The role of sports as a social tool is marked by the ways in which athletes challenge the structure of the game through their own representation within and beyond the field. This conversation, focusing on fútbol, aims to expand upon how the game is a critical and aesthetic tool that links indigenous heritage with current social issues. Moderated by Marcela Guerrero, Assistant Curator at The Whitney Museum of American Art, and referencing the work of Betty Bastidas, director of Dreamtown and Ronny Quevedo’s exhibition no hay medio tiempo / there is no halftime, the panel investigates a cultural tradition inherited from the past that cuts across several temporalities in the Americas as well as diverse local histories, which in Ecuador includes its African diaspora and immigration to new territories.

Following the panel Betty Bastida’s film Dreamtown will be screened as part of Passport Thursdays: International Dance, Music, and Film Series.

Moderator: Marcela Guerrero
Panelists: Betty Bastidas and Ronny Quevedo

Betty Bastidas is an award-winning filmmaker, photographer and media educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Ecuador, came to the US at the age of nine. She uses filmmaking and photography as social tools to celebrate the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity. Most recently, she completed her first international soccer feature, Dreamtown, following the precarious dream of a young Afro-Ecuadorian soccer player, Anibal Chala, as he strives to make it to the professional leagues, and over the span of six years sees his dreams become reality. Other credits include a commissioned short film for ITVS Latino Graduates called Can’t Hold Me Back, following Fernando, a Latino youth from Detroit as he becomes the first in his family to earn a high school diploma. This story aired on PBS Independent Lens in 2013 and was selected to be part of the PBS Online Film Festival. She is the co-founder of a multicultural production company called Maracuya Productions focusing on stories of injustice and inspiration for underrepresented communities in the US and abroad. Her work has garnered numerous awards, including 2013 and 2008 NALAC Fund for the Arts, NALIP/HBO Film Grant, Post-production grant from the CNCINE Ecuador, New York Women in Film & Television In-kind grant, NYFA Photography Fellowship, and Brooklyn Council of the Arts Community Grant. She is a graduate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Marcela Guerrero is Assistant Curator at The Whitney Museum of American Art. From 2014 to 2017 she worked as Curatorial Fellow at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles where she had a hand in curating—with Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta—the upcoming Hammer exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985, for the Getty Foundation’s initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA. Prior to her tenure at the Hammer, she worked in the Latin American and Latino art department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she served as research coordinator for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas. She has also written for a variety of arts publications, such as ArtNexus, Caribbean Intransit: The Arts Journal, and Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. Guerrero holds a PhD in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Ronny Quevedo is a recipient of the 2016 Queens Museum/Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists. He was recently awarded a 2017 A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art and a Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at The Drawing Center; The Bronx Museum of the Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Emerson Gallery (Germany), amongst others. Residencies include Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Program, Kala Art Institute, the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Project Row Houses, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and Lower East Side Printshop. Quevedo received his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2013 and BFA from The Cooper Union in 2003.