Beatriz Cortez, Black Mirror. Multimedia installation: steel, automotive paint, found audio recording. Cerritos College Art Galleries. | Photo: James MacDevitt.
In artist Beatriz Cortezs installations, cracks and crevices are a consistent clue to the fractured existence she has experienced in her life. Cortezs work is greatly impacted by her migration from El Salvador to the United States and the civil war she endured, escaped, and left behind. All of my friends were being murdered. There was no way I could stay, Cortez tells me as we walk through her Los Angeles area studio, which contains many versions of her flight-into-exile narrative. Her installation work Hideout, revisits the stinging memory of hiding in a small crawlspace to avoid the whirring bullets flying past her. She re-fashions the ramshackle structure, inviting spectators to crawl inside and imagine the gestures of war rage in this now ambivalent space positioned in a gallery. Through cracks in the wall, observers can see the world through a sliver. The interrupted view is much like her own life.
She came to the U.S. in 1989, after the final offensive in San Salvador, a guerrilla intervention, led by the various factions united as the Frente Farabundo Mart para la Liberaci n Nacional, which disrupted the country's presidential elections, signaling the bloody end of the country's 12-year civil war.
Later, she earned her PhD in Latin American literature from Arizona State University. After a stint teaching Central American literature in Detroit, she came to Los Angeles, becoming a professor of Central American studies at California State University, Northridge.
As an immigrant artist, Cortez says that living in Arizona taught her about how difficult it is for immigrants to negotiate daily life in an environment often hostile to outsiders. The community of students [at Mesa Community College in Arizona] really helped me survive the shock of immigration in a most creative environment, Cortez said. It was there where she was simultaneously having trouble appreciating the beauty of the desert and missing the green of the tropics. I remember drawing the moving shadows of multiple moons made by the light of a solar eclipse moving through the branches of a tree, or us trying to paint that very landscape that immigrants find when crossing the border.
Beatriz Cortez, Hideout/Guarida. An exploration of space and the human condition throughout the experiences of war and immigration.
--
--
Cortez offers that her experience as a cultural critic impacts her work through an abounding relationship to theory that serves as a creative motor. Many of the ideas about the cosmos, the future, becoming, play, the posthuman, or the mechanic eye come from my inner conversations with Spinoza, Deleuze, Agamben, Braidotti, Cortez says. It is really interesting to find the connection between my life as an immigrant and my past as a person who grew up in a war, and my ideas about the future, all connected to the philosophy that I read.
There is an expansiveness of grief and mourning embedded in Cortez's installations. In the middle of the loss there is always some life and some joy that pops up in my work, she says. I'm always thinking about the future, death and the cosmos, play and virtual reality, as well as the past being still here in the present, or the coexistence of different temporalities.
Her piece The Time Machine, ruminates on the expansiveness of longing that exists in the rearview mirror of the immigrant's memory. This piece recreates a birds-eye view of San Salvador at night, lights dotting the purview while the viewer swings on the swing inside the large box-like structure -- the last site the Salvadoran immigrant sees while leaving home under duress. On the other side of the installation the dots splinter over a projection of Griffith Park overlooking Hollywood -- home to a large Central American community. A community that, in Cortez's rendering, continues to seek out a present interrupted by that constant longing that hiccups itself into relief.
Beatriz Cortez, The Time Machine/ La m quina del tiempo. Multimedia installation. 6 x 8 x 8 feet.
After so many years of not feeling displaced, Cortez says Los Angeles has finally become home, while she simultaneously thinks of El Salvador as her home. I think the technological possibilities, the friendships, the ways in which we are in two places at once has greatly impacted my work, Cortez says.
Simultaneity, the sense of being in two places or two different moments in time at once, is another theme that emerges consistently in her work. In her turn towards it, Cortez makes the past visible and alive by establishing connections to daily life around her.
In her archival work, she is currently exploring the history and politics of vocational school. Black Mirror, her latest large-scale installation that looks like a futuristic multi-sided hedron structure, is part of Your Life's Work, a series that she says explores the way vocational education was conceived as part of a plan for population control that put into practice ideas about the predetermination of people's lives that were inherited from colonial times and then recycled into modern national discourse. This series takes a cue from Cortez's background as an educator at one of Los Angeles' largest working class universities, where the role of education still seems to gesture towards the predetermination of different groups of people based on divisions of class and race.
Beatriz Cortez, Black Mirror. Multimedia installation: steel, automotive paint, found audio recording. Cerritos College Art Galleries.
Beatriz Cortez, Unknown/Desconocida. Wire, soil, paste, grass seeds.
Beatriz Cortez, The Fortune Teller Machine/La m quina de la fortuna. I
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
06/12/2025
In a live broadcast from the Reagan National Defense Forum, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher Kubasik joined Morgan Brennan on CNBCs Closing Bell: Overtime. Ku...
06/12/2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of resp...
06/12/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. LiveU has announced that the national public broadcaster Czech Television has completed one of the largest LiveU live production deployments fo...
06/12/2025
NEW YORK The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leight...
05/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nati...
05/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Veritone's Sean King on the Power of Mining Video, Audio DataThe company's Data Refinery offers users total control and governance over da...
05/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: Inside the Nashville Predators' Unified, Flexible, Sca...
05/12/2025
Netflix Reaches Agreement To Acquire Warner Bros. Following Planned WBD SplitThe deal does not include WBDs sports assets like TNT Sports (US, UK, LatAm), Euros...
05/12/2025
FOX Sports Returns to Indianapolis for Primetime Broadcast of Big Ten Championsh...
05/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Digital Engagement & Monetization Workshop Tackles the ...
05/12/2025
Atlanta United Lights Up New Emory Healthcare Studio With First Live Broadcast f...
05/12/2025
As Messi Takes the Pitch, MLS, Apple, NEP Roll Out Largest MLS Cup Production Ev...
05/12/2025
ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows fo...
05/12/2025
It's about that time! Awards season is in full swing, and the Film Independe...
05/12/2025
Every year, Spotify Wrapped offers a personalized look back at the audio that defined your year. It's a snapshot of your listening habits, designed to tell ...
05/12/2025
In 2025, Spotify's EQUAL, GLOW, and RADAR programs celebrated women, LGBTQIA , and emerging artists who turned moments into milestones. From breaking record...
05/12/2025
In our latest blog, we explain how Wi-Fi 7 rollouts can drive consumer loyalty with value-add services such as consumer cybersecurity. We also explore how this ...
05/12/2025
LOS ANGELES Netflix announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsens Gracenote has launched Gracenote Content Connect, a new ad platform that provides agencies, brands, supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-si...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK In an most important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public c...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Pass the turkey. Pass the stuffing. Pass the cranberry sauce. All are common requests of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Day with family and f...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Netflix announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's $1.02 billion acquisition of spectrum from UScellular in a decision that was issued sho...
05/12/2025
The Best Coldplay Songs: 21 Tracks That Shoot for the Stars From Yellow to Viva La Vida, Fix You to Paradise, this playlist goes back to the start.
December ...
05/12/2025
Zafris Lecture Series Brings Nabil Ayers to Berklee The 32nd annual James G. Zafris Distinguished Lecture series was held on Thursday, November 13, with guest...
05/12/2025
Introducing New Perks to Help You Get Even More from LinkedIn Premium Published on Dec 5, 2025 Categories: Company News, Product News
LinkedIn Corporate Co...
05/12/2025
Friday 5 December 2025
A new Game of Thrones Tale: Official trailer for Sky Exc...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
05/12/2025
Tis the season of giving once again and this year we've taken our Give Back Fridays' concept and turned it on its head.
In the autumn we were approach...
05/12/2025
Brayden Gogis doesn't remember a time when he wasn't completely fixated on games in all forms. In preschool, when they asked us to dress up as what we ...
05/12/2025
The Grinch steals the spotlight as the theme for The Late Late Toy Show 2025
Tune in tonight at 9:35pm on RT One and worldwide on RT Player
#LateLateToyShow...
05/12/2025
RT Announces New Presenters of Flagship News Programmes
New RT Six One News co-presenter Tommy Meskill
Sarah McInerney & Justin McCarthy join Morning Ir...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir AJA Ki Pro Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & just:in linux
More Details:Starting with version 5.5, both just:in mac pro and just:in linux sol...
04/12/2025
Wangu Kanuri from Kenya and Godwin Asediba from Ghana are two of this years finalists for Thomsons Young Journalist of the Year Award. The pair are runners-up i...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
04/12/2025
SBS launches Future Frames initiative to support emerging First Nations video ed...
Beatriz Cortez, Black Mirror. Multimedia installation: steel, automotive paint, found audio recording. Cerritos College Art Galleries. | Photo: James MacDevitt. 
