About
Willy Castellanos
An art historian, curator, and artist, Castellanos graduated from the University of Havana with a research on the reappearance of nudes in Cuban photography (1982-1993) after two decades of absence. He is the co-founder -along with Adriana Herrera, PhD- of Aluna Art Foundation and Aluna Curatorial Collective.
A self-taught photographer, Guillermo “Willy” Castellanos” works at the intersection between documentary photography and various artistic intervention practices.
He has participated in several solos and group exhibitions such as Crosscurrents: Selections from the Rodríguez Collection of Cuban Artists (The Foosaner Art Museum, Melbourne, Fl., 2020); Return to Koyaanisqatsi (Kendall Art Center, Miami, 2019); Dobleplay: fotografía cubana contemporánea (Photo Museum Cuatro Caminos, Nahualcan, México, 2017); La banalidad del mar: fotografía cubana (Museum of Modern Art, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 2016); Re/Formulations: Narrative Processes (William V. Musto Museum, New Jersey, 2015); and Rites of Passage: Selection of Cuban Contemporary Photography (Photo Lima, Peru, 2015) among others.
His photographic exhibition Exodus: Alternate Documents, held at the Centro Cultural Español (CCEMiami), received the Miami Foundation Arts Award for Best Cultural Event in Miami in 2014.
Aluna Curatorial Collective
(Adriana Herrera, PhD & Willy Castellanos)
Aluna Curatorial Collective emerged as a curatorial necessity of Aluna Art Foundation, a non-profit institution created by Adriana Herrera, PhD and art historian Willy Castellanos. Since its foundation in 2011, the group has designed significant curatorial projects. They have opened spaces for a non-hegemonic dialogue on the relationship between art and society, both in the headquarters of the foundation in Miami and in different museums, institutions, galleries, and art fairs in Lisbon, Siberia, Monaco, Moscow, Houston, and Lima.
The collective’s ongoing research project "Affective Architectures," which is developed in multiple exhibitions, inquires into the relationship between personal and collective memory. It explores the way in which the appropriations of architecture in Latin America contain—as residues of failure—the trace of the unfinished history of modernity on the continent, as well as the social possibilities of artistic imagination.
The members of the Aluna Curatorial Collective have curated, among others, the following exhibitions: America Weaves (The Coral Gables Museum, Coral Gables, 2019); Women Weavers: The Warp of Memory (SaludArte Foundation, Miami, 2018); Sonia Falcone: Campos da vida (Palácio Nacional da Ajuda, Lisboa, Portugal, 2017); The Object and the Image; This is Not a Chair Either (Concrete Projects/Doral Contemporary Art Museum, Miami, 2017); Ronald Morán. Diálogos inmateriales (Centro Cultural Español de Miami, 2017); The Global South: Visions and Revisions from the Brillembourg Capriles Collection. Co-curated with Adolfo Wilson (Mana Contemporary Pavilion, Miami 2016); Jorge Eduardo Eielson: The Other Side of Languages (Kabe Contemporary Gallery, Miami, 2016); Illuminations (Miami Biennale, Miami, 2015-2016); Arte-Factum/Fictions. Viviana Zargón (Aluna Art Foundation, Miami, 2015); Photo Album: Families in Miami. Lorna Otero (The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami, 2015); Affective Architectures (Aluna Art Foundation, Miami, 2014-2015); Éxodus: alternate documents (Centro Cultural Español de Miami, 2014); Seminal Art: We are All Co-creators (Siberian Museum of Contemporary Art, Novosibirsk, Western Siberia, 2013); Damien Hirst and Sonia Falcone (General Society Private Banking of Monaco, Mónaco, 2013); Vanished Points and Convergences. Salvadorian Artists in Perspective (Biscayne Art House, Miami, 2013); Body, Maps and Territories: Personal Geographies (Aluna Art Foundation, Miami, 2012); and María Thereza Negreiros: Offerings. Co-curated with Francine Birbrager (Frost Art Museum, Miami, 2012).
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