Anthony Goicolea
Anthony Goicolea (born USA, 1971) currently lives and works in New York, USA.
He received an MFA from the Pratt Institute (New York, USA) in 1996 and a BFA and BA from the University of Georgia (Athens, USA) in 1993.
Goicolea received the Cintas Foundation Fellowship in Visual Arts in 2006, the BMW-Paris Photo Prize in 2005 and was a funding recipient of the MFA Grant Program, Joan Mitchell Foundation (New York, USA) in 1997.
He has been included in the KunstFilm Biennial (Cologne, Germany) in 2006, the Western Biennial (Davis, USA) in 2005 and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) in 2003.
Goicolea has had solo exhibitions at the North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, USA) in 2011, the Houston Center for Photography (Houston, USA) in 2010 and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (Denver, USA) in 2009.
He has been included in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum (New York, USA) in 2011 and 2004, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA) in 2010 and the International Center of Photography (New York, USA) in 2004.
Goicolea’s work is included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, USA) and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C., USA).
“I have often felt that there are many rituals and traditions embedded in our various cultures that have lost their meaning and now merely serve as scripts for people to follow and act out without thinking of their true meanings or origins. Many children’s rhymes and songs, polite dinner customs, or party games derive from darker moments in history such as plague, famine, and war.
Growing up the son of Cuban parents, my brothers and I always had piñatas at our birthdays. Usually they took the shape of some sort of crude but cute animal effigy that ended up beaten to smithereens as rioting children stumbled over each other in a mad dash for the sugary spoils of war that spilled out like guts before them.
In my film for films4peace I wanted to dissect this sacrificial custom, the mechanics behind group dynamics, as well as the destruction that comes from greed. A life-sized, anatomically correct, sculpted horse in the guise of a piñata is beaten and destroyed until the multiple, identically clad, kids who flog it like monks banging church bells or a gong, surrender to the regret of the destruction they have wrought.”