We had the good fortune of connecting with Fía Benitez and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Fía, we’d love to start by asking you about lessons learned. Is there a lesson you can share with us?
I am always learning, but so far I would say: keep going! And surround yourself with people you trust and admire.
Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
My most recent and ongoing body of work, Root Rot (2021), is a study of colonial histories in Valencia, CA. Incorporating research from public archives, works range from large-scale, colorfully-rendered citrus labels to graphite drawings of World’s Fairs photographs. These reflect on the legacies of the California citrus industry and its history of indigenous dispossession, erasure of immigrant labor, and privatization of land management practices.
Points of Interest (2021) broadens this research to Newhall, California. This project comprises graphite drawings of historical documents: local oil field photographs and company stock certificates, as well as bisque-fired vessels referencing orange juice advertisements, and rubbings of the Walk of Western Stars along Old Town Newhall’s Main Street. Probing relationships between extractivism, culture industries, and gentrification, the exhibition temporarily occupied an unused retail space in the luxury apartment building Newhall Crossings.
This year I co-organized Tense Renderings: the will and won’t of spatial logics (2022) with Simone Zapata at The Reef, Los Angeles. Featuring 14 artists across disciplines, the exhibition interrogates the motivations, conditions, and limitations of maps and mapmaking. The range of works include axonometric projection drawing; feminist, communally-woven textile; speculative sea and space colonization; and interventions into legal language delineating exclusion and belonging.
Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I am incredibly lucky and grateful to my friends, family, and mentors–so many more than I could possibly list here; as well as my artist communities in Los Angeles, New York, London, and Mexico. Today I shout out my REEF Residency collaborator Simone Zapata, as well as Patrick Winfield Vogel, Eleanor Francis, Jacqueline Muñoz-Geoghegan, Carrie Plover, Bobby Robinson, and Alyx Raz, who inspire me daily.
Website: https://www.officespaceslc.com/fia-benitez
Instagram: n0_relation
Image Credits
Headshot: Photography by Vinhay Keo Artworks:
1. Truth, 2021 Pastel, graphite, crayon, color pencil on matboard; Crate label, “Truth Brand.” Arlington, Riverside Co., CA (c. 1930s) 32 x 32 in.
2. Fountain, 2021 Bisque-fired ceramic, found tile from Santa Clara River Dimensions variable
3. Rubbing 3, 2021 Graphite on paper; Walk of Western Stars, Newhall, CA, bronze stars on terrazzo tiles (1981–) 24 x 18 in.
4. Untitled palimpsest, 2021 Graphite on paper; Jasper Cropsey, Evening at Paestum (1856); Bertolt Brecht, Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties (1935); UCLA Film & Television Archive at the Packard Humanities Institute Stoa, Valencia, CA (2015); CalArts Land Acknowledgement (2018-present) 6 x 4 ft.
5. Historic Houses, 2021 Mixed media on matboard; Harold D. Eberlein and Cortlandt V. D. Hubbard, Historic Houses of the Hudson Valley (1942); Sunkist Citrus House on Main Street, USA, Disneyland, Anaheim, CA, plans (1960-89) 32 x 32 in.
6. Stock, 2021 Graphite on matboard; The Newhall Land & Farming Co., stock certificate (1917) 40 x 64 in.
7. Oil field, 2021 Graphite on matboard; Schultheis, Herman. Newhall oil field, photograph (c. 1937) 32 x 40 in.
8. Health, Properties, 2021 Bisque-fired ceramic; Sunkist, California Fruit Growers Exchange, print advertisement (c. 1935) Dimensions variable