NCMA’s Newest Commissioned Artwork Explores the Interconnectedness of Polarities

Visitors may have noticed a new work of art in East Building: a large wall drawing with markings and constellation diagrams. This piece scales the entire section, with a deep blue color that brings life into the space. Titled South / North, this newly commissioned work was created by Ronny Quevedo, an artist born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, who immigrated to the Bronx at a young age and still currently resides and works there. Having been shaped by New York’s layered geography and expansive culture, much of his work incorporates aspects of abstraction, painting, collage, and cartography. Quevedo’s mother was a dressmaker and his father an indoor soccer player; the subtle markers of this family background are evident in the way the artist layers sports imagery and pattern making. Deeply engaged with the notions of identity, Quevedo taps into not only his own history but the history of those affected by colonialism and the iconographies that have been associated with their migration. He shines a light on the connection such iconographies may have to contemporary cultural markers.

In South / North Quevedo examines the way such polarities like south and north, above and below, and past and present are connected. The deep, rich blue comes from the dressmaking pattern paper that Quevedo’s own mother used. Both a choice reflective of his upbringing and its economical use, this paper is one way Quevedo inserts his history into his work. Its unique shape—gores (a sector of a curved surface) that span the wall—represents the earth’s globe being laid flat and made into individual puzzle pieces. With one half of the wall drawing being a direct impression of its counterpart, visitors can clearly see a south and north that are made from one another.  

The composition brings together mapped systems of knowledge and movement like constellations, Mesoamerican ball courts, basketball and soccer diagrams, migration patterns, and globes to explore how bodies, histories, and geographies are continually repositioned through time. He also takes inspiration from Ballcourt Marker, an ancient American object in the NCMA’s People’s Collection. This ballcourt marker is an object that would have been placed in the playing alley in the Mesoamerican ballgame—one of the earliest-known sports that involve a ball. By referencing this past, Quevedo further highlights how modern diagrams of play and sports strategies are not far from their origins, allowing the viewer to question the assumed distance between past and present. His work also conflates multiple histories, including visual movement patterns of Indigenous displacement in North Carolina, the Great Migration, and the migration of South American communities since 1981.

South / North reflects resilience and adaptation in the face of colonialism, structural oppression, and forced displacement. The title asks for a reconsideration of polarity, questioning how perception shapes the way opposites are understood.

Learn more about Quevedo’s process, what informed his materiality, and the meanings of the iconography incorporated by watching our latest interview video on YouTube.

Thank you to Jamie Watson for her support of this project.