In conjunction with the exhibition Recuerdo: Latin American Photography at the AGO, join curator Marina Dumont-Gauthier in conversation with AGO Artist-in-Residence Maru Aponte and Toronto-based Mexican photographer Ernesto Cabral de Luna. 

Working within Toronto’s Latinx diaspora, both artists engage with themes of place, displacement, and storytelling embedded in cultural narratives, respectively through painting and photography, contributing to the evolving dialogue on Latin American art in the country. Through conversation, they share insights into their practices and how they resonate with Recuerdo’s exploration of memory, migration, and ongoing discussions around the visibility of Latin American art in Canada. 

Join us as these artists share how they navigate and reflect on Latinx cultural identity in the diaspora, building on conversations sparked by Recuerdo around cultural memory and representation. 

Marina Dumont-Gauthier is the Curatorial Assistant in the Photography Department at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). Since joining the AGO in 2022, she has contributed to a range of projects, including Wolfgang Tillmans: To Look Without Fear, and has curated exhibitions such as We Are Story: The Canada Now Photography Acquisition, Cities in Flux, and , most recently, Recuerdo: Latin American Photography at the AGO. Marina previously held curatorial positions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum. Her areas of expertise include Latin American art and transatlantic studies. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Art History at the University of Toronto, where her dissertation investigates the pivotal role of female photographers in shaping Argentina’s photographic culture during the 1930s and 1940s. 

Maru Aponte (Puerto Rico, 1996) emerges through her exploration of watercolour, challenging its traditional and historical associations with “low art” and leisure. Her paintings and drawings, executed both in the studio and en plein air, investigate colour and light as phenomena through which she examines and observes nature, while redefining landscape to evoke an intense sense of place, or comment on her Caribbean experience and identity. Maru recently graduated with an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. Previously, she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduated from the Painting Department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. She was the 2023 Emily Carr Fellowship Resident at Griffin Art Projects, North Vancouver and was recently a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture 2024. 

Ernesto Cabral de Luna (b. 1996, Cholula) is a Mexican lens-based artist working in Toronto. Working through analog and digital processes, he utilizes his own photographs and archival family photos to explore the fragmentary nature of memory. Interested in narratives of migration, his material and process-driven explorations allow for the construction of alternate narratives. Drawing from his immigrant experience, he explores themes of identity and representation, along with the interplay between memory, dislocation, and displacement, by challenging the notion of ownership over memories that are not one’s own. Ernesto holds an Honours BFA in photography from OCAD University, where he received the 2024 Barbara Astman Photography Award and the 2021 Wendy Coburn Art and Social Change Scholarship. A recipient of the 2024 Gallery44 Residency Award and the 2024 Partners in Art's Artist-Direct Grant, Ernesto has exhibited at Patel Brown, Gallery 44, The Plumb, Xpace Cultural Center, and Abbozzo Gallery.