Ma's House Podcast: With Artist in Residence Simón Vega

In this episode of the Ma's House Podcast, the host, Hunter Begun, engages in a captivating conversation with the artist in residence, Simón Vega. Delving into the profound themes embedded within Simón's remarkable sculptures, the duo explores his artistic process and the inspiration behind his creations. They also shed light on Simón's current exhibition, "Tropical Space Castaways," showcased at the Parish Art Museum until June 5th. This is an episode you do not want to miss!

Artist Profile

Vega creates drawings, objects, sculptural installations, and happenings inspired by local markets, self-made architecture, and vendor carts found in the streets and beaches of Central America. His sculptures are Third World replicas of the sophisticated capsules and satellites developed by NASA and the Soviet Space Program during the ‘Space Race’; however, they are assembled with found materials, including transmutable elements, colored lights, and live plants. This series, titled Tropical Space Proyectos, comments on the effects of the Cold War in contemporary El Salvador and Central America. In other artworks, the artist reinterprets ancient Mesoamerican architectural sculpture, Modernism’s iconic buildings, and contemporary surveillance systems, creating an ironic and humorous fusion between past and present, first and third worlds.

Born in El Salvador in 1972, Simón Vega graduated in Fine Arts at the University of Veracruz in Mexico in 2000. He received a Master´s in Contemporary Arts from the Complutense University in Madrid in 2006.

He has exhibited his work extensively in Europe, the United States and Latin America, including the 55th Venice Biennial in Italy (2013), the IX Havana Biennial in Cuba (2006), at the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California (2018), at the Bronx Museum in New York (2019), at the Centre Pompidou, París for the exhibition Cosmópolis 2 (2019) and at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid amongst others. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Costa Rica, at Locust Projects, Miami, Liliana Bloch Gallery, Dallas, Texas, and at the Hilger Next Gallery in Vienna