No Vacancy: Gonzalo Hernández, AMERICA

AMERICA is a monumental textile installation composed of seven jacquard-woven banners spelling A-M-E-R-I-C-A. Each letter emerges through abstracted colors drawn from the flags of Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. By reconstructing the word through South American visual references, the work challenges its dominant identification with the United States and reclaims America as a broader, contested geography. Created as the United States marks its 250th anniversary, AMERICA considers how language produces ideas of nationhood, citizenship, migration and belonging. The work extends my ongoing investigation into cultural displacement and the politics embedded in seemingly familiar words and symbols. Textile is central to this inquiry: historically connected to labor, migration, trade and cultural transmission, it becomes both material and metaphor. Rather than proposing a singular definition of America, the installation asks who is represented by the term, who has historically claimed it and whose histories remain obscured within it. Gonzalo Hernández (b. 1991, Lima, Peru) lives and works in Miami, Florida. He received his MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design and is currently a studio resident at Oolite Arts, Miami Beach. His work is currently on view in *This Is America*, curated by Maritza Lacayo at Pérez Art Museum Miami and *Nothing Is Linear: Latin America and Its Diasporas in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection* at El Espacio 23. Recent solo exhibitions include David Castillo, Miami; Kates-Ferri Projects, New York; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah; ICPNA, Lima; among others. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in collections including Pérez Art Museum Miami, De La Cruz Collection, El Espacio 23, ICPNA and Savannah College of Art and Design. Hernández’s work has been reviewed in ARTnews, Hyperallergic, Cultured Magazine, Artpapers and Burnaway. He is represented by adhesivo contemporary, Mexico City and Galería Enlace, Lima, Peru.