Ulises Carrión: Post/Master, curated by María Paula Varela, PhD Candidate in art history, was Ulises Carrión’s first public exhibition in the United States. Carrión was a crucial figure in mail art, a prominent international movement of the 1970s and 1980s related to Conceptual art in which artists exhibited material they had mailed to one another. Loaned from the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), seven of the ten projects that comprise Carrión’s The Big Monster archive, including “Anonymous Quotations,” “A Poem,” “Cancellation Stamps,” “Definitions of Art,” “E.A.M.I.S.,” “Feedback,” and “Rob & Marta,” were showcased in the exhibition. These projects include hundreds of postcards, photographs, letters, and mixed media replies to Carrión’s collective postal works.
Ulises Carrión (b. 1941, Mexico; d. 1989, Netherlands) was a pioneering figure in mail art, a movement and a medium that produced a unique international network of creative exchange in the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout his life he developed an important oeuvre that spanned performance, video art, and books.
María Paula Varela is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at the University of Florida College of Art + Art History.