Domestic Disturbances, 490 Atlantic Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 2017 (Installation view).

Domestic Disturbances features the work of eight artists whose work merges functional and non-functional elements, highlighting the interplay of art and design. traditionally the use of craft and design was associated with domesticity, functionality and decoration. These classifications have contributed to a hierarchy that historically marginalized and devalued the art of women, minorities and non-western cultures. changes in cultural awareness precipitated by feminism, gender identity and racial diversity have shifted perceptions of aesthetic value and in turn softened divisions in the art world.
—Joanne Freeman, Curator

Five Corners, 57W57 ARTS - Project Space, New York, NY 2016 (Installation view).

Five Corners is a site-specific installation that engages the room’s architecture with an exploration of primary and secondary colors. Reflected Agenda references the Colombian flag, which consists of three bands of color: yellow, blue and red. Hung in the corners of the room, its three vertical paintings cast reflected glows on the walls. Also included is Triangular Mix, a work that reconfigures a rectangle into two triangles of secondary colors folded into the corners.

Pratt Alumni Exhibition, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY 2015 (Installation view).

…this exhibition represent the tradition of abstract painting embedded in the culture of Pratt Institute. Working in the vein of notable alumni such as Ellsworth Kelly and Pat Steir, the visual vocabulary developed by each artist confronts the formal elements of color. Spanning four decades of alumni, the exhibition proves an ongoing dialogue with abstraction.
—Caroline Taylor, Curator

Unconfirmed Makeshift Museum:: UMM, Irvine, CA 2015 (Installation view).

Using the obsolete medium of slides, in “slide slam,” Zarate eviscerates the film to work on the slide frame itself, which she hand-paints, conjuring the idea of emptiness in a minimalist composition of blank wall pockets. The emphasis in “slide slam,” as well as in other works by Zarate, is on color relationships and on the cumulative effect of individual formal units, how they reconfigure and activate each other with their individual presence. Zarate eschews large heroic gestures, instead using modest materials that she associates with lived experience to build colorful compositions.

—Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, Curator

Doppler Shift, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ 2014 (Installation view).

In the eye of the beholder
A look at the works in doppler shift

This exhibition examines the relationship of the viewer to the work of art by investigating how shifting perspectives alter the visual experience. As various factors change—the viewing distance, angle of vision, lighting conditions, duration of looking—forms and objects seem to shift between two and three dimensions, creating spatial ambiguities and visual disorientation. The interaction of color and line may prompt similar optical sensations, making stationary lines and forms appear to move. The unconventional or unexpected placement of art objects creates interesting and playful juxtapositions that respond to the building’s architecture, with its angled walls, high and low ceilings and expansive windows.

—Mary Birmingham, Curator

Open Studios, Castello Aragonese di Otranto, Bau Institute, Otranto, Italy 2013

I focused on creating work that drew from and/or was directly influenced by the physical space of the studio and the town of Otranto. Otranto is described, in the tourist websites, as boasting “deep intense crystal clear blue water and stark pristine white buildings” – reacting to this natural beauty, I created a site-responsive piece in the studio using these predominate colors.

759 Running Feet: Wall Drawings in Gwangju, Gwangju Art Museum, Gwangju, South Korea, 2005 (Installation view).

Zarate’s Across the Divide (2005) is a meditative dialogue between two locations: Hyanggyo in Gwangju and Sunnyside in Queens, where she resides. To represent these two remote places she has chosen the pattern from two religious sites. While a floral motif for Gwangju is taken from the architectural ornament of Daeseongjeon (a shrine), seemingly anonymous grid design is extracted from the facade of New York Presbyterian Church that houses a largely Korean congreation. Zarate placed these contrasting pictorial signs in facing walls of the gallery to evoke the geographical distance of the two sites as well as to suggest the ubiquity of cultures found in our everyday.

— Hitomi Iwasaki, Associate Curator, Queens Museum of Art