Press Release (PDF)

Press Release Text:

The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) and Canal Projects present Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi: Triumphant Currents, Auspicious Winds, the artist’s most ambitious public art installation to date. Activating the windows of Canal Projects along Canal Street and Wooster Street, Perez-Tlatenchi’s eleven-panel mural and three-channel video weave together imagery from urban environments, religious iconography, and the commercial vernacular that reflect on obscured colonial histories and diasporic narratives.

Informed by his experience growing up in the Mexican and Chinese communities of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, Perez-Tlatenchi creates collages layered with cultural references from immigrant neighborhoods like his own. He finds inspiration in advertisements and borrows from commercial printing techniques and materials, including perforated vinyl found on convenience store windows and lenticular prints used for signage.

In Triumphant Currents, Auspicious Winds, vibrant landscapes and motifs—some drawn from the artist’s extensive travel photography, and others from Catholic prayer cards and related religious sources—intersect across a series of disorienting vignettes. Digitally composed, these scenes feature images of Mexico's Popocatépetl volcano, Hong Kong's historic Tamão settlement hills on Lantau Island, and the rolling, sun-bleached Judean desert between Bethlehem and Jericho, places that once linked the Mexican and Chinese empires in the earliest global trade system known as the Manila Galleon Trade. The artist also incorporates archetypes such as the Seven Swords of the Archangels, Holy Fire, Archangel Michael holding the scales of justice, and the sea goddess Mazu, as well as a deconstructed maritime scene that alludes to the Biblical flood myth and water as signs of both divine judgment and historical erasure.

Made with perforated vinyl that requires light for it to be fully visible, the mural gradually becomes transparent as day shifts to night. At sunset, the Canal Street windows reveal a three-channel video that transforms the work into a moving tapestry of footage from colonial sites of the former Spanish empire—from the Americas and Europe to its Asian trading outposts. Perez-Tlatenchi renders colonial histories as a persistent cyclical presence in contemporary life. The monitors’ illuminated imagery enters into direct conversation with Canal Street, one of New York City’s many definitive sites of commercial exchange. Through a constellation of images, Perez-Tlatenchi invokes narratives of conquest, trade, and exploitation that are still embedded in the cultural fabric of the city today. At a time when deglobalization re-enforces borders, this work insists that distinct cultures and their histories are fundamentally entangled.

Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi: Triumphant Currents, Auspicious Winds is co-organized by the International Studio & Curatorial Program and Canal Projects. The exhibition is curated by Melinda Lang, ISCP’s Director of Programs and Exhibitions, with Veronica Sanchez, ISCP’s Programs Coordinator.