We recently connected with Zoë Elena Moldenhauer and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Zoë thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How has Covid changed your business model?

For me, there is no going back to “the way things were.” There is freedom to do things in more than one way.

The Aerogramme Center is an online exhibition space, quarterly magazine, artist interviews and podcast providing opportunities to artists and writers around the world.

I launched The Aerogramme Center in March 2020—to your point about change—the original model was an artist collective that would support artists through critiques, discussions, and networking. I had just graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2019, and felt this immediate loss of community, access to facilities, and loss of structure and wondered how I would maintain my artistic practice. I knew I was not alone in this and was determined not to get stuck in negativity. So, I sought to engage with other young artists in the Baltimore area.

When the pandemic closures went into effect, I put out an open call for an online group exhibition and received an overwhelming response from artists around the world. Thus, The Aerogramme Center was born.

Today, The Aerogramme Center has featured over 200 artists, writers, and scholars. Our mission is to provide opportunities for emerging and mid-career artists and writers around the world, defying adversity, and the challenges of making art in the 21st century.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

In addition to managing The Aerogramme Center, I am an artist.

Through painting and drawing, I explore my transracial adoption, language, and absent heritage. As a Guatemalan-New Yorker, who grew up around the French, German, Hebrew, Spanish languages and classical music, my work meditates on alienation and assimilation.

Since 2017, I have been using a fictional alphabet in my paintings and drawings. I often combine collage and imagery from Mesoamerican cultures to reconcile my western upbringing with this pre-literate absent heritage.

My first curatorial experience was at MICA where I helped organize a group exhibition on Third Culture Kid experiences (an individual raised in a culture outside of their parents) with the Hispanic-Latino Student Union (HLSU), there I a student-identity based organization.

Sophomore year, I became president and continued to expand the organization by hosting roundtable discussions, movie screenings, dances, and curating exhibitions on Latinx identity and heritage.

Outside HLSU, my curatorial work centered on racial justice, social change, and culture. Among my most exciting projects was “American Made” (2017), a year-long, graduate-level class culminating in an exhibition on how incarcerated individuals use art to resist exploitation in the prison systems.

After earning an M.A. in Museum and Latin American Studies, I was awarded a fellowship at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino in 2022. Working at the Smithsonian has allowed me to engage with the intersection of art, culture, and history. After the terrible Uvalde mass school shooting in May 2022, I helped co-organize a Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) event in conjunction with the museum’s online exhibition focusing on healing and memory in collaboration with The Peale’s and Johns Hopkins University’s “Hostile Terrain 94” exhibition.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I didn’t realize how hungry I was for knowledge on Latin American and Latino/x art and history until I joined HLSU at MICA. But it wasn’t until graduate school that I really had a historical framework to begin to understand the complex political and social relationships between Latin American countries and the United States, let alone art movements.

I now appreciate the connection between my grassroots work at HLSU and my professional curatorial work at a major cultural institution. The throughline is community.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Being an artist can also be an isolating experience and community is essential.

In 2021, I was part of an artist residency at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). My cohort and along and members of SVA’s Alumni Residency Network went on to form an international art collective. Now in our fourth year, Teleportal has organized pop-up exhibitions around the world most recently in Munich, Germany. Our next exhibition will be in Tulsa, Oklahoma in September 2024.

Collaborating with this diverse group of artists has helped me maintain my artistic practice—coming full circle with The Aerogramme Center’s original model.

There are good and bad things that came with the Covid-19 pandemic, but the one thing that won’t go away is the hybrid and virtual presence.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aerogramme.org | https://zoemoldenhauer.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aerogrammearts | https://www.instagram.com/zoe_moldenhauer
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aerogrammearts
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/aerogrammearts

Image Credits
IMG_1: Installation Image & Artist Talk of Transparent Boundaries: Group Exhibition curated by The Aerogramme Center, Compère Collective, NY, Photo by Zoë Elena Moldenhauer, August 2023. IMG_2: Installation Image of Ephemeral Threads curated by Fora Arts Collective, Gallery MC, NY, Photo by Zoë Elena Moldenhauer, January 5, 2024. IMG_3: Figuring Dreams, Oil and oil pastel on canvas, Photo by Zoë Elena Moldenhauer, 2023. IMG_4: Deconstructing Interactivity, Mixed media on canvas, Photo by Zoë Elena Moldenhauer, 2023. IMG_5: Artist, Frida Larios activating ofrenda, Co-organized by National Museum of the American Latino, The Peale and Johns Hopkins University, Photo by Zoë Elena Moldenhauer, November 2022. IMG_5: Installation Image of Teleportal: Munich Calling curated by Teleportal Gallery, DONNER, wie Blitz, Germany, Photo by Zoë Elena Moldenhauer, July 2023.