Guadalupe Rosales

Winter Solstice/Hazards
2022

A nighttime scene in an urban park with trees illuminated by artificial light. A concrete building with a balcony is visible on the left, and a graffiti-covered wall on the right. The foreground shows a grassy area with shadows cast by the trees, and a streetlight glows in the background. The image is framed by a decorative border resembling an ornate picture frame.

Not on view

Date
2022

Classification
Photographs

Medium
Inkjet print in artist's frame

Dimensions
Overall (framed): 51 × 64 7/8 × 2in. (129.5 × 164.8 × 5.1 cm)

Accession number
2022.125a-b

Edition
1/5 | 2AP

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Photography Committee and the Henry Nias Foundation

Rights and reproductions
© Guadalupe Rosales

API
artworks/65802

Audio

Guadalupe Rosales, Solsticio de invierno / Hazards

In Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet As It's Kept (Spanish)

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Guadalupe Rosales, Solsticio de invierno / Hazards

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Guadalupe Rosales: Me llamo Guadalupe Rosales, soy artista y vivo en Los Ángeles.
Hacia fines de los noventa y comienzos de los 2000, la ciudad de Los Ángeles se convirtió en un lugar oscuro para mí; comenzaron a acumularse algunas cosas en mi vida. Mi primo falleció en 1996 y algunos amigos fueron a prisión, o incluso murieron. Así que me fui. Me desconecté de mi familia y de la comunidad del este de L.A., y pude ver cómo se describía la ciudad o nuestras comunidades; como pandilleros, personas que estaban muriendo, ese tipo de cosas, lo que en parte es verdad. Pero, al mismo tiempo, también hay algo más real, más auténtico.
Una de las fotografías de la exposición se llama Winter Solstice. Es una foto del lugar donde asesinaron a mi primo; vuelvo ahí todos los años en el solsticio de invierno, que fue la fecha en la que lo mataron. ¿Seguiré visitando este sitio una y otra vez? No lo sé.
Y algo más profundo que me sucede a nivel personal cuando voy es que, cada vez que llego al lugar donde mataron a mi primo, incluso viendo la tierra, el suelo que sigue ahí, pienso en su sangre; su existencia permanece en ese lugar.
Guadalupe Rosales, Winter Solstice/Hazards

In Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet As It's Kept

0:00

Guadalupe Rosales, Winter Solstice/Hazards

0:00

Guadalupe Rosales: My name is Guadalupe Rosales, and I am an artist based in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles became a dark place for me towards the late nineties, early 2000s. Things started to almost accumulate or build up. My cousin dying in ‘96 and then just seeing friends go to prison, dying even. And I left. I disconnected myself from family and community here in East L.A. And I started seeing the ways in which L.A. or my communities were being described, like gangs, people dying and all this stuff, which part of it is true. But at the same time, like you know there’s actually something more real, more authentic.
One of the photographs that I have in the show is called Winter Solstice. That is a photo of where my cousin was killed, and I've been going back every year on the winter solstice because that's when he was murdered. Is this something that I'm going to keep repeating over and over and over and over? I don't have an answer to that question.
And something more, I would say, for myself in a deeper way is every time that I go to where my cousin was killed, even through the land that is there, the soil that is there, I still think about his blood, his existence is still living there.