Mauricio Muñoz
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The Harvest
Project in collaboration with Andrew Roberts
Group show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Maine
October 3 — December 13, 2025

The Harvest marks the first collaboration between artists Mauricio Muñoz and Andrew Roberts to conceive a musical romantic comedy situated within an otherworldly and fantastical realm. In this project, the artists embody a couple of orcs living peacefully in the deep woods, hidden from a land where segregation and rigid hierarchy between magical races are the norm. This narrative takes the form of a central video piece accompanied by a series of photographic portraits and sculptural works.
The artists are keenly interested in exploring the Otherness inherent in the fantasy genre, particularly through its system of magical races. Muñoz and Roberts intentionally reclaim the figure of the orc —a creature typically cast as barbaric, monstrous, and subhuman— as an analogue for their own gender, sexual, and bodily identities. By inserting their practice into Internet subcultures that relate to each other through post-human, erotic avatars, the artists recognize the transformative power of images as mobiles of desire and tools for world-making.

The project blends the handcrafted feel of early fantasy cinema with contemporary digital intimacy. The resulting works, sculptures and photographic portraits of the orcs, are positioned not just as characters but as artifacts from a possible future or a history that was suppressed. They serve as evidence of an affective archive built from queer desire. By framing this fantastical narrative as a musical comedy, the artists utilize absurdity and emotion to critique the serious political implications embedded in the design of fictional races.