The Ethical Imperative: Why We Can’t Stay Silent Now

At a time when censorship increasingly threatens our ability to stand by our beliefs and ideas, defending free expression becomes an urgent ethical imperative. The current political moment demands that we confront systems designed to silence dissent, control narratives, and restrict what can be explored and discussed in our work. As artists, how do we continue to resist and push back against the boundaries imposed on public discourse? 
 

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About the Speaker

Carlos Motta

Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice, Fine Arts

Pratt Institute
 

Carlos Motta’s (b. 1978, Colombia) multi-disciplinary art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities in order to challenge normative discourses through acts of self-representation. As a historian of untold narratives, Motta is committed to in-depth research on the struggles of post-colonial subjects and societies. His work manifests in a variety of mediums including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia.

In 2025, Motta was the recipient of a Ruth Arts Award and will have a mid-career survey exhibition titled Carlos Motta: Pleas of Resistance at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), co-curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio and Maria Berrios. In 2024, he presented the solo exhibition Gravidade (Gravity) at Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, and  participated in Disobedience Archive, a project by Marco Scotini, La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Adriano Pedrosa; and in the group exhibitions Scientia Sexualis during Pacific Standard Time at ICA LA, and El Dorado (Myths of Gold) at Americas Society, New York. Motta also staged the new performance Gravedad at El Espacio 23, Miami during ArtBasel week in December 2024.

Motta’s work was the subject of the survey exhibitions Carlos Motta: Stigmata, Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO) (2023); Carlos Motta: Your Monsters, Our Idols at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, USA (2022); Carlos Motta: Formas de libertad at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM), Colombia (2017) that traveled to Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile (2018); and Carlos Motta: For Democracy There Must Be Love, Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden (2015). 

Other solo exhibitions at international museums include, We Got Each Other’s Back, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) (2020); Corpo Fechado, Galeria Avenida da Índia (EGEAC), Lisbon (2018); The Crossing, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2017); Histories for the Future, Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami (2016); Réquiem, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano the Buenos Aires (MALBA) (2016); Patriots, Citizens, Lovers, PinchukArtCentre, Kiev (2015); Gender Talents, Tate Modern, London (2013); La forma de la libertad, Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico (2013); We Who Feel Differently, New Museum, New York (2012); Brief History, MoMA/PS1, New York (2009); and The Good Life, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Philadelphia (20 08); among others.

Motta participated in Signals: How Video Transformed the World at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York (2023); Is it morning for you yet?, 58th Carnegie International (2022); The Crack Begins Within, 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2020); Incerteza Viva: 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (2016); A Story Within A Story: Göteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2015); Burning Down the House: X Gwangju Biennale (2014); and Le spectacle du quotidian: X Lyon Biennale (2010). His films have been screened at the Rotterdam Film Festival (2016, 2010); Toronto International Film Festival (2013); and Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur (2016); Film at Lincoln Center (2021); Anthology Film Archives (2022); among many others.

Other recent group exhibitions include Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2022); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2021); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2020); The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston (2019); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) (2019); and Migros Museum, Zürich (2019).

Carlos Motta’s first 20-year career monograph Carlos Motta: History’s Backrooms was published by SKIRA in June 2020. His work in featured in Phaidon’s 2023 anthology Latin American Artists.

Motta won the Artist Impact Initiative x Creative Time R&D Fellowship (2023), Vilcek Foundation’s Prize for Creative Promise (2017); the PinchukArtCentre’s Future Generation Art Prize (2014); and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008). Motta has received grants from Penn Mellon Just Futures Initiative (2022), The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (2019), Art Matters (2008), NYSCA (2010), Creative Capital Foundation (2012), and the Kindle Project (2012).

He has recently delivered talks and presentations at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh; Amant Foundation, New York; Guggenheim Museum; Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP); Berlin Biennial; The Center for Cultural Studies, UCSC; Summit X Sessions, Creative Time; MIT List Center; MoMA; Artists Space; New Museum; Frieze New York; and Museo Jumex. Motta guest edited the e-flux journal April 2013 issue, “(im)practical (im)possibilities” on contemporary queer art and culture.

Carlos Motta’s work is in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Barcelona; Museu Fundaçao Serralves, Porto; and Museo de Arte de Banco de la República, Bogotá; among many other institutional, corporate and private collections around the world.