Far Away So Close: Part II

Running alongside or adjacent to the exhibitions, the publication series Far Away So Close features meditations by a diverse grouping of further artists, thinkers, and writers who have been invited to respond―however obliquely―to the ideas and concerns that underlie the exhibited works. Far Away So Close: Part II includes written contributions by the Vancouver-based poet, activist, editor and professor Stephen Collis, as well as Andrea Torreblanca, writer and curator at the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City.

Stephen Collis is a poet, activist, editor and professor. His many books of poetry include The Commons (Talon Books 2008; second edition 2014), On the Material (Talon Books 2010—awarded the BC Book Prize for Poetry), To the Barricades (Talon Books 2013), and (with Jordan Scott) DECOMP (Coach House 2013). He has also written two books of literary criticism, a book of essays on the Occupy Movement, Dispatches from the Occupation (Talon Books 2012), and a novel, The Red Album (BookThug 2013). In 2014, while involved in anti-pipeline activism, he was sued for $5.6 million by US energy giant Kinder Morgan, whose lawyers read his poetry in court as “evidence.” He lives near Vancouver and teaches at Simon Fraser University.

Andrea Torreblanca is a curator at the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo. She holds an MA in Curating from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in New York. She was coordinator of the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros-The Tallera, Deputy Director at the Centro Cultural Muros, Head of Registry at the Colección de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo Mexicano de Jacques and Natasha Gelman and Registry Coordinator of the Museo de las Californias en el Centro Cultural Tijuana. She has been a fellow of the Jumex Foundation, CONACYT and FONCA, and currently teaches critical theory and contemporary art.