Edin Vélez

Through rich imagery and an acute sense of visual metaphor, Edin Vélez, one of the pioneers in video art, has recast traditional video documentary into a more personal and poetic vision
Vélez was born and raised in Puerto Rico and studied painting at the University of Puerto Rico and at the School of Fine Arts of the Institute for Puerto Rican Culture.
In 1970, Edín, inspired by the writings of Marshall McLuhan, moved to New York in order to explore the possibilities of video as an art form. In New York, he worked at Global Village and experimented in the new art form with the Vasulkas, Nam June Paik, Juan Downey, and other artists.
Vélez's subjective observations of place take the form of impressionistic visual collages. Merging the ethnographic and the interpretive, his multi - layered works are cross-cultural portraits. Eschewing a conventional narrative voice, Vélez orchestrates a confluence of associative elements to evoke, rather than analyze, the textures of a specific culture or place. The internal rhythm, pace and structure of his works lend the recorded images immense weight and credence.
Edín lived in Tokyo, Japan for one year as a US/ Japan Commission Fellow (1984-85) and was selected a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 1985. The American Film Institute awarded him their Maya Deren Award for outstanding achievement in Video Art in 1991. In 1998 he was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship.
His work has been exhibited at Documenta 8, Germany; Stedelijk Museum, Holland
(permanent collection); Museum of Modern Art, New York (permanent collection); Whitney Museum Biennial; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; La Sept ( French Television); NHK TV, Japan, and many others.
Vélez has lectured, and taught widely at universities (New York University, Brown University, Cornell University, School of Visual Arts ) as well as galleries and museums ( American Center, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Video Viewpoints; Esalen Institute ).
His videotapes have been distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix since 1976.
This summer Edín's work was included in a landmark survey show of 290 art works representing modern art from the late Nineteenth century to the present, which was the flagship exhibition of the newly opened Mori Museum in Tokyo.
Curated from works in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the exhibit includes works by Picasso, Mondrian, Frank Lloyd Wright, Matisse, and Rodin among others.
Vélez currently lives and works in New York City.