El Encuentro
El Encuentro
May 23rd -
July 12th, 2025
The Luminary is pleased to present El Encuentro, a new exhibition featuring the works of Laura Camila Medina and Cecilia Vargas Muñoz
Opening Reception: May 23rd, 2025 from 6 to 9pm
Exhibition on view Wednesday through Saturday each week through July 12th.
The Luminary is pleased to present its summer exhibition El Encuentro featuring new work by Laura Camila Medina and Cecilia Vargas Muñoz on view from May 23rd to July 12, 2022.
What does it mean to reconnect with a place that no longer exists in its original form, or to remember something never truly experienced?
Opening on May 23rd, 2025, El Encuentro is an invitation to consider these questions, to confront the tension between nostalgia and transformation, preservation and change, and the inevitability of cultural evolution.
The Luminary’s summer exhibition invites a critical reflection on the shifting nature of memory, identity, and cultural symbols through the work of Cecilia Vargas Muñoz and Laura Camila Medina. Beginning their relationship in 2023 as mentor and mentee, the two artists engage in a call-and-response dialogue that traces how Colombian cultural identity is reshaped through migration and globalization, particularly through craft. Medina presents her latest and largest multi-media sculptural commission, alongside works that draw from her personal narrative—symbols and visual languages shaped by her experience growing up in 2000s Florida after moving from Colombia. These pieces weave together her intimate connection to both Colombian traditions and the complexities of diasporic identity, examining how cultural symbols are recontextualized in the process of displacement and reidentification.
Vargas Muñoz’s work is anchored by her iconic miniature Chiva bus sculptures, alongside a selection of smaller works spanning her legacy from the 1970s to the present. El Encuentro marks the first time Cecilia’s work will be presented in the United States at this scale, offering a rare opportunity to witness her profound influence on both folk art and contemporary craft. The Chiva bus, which remains central to her practice, serves as a symbol of rural Colombia's cultural landscape—a bridge between personal and collective histories that resonates across time and space. Historically, Cecilia has largely gone unrecognized as the creator of this iconic form.
In her installation, Medina interrogates the effects of cultural displacement: What is lost when an object, like the Chiva, is mass-produced and severed from its context? What does it mean for a personal artifact to become commodified, recontextualized, and transformed into a symbol of nostalgia and displacement? Medina reimagines the Chiva in homage, moving it beyond its folk origins into a symbol of longing and memory, reflecting on how objects, like people, travel across borders and carry fragmented histories that stretch beyond their original form.
El Encuentro speaks to the encounter as an embrace of memories and histories, and a confrontation with the weight of symbols in motion. It reflects the physical and emotional terrain of displacement, the transformation of objects and people across borders, and the shifting meanings carried along the way. This encounter is not just a meeting, but a moment to face the complexities of culture, memory, and evolution.
Accompanying the exhibition will be an opening reception on May 23, 2025, from 6-9pm and a closing reception and artist talk on July 12, 2025, from 2-4pm. Additional details on programming will be available on The Luminary’s website.
El Encuentro is collaboratively curated with the artists and The Luminary’s Artistic & Executive Director Kalaija Mallery, with support from Kentaro Kumanomido (Deputy Director), Kellen Wright (Artist Projects Coordinator), Kevin Harris (Fabrication and Tech), and Ashley King (Designer). The exhibition is made possible in part by the generous efforts of the Jorge Flores collection, whose contribution has been instrumental in enabling the preservation and presentation of Cecilia Vargas Muñoz’s work. This support has enabled The Luminary to share this significant cultural legacy with a wider audience.
About the Artists
Laura Camila Medina (b. 1995) is an interdisciplinary artist born in Bogotá, Colombia. Her practice is deeply inspired by the kisses between mountains and sky of her birthplace intertwined with the thematic fantasy-scape and migrant microcosms of Central Florida. Her work has been exhibited at Yossi Milo, David Castillo Gallery, SPURS, Arts Fort Worth, Fuller Rosen Gallery, the Portland Art Museum, and Nationale. She was awarded the H. Lee Hirsche Memorial Prize, Dean’s Travel Grant, and CCAM Fellowship at Yale University, Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission, New Media Fellowship at Open Signal, and various artist residencies including: the Living School of Art, ACRE, Signal Fire, and Centrum. She is represented by Nationale in Portland, OR. Medina earned her BFA at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and an MFA in Painting & Printmaking from Yale University. She is currently based in Cleveland, OH, where she is the AICAD Post-Graduate Fellow at the Cleveland Institute of Art.
Cecilia Vargas Muñoz (b. 1951) is a master clay artist from Pitalito, Huila, known for her work that celebrates Colombian heritage and culture. Her contributions include a notable project for the Gold Museum of the Banco de la República, where she highlighted the life and culture of indigenous Colombian peoples. Her most iconic work, La Chiva, is a colorful sculpture of a traditional carriage filled with figures and objects, evoking the history of hardworking and joyful Colombian people. While Chivas are now mass-produced across Latin America and beyond, the original Chivas that inspired this widespread symbol were crafted by Vargas herself. Influenced by her early experiences with her mother, Doña Aura, Vargas’ work is imbued with the values of dedication, love, and the slow, steady transmission of knowledge that has shaped her legacy.