Yucef Merhi

Life and work

Yucef Merhi was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He studied at Universidad Central de Venezuela, New School University, and holds a Master's in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University. His artistic practice began in the mid 80s. He is known as the first artist in exhibiting a work of art that included a video game console, the Atari 2600, back in 1985. As the pioneer of Digital Art in Venezuela, Merhi has produced a wide body of works that engage electronic circuits, computers, video game systems, touch screens, and other devices in the presentation of his written words, like the Poetic Clock, a machine that converts time into poetry which generates 86.400 different poems daily. The resulting artworks expand the limitations of language and the traditional context of poetry, proposing a bold new role for the poet in our culture.

Exhibitions

Merhi's career encompasses a world wide exhibition record in places such as the New Museum of Contemporary Art; Bronx Museum of the Arts; El Museo del Barrio;Eyebeam Art and Technology Center and Exit Art, all located in New York; as well as the Newark Museum (New Jersey); Orange County Museum of Art (California); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (California); De Appel (Amsterdam); Museo Michetti (Rome); Borusan Culture & Art Center (Istanbul); Paço das Artes (São Paulo); Museo del Chopo (Mexico DF); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Yucatán (Yucatán); Museo de Bellas Artes (Caracas); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Caracas); Science World British Columbia (Vancouver); among many others. He also participated in the official selections of the 7th International Festival of New Film, Split, Croatia; the 2007 Bienal de São Paulo – Valencia;, the 10th Istanbul Biennial., and the 30th Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts.

His work is documented in more than 40 catalogs, encyclopedias, dictionaries, movies, text books, PhD thesis and academic volumes. He is currently represented in the collections of the Orange County Museum of Art (California); National Art Gallery (Caracas); Library of Congress (Washington); Whitebox Art Center (New York); Mednarodni Grafični Likovni Center (MGLC) (Ljubljana); Museo Alejandro Otero (Caracas); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas (Caracas); Museo de Arte Valencia (Valencia); and private collections in New York, Miami, Caracas, Madrid and Tel Aviv.

Awards

Merhi has received several grants and awards including the New York Foundation for the Arts in Digital/Electronic Arts, as well as numerous commissions and residencies from institutions such as the Orange County Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, among others.