Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi: Triumphant Currents, Auspicious Winds

Opening Reception Friday, September 19, 2025, 6-8pm

The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) and Canal Projects present Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi: Triumphant Currents, Auspicious Winds, the artist’s most ambitious public art installation to date. Activating the windows of Canal Projects along Canal Street and Wooster Street, Perez-Tlatenchi’s eleven-panel mural and three-channel video weave together imagery from urban environments, religious iconography, and the commercial vernacular that reflect on obscured colonial histories and diasporic narratives.

Informed by his experience growing up in the Mexican and Chinese communities of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, Perez-Tlatenchi creates collages layered with cultural references from immigrant neighborhoods like his own. He finds inspiration in advertisements and borrows from commercial printing techniques and materials, including perforated vinyl found on convenience store windows and lenticular prints used for signage.

In Triumphant Currents, Auspicious Winds, vibrant landscapes and motifs—some drawn from the artist’s extensive travel photography, and others from Catholic prayer cards and related religious sources—intersect across a series of disorienting vignettes. Digitally composed, these scenes feature images of Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano, Hong Kong’s historic Tamão settlement hills on Lantau Island, and the rolling, sun-bleached Judean desert between Bethlehem and Jericho, places that once linked the Mexican and Chinese empires in the earliest global trade system known as the Manila Galleon Trade. The artist also incorporates archetypes such as the Seven Swords of the Archangels, Holy Fire, Archangel Michael holding the scales of justice, and the sea goddess Mazu, as well as a deconstructed maritime scene that alludes to the Biblical flood myth and water as signs of both divine judgment and historical erasure.

Made with perforated vinyl that requires light for it to be fully visible, the mural gradually becomes transparent as day shifts to night. At sunset, the Canal Street windows reveal a three-channel video that transforms the work into a moving tapestry of footage from colonial sites of the former Spanish empire—from the Americas and Europe to its Asian trading outposts. Perez-Tlatenchi renders colonial histories as a persistent cyclical presence in contemporary life. The monitors’ illuminated imagery enters into direct conversation with Canal Street, one of New York City’s many definitive sites of commercial exchange. Through a constellation of images, Perez-Tlatenchi invokes narratives of conquest, trade, and exploitation that are still embedded in the cultural fabric of the city today. At a time when deglobalization enforces borders, this work insists that distinct cultures and their histories are fundamentally entangled.

Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi: Triumphant Currents, Auspicious Winds is co-organized by the International Studio & Curatorial Program and Canal Projects. The exhibition is curated by Melinda Lang, ISCP’s Director of Programs and Exhibitions, with Veronica Sanchez, ISCP’s Programs Coordinator.

This project is supported by The New York Community Trust’s Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund; Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso; Hartfield Foundation; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso; New York City Council District 34; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; James Rosenquist Foundation; van Beuren Charitable Foundation; and William Talbott Hillman Foundation.

About ISCP
Founded in 1994, ISCP is the fourth-largest visual arts residency program in the world and a global leader in the field of visual arts residency programs. ISCP supports the creative development of artists and curators, and promotes exchange through residencies and public programs. Housed in a former factory in Brooklyn, with 35 light-filled work studios and two galleries, ISCP organizes exhibitions, events and offsite projects, which are free and open to all, sustaining a vibrant community of contemporary art practitioners and diverse audiences. Over 2,000 artists and curators from more than 100 countries, including the United States have undertaken residencies at ISCP.

ISCP does not discriminate on the basis of disability in terms of admission, access, or employment. ISCP programs and activities are accessible to visitors with disabilities. Accommodations are made to the best of the institution’s ability, depending on individual visitors’ needs. To request accommodations, please contact info@iscp-nyc.org or call 718-387-2900.