Migración de Jarana
Joan Jimenez
March 30–June 30, 2024
Supermarket Gallery at FLY STUDIO
This exhibition is a lesson in why “moving in silence” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Gatekeeping is for suckers, and making big dreams possible is kind of more delicious with friends. This is the case here.
If you’ve looked through my website, you’ll know I curated a solo show for Mabelin Castellanos in the summer of 2023. Joan, whom had become a staple of my daily life when I worked at a Wynwood art institution I won’t name, saw this and sent me one of the coolest portfolios I’ve ver had the pleasure of diving into in my life.
After a long conversation with a good friend of mine, Joan’s idea for a show became the impetus for Supermarket Gallery. This exhibition would be his first solo exhibition in Miami outside of the graffiti sphere, which would lead to more adventures than we could’ve hoped for at present moment. It was also unbelievably affirming to be received by Miami’s fine art ecosystem with love, fun, and a hell of a lot of translating.
SUPERMARKET Gallery presents its debut exhibition, Migración de Jarana, featuring the work of Afro-Peruvian painter Joan Jimenez.
For their first fine art exhibition in Miami, SUPERMARKET and Joan have worked together to curate works embodying his personal anchors: authenticity, tenacity, and anarchy. We’ve decided on a selection of works that are vibrant and celebratory, warm and natural, with an emphasis on his identity and how it informs his aesthetics. Migración de Jarana is centered around the sincerity with which Joan moves through the world. Each piece in the exhibition is an invitation into jarana, and how the artist has experienced it while relocating from his native Lima to Miami.
Joan is most successful at breathing life into stills from scenes of jarana—a pleasant festivity in the air, the street, at home, an embrace between lovers, friends, and neighbors; embodied and spiritual. The artist invites us into a scope of dialogues happening in tandem with one another. Themes of community, love, race, and self-awareness are met with an intimate blend of tenderness and joy featuring a familiar cast of characters that are equal parts affectionate and rowdy. They’re local, they’re lively, they’re our friends and family, they’re Black, they’re Peruvian. More importantly, these moments represent the moving parts of Joan’s life and the lens through which he meets the world where it’s at.