Harley Cortez and the Language of Memory
Image credit: Harley Cortez in his Los Angeles studio. Courtesy of the artist.
When Harley Cortez speaks about VOZ, his new exhibition, his words carry the rhythm of invocation. The title itself, VOZ, is layered with meaning, translating both as “voice” and “you.” For the Los Angeles–based multidisciplinary artist, who grew up between Guatemala, Los Angeles, and Queens, this linguistic doubling is more than a coincidence; it’s a key to the work’s cosmology. “In Spanish, you say voz for ‘voice’ and vos for ‘you’,” he explains. “But vos is mainly used in certain Central American countries, whereas others use tú. My family used vos, so we always heard voz growing up, and that became a way of identifying”.
The duality of VOZ —its echo between self and other, sound and identity —frames the exhibition as a kind of collective song. “It suggests dialogue between self and other, between memory and presence,” he says. “It frames the exhibition as a kind of chorus where many temporalities coexist: ancestral, personal, and collective. I think of it less as a title and more as an invocation.”
Opening October 25 at North Gallery in Fitzroy, presented in partnership with Behind The Gallery, VOZ brings Cortez’s practice to Australian audiences for the first time. It arrives at a defining moment in his career: following a sold-out run of his OJALÁ exhibition at Dries Van Noten’s Los Angeles outpost, the artist has been named a recipient of the LABA Award (Los Angeles Beverly Arts – Most Influential / Most Valuable 2022–2024) and will soon appear in Arte Vivo 2025 in Mexico City.
Raised by a single mother from Guatemala, Cortez’s practice emerges from a deep and fluid negotiation between memory and movement. “I’ve said before that the role of an artist is to break generational patterns and to understand, in some ways, ancestral language in order to move forward,” he reflects. “Each painting becomes a kind of offering, a point of contact between the living and the remembered, and what’s yet to come.”
Across paintings, sound, and sculptural installations, VOZ bridges worlds, past and present, material and metaphysical. “Materiality is crucial to me because it carries its own memory,” he says. “I want the surfaces to feel lived in, imperfect, layered, touched. The intimacy comes through that honesty and the refusal to hide the labour or the hand. In a way, the imperfections are what make the works breathe.”
Cortez’s story and, by extension, his art, is one of movement. “L.A. connected me to the street and everyday life; New York City opened the door to academia and cultural institutions; Guatemala connected me to the earth and my ancestors.” That education, rooted in observation, community, and the rhythm of cities, continues to pulse through his work. Even as he speaks of the contrast between city life and rural Guatemala, working in his uncle’s cornfield, the connection between earth and spirit remains central. “That gave me empathy and a grounding sense of the world, a spiritual connection that simplicity often invokes.
Cortez draws upon high-concept ideas, framing his projects with a sense of heart that connects each decision and weaves a web of ideas and intersections. “With OJALÁ, I was thinking about longing and displacement as both an emotional and spatial condition. In VOZ, I wanted to shift toward a more interior migration, one that occurs within the psyche and the body,” he explains. “It’s a quieter form of transience, one that unfolds through remembering rather than departure.”
This act of remembering, carried in gesture, pigment, or sound, runs through his practice. “In VOZ, I was interested in how gestures, pigments, or even textures can hold the residue of memory,” he says. “Each painting becomes a kind of offering.”
Image credit: Painting by Harley Cortez. Courtesy of the artist..
His recurring imagery, coyotes, horses, and dreamlike symbols, emerges intuitively. “It emerged slowly, through repetition and intuition,” he says. “The coyote became a recurring figure: part trickster, part guide. In L.A., you often see them in the streets at night. They’re beautiful and have so much aura. When you see them out on the street, it really makes you present. But there’s another layer: coyote is also the term used for those who help others cross the border, which connects to my family’s story generations ago.”
Though he moves fluidly between painting, sound, and film, VOZ represents a synthesis of these disciplines. “It’s a continuation, but one that feels more integrated,” he explains. “With VOZ, I’m interested in how they overlap and converse. The paintings carry cinematic pacing; the sound pieces feel sculptural; the installations behave almost like scores.”
That sensibility continues in Maize, his performance project blending dance, sound, and ancestral narrative, set to return in 2026 after a sold-out premiere. “Maize and VOZ are connected through their exploration of ritual and transformation,” he says. “They’re two sides of the same impulse: to create portals of remembrance.”
For his Australian debut, Cortez hopes VOZ will resonate across cultures. “It’s about exchange: listening as much as speaking,” he says. “Melbourne feels like a place for VOZ because of its culture and history. I really want to develop a relationship with the city and continue to return, especially to connect with First Nations peoples and their way of life.”
Ultimately, Cortez sees VOZ not as a closed chapter, but as an ongoing conversation. “I hope it’s one of recognition, not of me, but of themselves within the work,” he says. “I want viewers to sense that what’s being spoken isn’t a singular story but a collective murmur, something shared across borders and lineages.”
VOZ is showing at North Gallery, Fitzroy, until 8 November. Presented by Behind The Gallery and North Gallery.
