Would you support the life of a stranger? LOVE, care, and gravity in Carlos Motta’s great metaphor

Carlos Motta’s (b. 1978, Colombia) multi-disciplinary art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities to challenge normative discourses through acts of self-representation. Motta exhibitions include career-survey exhibitions at Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO) (2023); The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2022); Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM) (2017); and Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg (2015). His work was included major group exhibitions, biennials, and film festivals such as Foreigners Everywhere, Biennale di Venezia (2024); Scientia Sexualis, Pacific Standard Time (PST) at Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Los Angeles (2024); Signals: How Video Transformed the World at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York (2023); Film Festival Oberhausen (2023); Is it morning for you yet?, 58th Carnegie International (2022); Film at Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real (2021); The Crack Begins Within, 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2020); Home is a Foreign Place, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2019); When Home Won’t Let You Stay, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston; Incerteza Viva: 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (2016); Rotterdam Film Festival (2016, 2010); A Story Within A Story: Göteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2015); Burning Down the House: X Gwangju Biennale (2014); Toronto International Film Festival (2013); Le spectacle du quotidian: X Lyon Biennale (2010); and many others.Motta’s grants, fellowships and awards include the Artist Impact Initiative x Creative Time R&D Fellowship (2023); a Penn Mellon Just Futures Initiative Grant (2023); a Rockefeller Brothers Fund Grant (2019); The Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise (2017); The PinchukArtCentre’s Future Generation Art Prize (2014); and a Guggenheim fellowship (2008).His work is in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, SFMOMA, Museo de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, The Centre Pompidou, Paris, amongst many others.