New York / Miami — November 26, 2025 — EL CONSULADO NYC, a Venezuelan artist collective based in New York, is honored to be selected for the TD Bank Curated Spotlight at NADA Miami 2025, presenting a joint installation by Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck and Ana Alenso. Curated by Kate Wong, curator, writer, and researcher from Vancouver, British Columbia, the presentation will be on view at Ice Palace Studios, 1400 N Miami Ave, December 2–6, 2025.
Now in its sixth year, the NADA x TD Bank Curated Spotlight has become a key platform within both NADA Miami and NADA New York, foregrounding experimental practices and gallery models that stretch beyond conventional commercial formats. For the 23rd edition of the fair, Wong brings together five presentations from galleries and artist-run spaces that are rethinking how artistic practices are supported, resourced, and situated within communities.
Within this framework, EL CONSULADO NYC presents an intergenerational dialogue between Balteo-Yazbeck and Alenso—two Venezuelan artists whose practices probe the political, economic, and ecological afterlives of extractive capitalism, with a particular focus on Venezuela’s petro-history and its global entanglements.
About the Presentation
Balteo-Yazbeck and Alenso approach the question of extractivism from distinct yet deeply interconnected vantage points, weaving together historical research, archival investigation, and material evidence of collapse.
Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck examines how oil has shaped geopolitical narratives, cultural diplomacy, and the visual languages of power. Through installations that incorporate documents, design objects, and historical artifacts, he reconstructs the ways Cold War oil diplomacy and media infrastructures fabricated ideals of “progress” and modernity. In his work, the archive becomes a critical device: a way to map how propaganda, foreign policy, and corporate branding converged to produce a global petro-imaginary.
Ana Alenso engages the material ruins and debris of extractive economies—industrial remnants, ad-hoc infrastructures, and precarious support systems—to give form to the lived experience of crisis. Her sculptural and installation works evoke makeshift architectures of survival, referencing not only oil but also the looming specter of water scarcity, failing harvests, and climate-driven instability. In Alenso’s practice, the studio becomes a laboratory of “post-resource” futures, where risk, improvisation, and breakdown shape everyday life.
Together, their work constructs a forensic ecology of power. The joint presentation brings archival narratives into confrontation with the physical wreckage of extractive regimes—where Cold War oil diplomacy meets contemporary collapse; narrative meets matter; intellectual critique meets visceral urgency. Rather than reproducing familiar ideological binaries, their work interrogates underlying architectures of control: pipelines of influence, supply chains, financial infrastructures, and shifting energy regimes that define our present.
In the context of NADA Miami 2025—a fair situated at the crossroads of the Americas and the global art market—this presentation positions Venezuela not as an isolated case but as a lens through which broader geopolitical and ecological transformations can be understood.
Curated Spotlight Framing
Curator Kate Wong’s TD Bank Curated Spotlight brings together galleries and spaces testing new forms of sustainability and solidarity. Alongside El Consulado NYC, the 2025 edition features:
- Devin N. Morris (EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, New York)
- Faith Icecold (ROMANCE, Pittsburgh)
- Huey Lightbody & Mahari Chabwera (Southside Contemporary Art Gallery, Richmond, VA)
- Marissa Delano (Spill 180, New York)
The section emphasizes organizations that operate beyond traditional gallery models—cooperatives, apartment galleries, artist-run collectives, hybrid educational/publishing spaces. El Consulado NYC’s participation extends this ethos, foregrounding Venezuelan diasporic culture while experimenting with new ways to circulate critical artistic work.
About EL CONSULADO NYC
EL CONSULADO NYC is an artist-run collective founded by Venezuelan artists and cultural workers in New York. Working outside traditional institutional structures, the collective develops exhibitions, public programs, residencies, and editorial projects that center Venezuelan and Latin American diasporic experiences while building networks of care and mutual support.
For NADA Miami 2025, EL CONSULADO NYC will be present with its TD Bank Curated Spotlight presentation of Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck & Ana Alenso, as well as its large-scale participatory installation KIOSKO, a traveling kiosk-sculpture and micro-showcase for small-format works by Venezuelan artists across the diaspora and within Venezuela. Together, these projects articulate the collective’s commitment to rethinking how art circulates—economically, narratively, and materially—across borders.
Event Details
NADA Miami 2025
📅 December 2–6, 2025
📍 Ice Palace Studios, 1400 N Miami Ave, Miami, FL
The debut of KIOSKO, a traveling kiosk-sculpture, micro-showcase, and participatory installation presented in the fair’s outdoor sculpture garden. KIOSKO brings together more than 40 small-format works by Venezuelan artists across the diaspora and inside Venezuela, transforming the art-fair booth into a living, mobile cultural platform. For further details see El Consulado NYC — KIOSKO at NADA Miami 2025.
