Beyond the Blue Wall: REEF Residents Fía Benitez and Simone Zapata
03/08/23 • 38 min
The REEF Residency is a collaboration between the School of Critical Studies, School of Film/Video, and School of Art. Learn more about the REEF Residency.
In this episode, we speak with 2022 REEF Residents, Fía Benitez and Simone Zapata. Their exhibition, Tense Renderings: the will and won’t of spatial logics, opened at The REEF Los Angeles, June 24–July 24, 2022. Tense Renderings 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.
Tense Renderings features 14 artists across time zones and disciplines: Jumanah Abbas, C. Bain, Amy Chiao, Natan Diacon-Furtado, Jen D’Mello, Alexsa Durrans, Christine Imperial, sj kim-ryu, Wesley Larios, Julia Saenz Lorduy, Sonya Merutka, Amanda Teixeira, Sarah Sophia Yanni, and Bz Zhang.
Simone Zapata is a poet and educator from San José, CA. Her work can be found, or is forthcoming in Foglifter, The Quarterless Review, Tiny Spoon, Reed Magazine, and The Vassar Review. She serves as Managing Editor for The Beat Within, and as a poetry editor for MAYDAY. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from California Institute of the Arts.
Fía Benitez is an artist and educator living in Los Angeles. Their ongoing body of work, Root Rot, encompasses large-scale graphite drawings, collage, turn of the century artifacts, and bisque-fired ceramics. Incorporating research from public archives, works in Root Rot index the legacies of the California citrus industry and its history of indigenous dispossession, erasure of immigrant labor, and privatization of land management practices. Fía is a 2022 REEF Artist-in-Residence and a 2020 Research & Practice Fellow, with recent solo and group exhibitions at The Consulate General of Mexico in Los Angeles, NÉVÉ, The Reef, Tin Flats, Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, 7313 Melrose, Newhall Crossings, Other Places Art Fair, and CalArts. Publications include re:connections, water / relic / spices, as well as Baest Journal, Sublevel Magazine, The Kitchen Blog, and The Vassar Review. Fía holds degrees from Vassar College and CalArts.
Beyond the Blue Wall’s Season 2 original theme music was composed and pe
Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at https://calarts.edu/about-calarts/newsroom/podcast.
The REEF Residency is a collaboration between the School of Critical Studies, School of Film/Video, and School of Art. Learn more about the REEF Residency.
In this episode, we speak with 2022 REEF Residents, Fía Benitez and Simone Zapata. Their exhibition, Tense Renderings: the will and won’t of spatial logics, opened at The REEF Los Angeles, June 24–July 24, 2022. Tense Renderings 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.
Tense Renderings features 14 artists across time zones and disciplines: Jumanah Abbas, C. Bain, Amy Chiao, Natan Diacon-Furtado, Jen D’Mello, Alexsa Durrans, Christine Imperial, sj kim-ryu, Wesley Larios, Julia Saenz Lorduy, Sonya Merutka, Amanda Teixeira, Sarah Sophia Yanni, and Bz Zhang.
Simone Zapata is a poet and educator from San José, CA. Her work can be found, or is forthcoming in Foglifter, The Quarterless Review, Tiny Spoon, Reed Magazine, and The Vassar Review. She serves as Managing Editor for The Beat Within, and as a poetry editor for MAYDAY. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from California Institute of the Arts.
Fía Benitez is an artist and educator living in Los Angeles. Their ongoing body of work, Root Rot, encompasses large-scale graphite drawings, collage, turn of the century artifacts, and bisque-fired ceramics. Incorporating research from public archives, works in Root Rot index the legacies of the California citrus industry and its history of indigenous dispossession, erasure of immigrant labor, and privatization of land management practices. Fía is a 2022 REEF Artist-in-Residence and a 2020 Research & Practice Fellow, with recent solo and group exhibitions at The Consulate General of Mexico in Los Angeles, NÉVÉ, The Reef, Tin Flats, Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, 7313 Melrose, Newhall Crossings, Other Places Art Fair, and CalArts. Publications include re:connections, water / relic / spices, as well as Baest Journal, Sublevel Magazine, The Kitchen Blog, and The Vassar Review. Fía holds degrees from Vassar College and CalArts.
Beyond the Blue Wall’s Season 2 original theme music was composed and pe
Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at https://calarts.edu/about-calarts/newsroom/podcast.
Previous Episode
Beyond the Blue Wall: The Story of A-Block
On Saturday, June 5, 2021, a cooling tower on the fifth floor of CalArts’ A-block overflowed, flooding several locations below and causing much damage to the Character and Experimental Animation areas. This is the story of that flood, as well as the resurrection of this critically important space on the CalArts’ campus.
To follow the progress of construction in A-block, visit this page on the School of Film/Video website.
Learn more about CalArts’ Character Animation and Experimental Animation programs.
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Beyond the Blue Wall's Season 2 original theme music (the intro and outro) was composed and performed by 2020 Music alumnx, Socks Whitmore. You can learn more about Socks at sockswhitmore.com.
Additional music in this episode includes:
- “Zion” by Salmon Like the Fish from the Free Music Archive and Creative Commons
- “Midnight” by Lexin Music from Pixabay
- “Light Chilled Music Backgrounds” by ComaStudio from Pixabay
- “Mountain Pass” by Lobo Loco from the Free Music Archive and Creative Commons
- “Flying Minimal” by Coma-Media from Pixabay
Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at https://calarts.edu/about-calarts/newsroom/podcast.
Next Episode
Beyond the Blue Wall: Chad Hamill
Chad Hamill/ čnaq'ymi (Music BFA 93; MFA 97 ) is the Executive Director for Indigenous Arts and Expression and Senior Advisor to the President on Indigenous Affairs at CalArts. During the 2021-22 academic year, Chad was named the inaugural CalArts Presidential IDEA Fellow. Chad led the effort to establish a partnership between CalArts and the Institute for American Indian Arts (IAIA). He has also developed and taught the first Indigenous Studies and Native arts course in CalArts history, as well as organized numerous cultural events across the CalArts community.
Chad previously served as chair of the Department of Applied Indigenous Studies and Vice President of Native American Initiatives at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff. While at NAU, where he began teaching in 2007, Chad led innovative and impactful initiatives focused on a variety of areas, including tribal leadership, K-12 engagement with Native-serving schools, global Indigenous partnerships, wifi infrastructure on Native lands, and environmental sustainability in Indian Country.
Chad received his BFA in World Music Performance and his MFA in North Indian Classical Music from CalArts and went on to earn his PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Colorado.
A descendant of the Spokane Tribe of Indians, Chad is the co-founder of the Spokane Language House, a nonprofit tribal organization focused on language revitalization.
Chad’s research and publications focus on music and sovereignty, music and spirituality, Indigenous ecological knowledge, performative scholarship, and the Indigenization / decolonization of academic structures.
His book, Songs of Power and Prayer in the Columbia Plateau (OSU Press), explores song as a vehicle for spiritual power among tribes of the interior Northwest. Chad continues to write, record, and perform musical works centered on Spokane ways of knowing and being in the world.
Learn more
- To learn more about Chad Hamill’s music and scholarship, and to listen to his music and watch him perform, visit motherearthsongs.com.
- Learn more about qey’s (Dream) Scholarship for Indigenous Artists, established by Chad, which provides full tuition support for students at CalArts.
- Learn more about Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access (IDEA) at CalArts.
- Learn more about CalArts’ Land Acknowledgment.
Beyond the Blue Wall’s Season 2 original theme music was composed and performed by Socks Whitmore (Music BFA 20). Learn more about their work at sockswhitmore.com.
Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at https://calarts.edu/about-calarts/newsroom/podcast.
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