AIA gallery located in UNM School of Architecture and Planning
An opening reception for Cecilia Portal’s photography exhibition, Redención, or Redemption, will be held Friday, July 7 from 5 to 8 p.m. in the American Institute of Architects gallery space in the UNM School of Architecture and Planning, 2414 Central Ave., SE.
Portal, a Guggenheim Fellow and AIA Albuquerque executive director, has been widely exhibited, including shows throughout New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois and Mexico.
“Photography has been the principal creative force in my life and has allowed me to explore my inner and outer worlds for the past 30 years. This photographic exploration navigates through my feminine, Cuban, Latina and immigrant experience sometimes with delight and other times with coarse, crude images. My esthetical pursuit incorporates my early life’s visual experience in my Native Cuba and my young adult life in Mexico,” she said.
Portal was a recipient of a 2002-03 New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities grant to collect oral histories from New Mexico architects. She received a previous NEH grant for the exhibition, “Las Mujeres de la Tierra del Sol,” a Village of Los Ranchos exhibit, lecture and series of oral history workshops.
Portal also received a 1998-99 grant from U.S. Mexico Culture for her project, “Con el Corazón Partido, Inmigrantes Mexicanas en Nuevo México,” With a Split Heart, Mexican Immigrant Women in New Mexico.
The gallery’s regular hours are Monday – Thursday noon to 5 p.m. Portal’s exhibition will be up through August 24.
For more information, call the New Mexico AIA office at 260-0571.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu