Daniel Bejar Bio

Statement

Informed by questions of memory, identity, and the histories found in the present-day, my
practice looks to create ruptures within established narratives.
Utilizing performance, intervention, photography, and sculpture, my work employs
appropriation towards historical and cultural residue as a strategy to provoke historical
amnesia and subvert the established narratives of power operating within the present.
I believe the past can influence the future, and by employing modes of evocation to
bring the past into the present, a rupture can be created, which provides an opportunity to
explore unresolved histories, pose critical questions, and affect social change.
Connecting the past to the present within social and political contexts, projects like
“Get Lost! (NYC)” have restored the NYC’s subway map designed in 1979 to what it may
have geographically looked like prior to colonial intervention in 1609; in "Neither Here Nor
There" the halfway point between the United States and Puerto Rico was documented and
mapped, where it can now be found and viewed in the virtual globe software: Google Earth;
and in the “Betsy Ross Trilogy” the American Flag is literally deconstructed.
My practice aims to peel back the layers of history through radical poetics, where the public
is encouraged to question what is familiar, and envision alternative models and possibilities.

Bio

Daniel Bejar is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Bejar
recently completed the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Artist-in-Residence Workspace
Program, and in 2011 Bejar was selected to Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY Hot Picks program.
Bejar has also participated in residencies at SOMA, Mexico City D.F., Vermont Studio Center,
Johnson, VT, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing Space Program, and the AIM Program
at the Bronx Museum of Art, NY.
Bejar’s work has been exhibited internationally, with recent venues including El Museo Del
Barrio, NY sixth Bienal The (S) Files Bienal 2011; SITE Santa Fe, NM; University of New Haven,
CT; Artnews Projects, Berlin, Germany; and Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY. Bejar is a 2007
MFA sculpture recipient from the State University of New York, New Paltz, and received his BFA
from the Ringling College of Art & Design, Sarasota, FL.