
Miguel Ángel Rojas, portrait at his studio, Bogotá, Colombia
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Greed and Desire Exhibition, Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, 2018
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Serie Faenza: Sobre Porcelana, 1979, printed c.1980. Six vintage silver gelatin prints, 27 1/2 x 19 2/3 in. (each)
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Serie Faenza. Bienal de São Paulo, 2018
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Serie Faenza: Tres en platea, 1979, Silver Gelatin on aluminum, 32 1/4 x 48 in.
Miguel Ángel Rojas, La Esquina Rosada (Edition of 3 + 2AP), 1975/2015. Inkjet print from color transparency on 300 gr. Hahnemühle cotton papers, 23 5/8 x 15 3/4 in. (each)
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Grano, 1980-1981. Installation Mineral Pigments at 2007 Objetivo-Subjetivo, Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Mirando la flor (Edition of 3 + 2AP), 1997-2007. Video and 2 silver gelatin prints, 5:22 min., 31 7/8 x 44 in. (each)
Miguel Ángel Rojas, installation view 2007 Objetivo-Subjetivo [partially developed photographs] Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Economía Salvaje, [left] 2018. Mural, serigraph with clay, vegetal pigments and gold leaf. 158 x 590 in. El nuevo dorado, [right] 2018. Serigraph with vegetal pigments and gold leaf. 158 x 708 in. at the 2018 Shangai Biennial
Miguel Ángel Rojas, El nuevo dorado, 2018, Serigraph print with vegetable pigments and gold leaf. 157.48 x 708.66 in. (detail)
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Economia Intervenida, Ensamblaje. Video, coca leaf powder, gold leaf and aluminum, 43 5/16 in. x 64 3/16 in.
Miguel Ángel Rojas, the making of Economía Intervenida, Ensemblaje
Miguel Ángel Rojas, At the Edge of Scarcity Exhibition, Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, 2011
Miguel Ángel Rojas in his studio in Bogotá, Colombia, producing El Capital, Diptych, [Ed. of 3 + 1AP], 2009. Acrylic, gold leaf, silver and gold electrolytic, 16 x 66 in. each
Miguel Ángel Rojas in his exhibition El Camino Corto at Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Cuernavaca, Mexico, 2013
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Exhibition at Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, 2006
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Greed and Desire Exhibition, Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, 2018
Miguel Ángel Rojas, El camino corto. Diptych, Ed. 1/3 [Edition of 3], 2010. Cut coca leaf and dollar bills, 35 13/32 x 80 5/16 in. each
Miguel Ángel Rojas, El camino corto, 2010 in the making
Miguel Ángel Rojas, At the Edge of Scarcity Exhibition, Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, 2011
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Nowadays (Ed. of 3 + 2 AP), 2001. Installation: coca leaves mounted on acetate, at 2007 Objetivo-Subjetivo, Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia
Miguel Angel Rojas, solo exhibition, Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, 2006
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Machu Picchu, detail, 2013, Dollar bills and coca leaves on paper, 19 7/8 x 66 16/16 in.
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Greed and Desire Exhibition, Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, 2018
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Sin frío permanente (Edition of 2 + 1AP), 2012. Impression with coca leaf powder on jute, 96 1/2 x 53 1/8 in.
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Broadway installation at Contingent Beauty Exhibition, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2015
Miguel Ángel Rojas, La cama de piedra, 2000. Polyptych: Ink and silver leaf on polyester filled canvas. 36 3/16 x 66 7/8 in. each. Collection: Museo Nacional de Colombia
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Por Pan installation in El Cuerpo Sutil exhibition, Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, 2014
Miguel Ángel Rojas, Selva Cosmopolitica, 2014, Bogotá, Colombia.
Clemencia Echeverri and Miguel Angel Rojas
Miguel Angel Rojas in his studio.
Miguel Angel Rojas with students in Colombia.
MIGUEL ÁNGEL ROJAS (b. 1946, Colombia)
“In some way, my work is a self-portrait, even if it deals with themes such as drug-trafficking or war, events that I have no direct part; that information passes through the filter of ‘I’…”
Miguel Ángel Rojas is a conceptual and multimedia artist whose work addresses subjective experience, identity, and politics. His projects have included indictments of international drug trafficking and violence, and much of his work focuses upon experiences of marginality. In 1964, he began studying architecture at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, where he remained for six semesters. Deciding not to pursue a career in architecture, Rojas enrolled at the School of Fine Arts at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá in 1969. His earliest experiments with long-exposure photographic portraits and self-portraits began during this period in the mid-1960s, and continued throughout the 1970s.
In 1973, he began one of his most important series of photographs, the Faenza series. Rojas took these photographs—of encounters between gay men at B-movie theaters in Bogotá—secretly, hiding his camera in a suitcase or under a jacket. The resulting images are ghostly records of the affective and physical experiences of a largely invisible community. The series also marks Rojas’s first exploration of his own subjectivity as central to his work, and it was his first extended foray into photography “at a time when photography was not a medium considered part of the great canon of the plastic arts,” he recalls. The freedom that came with working outside of the accepted subject matter and materials of fine arts allowed Rojas the space to make what he would call “leaps in the dark” as he established his formative style. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Rojas also worked with engraving, drawing, video, intaglio, stitching, and photographic reductions.
In the mid-1990s, Rojas began using coca leaves in his work. Initially the works explored histories of indigenous life in Colombia, but over time Rojas began using them to comment upon the production of cocaine for consumption in the first world. Since the 1990s, he has used coca to reconstruct pop imagery, bringing consumerism into dialogue with widespread political and social problems. “The great lesson of pop, for me,” he says, “is the way society looks at itself—understanding that art is in everything. That it is the ‘skin’ of culture. Every human action, all the markers of an age, including tastes and violence, are the driving forces in art.”
Miguel Ángel Rojas lives and works in Bogotá.
2015 | Miguel Ángel Rojas: Unas de cal y otras de arena (Quimbaya), Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, ARCO Madrid 2015, Madrid, Spain |
2013 | El camino corto, Sala de Arte Público Siqueros, Cuernevaca, Morelos |
2012 | Camino Corto, Museo de Arte Universidad Nacional, Bogotá, Colombia |
| Negocios Grandes y Pequeños, Galería Casas Reigner, Bogotá, Colombia |
| El Nuevo Dorado, Solo Project invitation, ARCO: Feria Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid, Spain |
2011 | At the Edge of Scarcity, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA |
2009 | Pueblito. Museo Bolivariano de Arte Contemporáneo. Santa Martha, Colombia |
2008 | Fotofest, 2008, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA |
2007 | Objetivo-Subjetivo, Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia |
| David, La vitrina, Lugar a Dudas, Cali, Colombia |
2006 | Fotofest 2006, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA |
2004 | Must we meet like this?, Casas Riegner Gallery, Miami, FL, USA |
2002 | La Cama de Piedra, Museo Nacional, Bogotá, Colombia |
2001 | Sub, Galería Valenzuela – Klenner, Bogotá, Colombia |
2000 | La Cama de Piedra, Alianza Colombo – Francesa, Bogotá, Colombia |
1995 | Pascal y Pascual, Museo del Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico |
1992 | Dibujo y Pintura, Galería Arteria, Barranquilla, Colombia |
1991 | Bio, Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia |
1990 | Miguel Angel Rojas, Museo de Arte Moderno, Cartagena, Colombia |
| Miguel Angel Rojas obra en proceso, Museo de Arte Moderno, Medellín, Colombia |
| Pinturas, Galería Garcés-Velásquez, Bogotá, Colombia |
1985 | Bio, Intar Latin-American Gallery, New York, NY, USA |
1982 | Subjetivo, Galería Garcés-Velásquez, Bogotá, Colombia |
1981 | Works on Paper, Center for Inter-American Relationes, New York, NY, USA |
1980 | Grano, Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia |
Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango del Banco de La República, Bogotá, Colombia
Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba
Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, FL, USA
Coleccion de la Rectoria de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia
Coleccion Embajada de Colombia en España, Madrid, Spain
Daros Latin America Collection, Zürich, Switzerland
Diane and Bruce Halle Collection, Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Embajada de Francia, Bogotá, Colombia
Fundación La Caixa, Barcelona, Spain
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Mexico
Museo de Arte Americano de Managua, Managua, Nicaragua
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), Spain
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico
Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia, Cali, Colombia
Museo de Arte Moderno, Barranquilla, Colombia
Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia
Museo de Arte Moderno, Bucaramanga, Colombia
Museo de Arte Moderno, Cartagena, Colombia
Museo de Arte Universidad Nacional, Bogotá, Colombia
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela
Museo Nacional, Bogotá, Colombia
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), Houston, TX, USA
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY, USA
Tate Modern, London, UK