Henry Bermudez: Wilderness in Mind
On View: February 8 - April 25, 2020 (Extended through August 21, 2020)
Wilderness in Mind is an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and a site-specific installation by the Venezuelan American artist Henry Bermudez. His paintings, drawings, and installations are elaborate and rich with distinctive patterns referencing the Amazon Jungle, Mexican, Peruvian, and Afro-Latino influences.
In recent years Bermudez’s work has become more overtly political in addressing the politics of race, beauty, climate change, and immigration.
Henry Bermudez emerged from the Caribbean tropics and immigrated to the USA in 2003 due to political upheaval in his country. His artistic life has been an unexpected intermingling of ideas informed by an acute sensitivity to the past and stenciled as part of a personal inventory onto places where he has lived and made his artistic working territory.
His earliest influences came from travels within the Amazon and a teaching assignment in an Afro-Caribbean community called Borbures, a small Afro-Caribbean village in Venezuela on the coast and next to a vast rainforest. He spent 2 years with the villagers, learning about their music and exploring the overgrown terrain. Providing a lifelong influence on his work, their stories opened his eyes and curiosity to the myths that served this community.
Curated by Rafael Damast
About the artist
Henry Bermudez has had more than 31 solo shows and has exhibited internationally. In 1986, he was selected to represent Venezuela in the XLII Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy. Having worked in the United States since 2003, he settled in Philadelphia in 2004.
Bermudez attended the National School of Art in Venezuela and was awarded a scholarship to the National School of Art “La Esmeralda” in Mexico City. He also studied at New York City’s Art Student’s League, as well as in Rome. Bermudez’s work has appeared in many exhibition catalogs, such as the X International Print and Drawing Exhibition of China.
funding for this exhibition and its programs was provided by
Related Programs
Artist Talk
The Art of Henry Bermudez
March 7, 2020 @ 2 – 3:30 PM | Free
Please join us for a conversation with Henry Bermudez and curator Rafael Damast. We will discuss Bermudez’s work, Venezuelan art, and Bermudez’s influences. With special guests Andrea Packard, Director of Swarthmore’s List Gallery, and Jorge Luis Gutierrez, Artistic Director of Contemporary Art Lab.
