Join us for the opening of The Esperanto Project on Saturday, September 26, 1:00 to 5:00 PM, and for an artist talk and conversation with Pablo Helguera on Saturday, October 24 at 2:00 PM–two opportunities to explore language, translation, and the ways ideas connect us across cultures.

The project consists of a series of typographic posters featuring aphorisms Helguera has written and translated into Esperanto, exploring questions of translation, locality, universality, and cultural interpretation. Rather than existing in a single venue, the exhibition unfolds through the participation of museums, galleries, universities, and artist-run spaces around the world, each presenting one or more posters within its own local context.

Initial participating organizations include The Print Center (Philadelphia), Grand Central Art Center (Santa Ana, California), Espacio Arista 1701 (Mexicali), Longtermhandstand (Budapest), and the Center of Art, Design and Visual Culture (Baltimore), Unison Arts (New Paltz), with additional venues continuing to join the project.

Pablo Helguera (Mexico City, 1971) is a New York-based artist, educator, and writer whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, performance, and socially engaged art. His work explores history, pedagogy, language, memory, ethnography, and the absurd, often bringing together art, education, and public participation.

His landmark project The School of Panamerican Unrest (2006–09), a nomadic think tank that traveled nearly 20,000 miles from Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego with 40 stops across the Americas, is considered a pioneering work of socially engaged art.

Helguera has exhibited and performed internationally at institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, the Brooklyn Museum, Museo Reina Sofía, ICA Boston, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, MALBA, and the Bronx Museum. He has received numerous honors, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital Grant, Franklin Furnace Fund, and Art Matters grant.

An educator as well as an artist, Helguera served as Director of Adult and Academic Programs at MoMA from 2007 to 2020 and previously headed public programs at the Guggenheim Museum. He is currently Assistant Professor of Arts and Entrepreneurship at The New School. He is the author of several books, including Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011), and writes the weekly column Beautiful Eccentrics.