Skip to main content
Hours of operation Today 10 AM - 5 PM.
Event Date
Date
Thursday, September 3
Time
5–7:30 PM
Category Duke Students

Student Party with Duke Arts and R-Tronika

First-year students enjoy their first visit to the Nasher Museum during the First Art Night Party, an orientation week tradition.
First-year students enjoy their first visit to the Nasher Museum during the First Art Night Party, an orientation week tradition.

Inspired by the Nasher exhibit, Explosion! Bay Area Punk, Duke Arts and the Nasher invites students, undergraduate and graduate, to explore the museum, create punk-inspired art, and learn about various arts and activism related resources on campus.

Students can make a button with a statement, up-cycle a t-shirt, screen print a poster and get a temporary tattoo while enjoying refreshments from the Nasher Cafe and a cash bar. Partners from Theater Studies, Cinematic Arts, Center for Documentary Studies, Art, Art History & Visual Studies, the Co-Lab, and the Office of Climate and Sustainability will join to share resources and other activities. Close out the night with a performance in the Nasher sculpture garden from R-Tronika, formed in New York by Peruvian artist Renzo Ortega, playing “Immigrant Songs,” in a blend of cumbia, punk, and synth.

About R-Tronika 

Founded in New York by Peruvian artist Renzo Ortega in 2004, R-Tronika was an active New York-based music project until 2016, when Renzo Ortega relocated to Carrboro, North Carolina. R-Tronika’s music combines cumbia, punk, and synth sounds, a contemporary fusion that reflects the multicultural backgrounds of the band’s members and the country they thrive in. The songs, sung in Spanish, are inspired by their immigration experience and struggles, love, politics, and people’s history, and embody the notion of music without borders.

In its more than ten years of existence, R-Tronika has performed at a variety of venues and festivals in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Texas, and internationally in Mexico City, Lima, and Berlin. From D.I.Y. spaces and punk festivals to Museums and Art Galleries. It has also released full-length albums, singles, and video clips.

For this special presentation at The Nasher Museum, Renzo Ortega will present an R-Tronika concert featuring the band’s original singers, Taina Rosa and Tania Murphy, traveling from New York especially for this occasion, along with Chapel Hill-based Dominican drummer Alberto Vargas and local guest musicians.

About Renzo Ortega 

Artist Renzo Ortega poses in front of his work in the exhibition Reckoning and Resilience

Renzo Ortega (Lima, Perú, 1974) received a BFA from the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes del Perú, studied at the Art Students League of New York, and holds an MFA in painting from Hunter College. His recent solo exhibitions have been Fish Tank at the Durham Art Guild Gallery at Golden Belt (2026), a survey exhibition of his New York works 200-2003 at The Art Space in Raleigh (2024-25), Craven Allen Gallery in Durham, North Carolina (2024), TW-Fine Art in Palm Beach(2022), and at LUMP Gallery in Raleigh, North Carolina (2021). Renzo’s artwork has been on view at the NASHER Museum of Art, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art SECCA, the Weatherspoon Art Museum in North Carolina, and at El Museo and the Queens Museum in New York. Renzo was an artist-in-residence at the Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University in 2019 and at the New Wave Art Wknd program in West Palm Beach in 2020. Renzo has been commissioned to create public art projects and community murals, and has been a Visiting Lecturer at UNC Chapel Hill and a Brock Family Visiting Studio Arts Instructor at Duke University, teaching painting and drawing. He is currently an art instructor at The ArtsCenter in Carrboro, North Carolina.

Event Details

Date
Thursday, September 3
Time
5–7:30 PM
Categories
Tags
Duke Students
Venue
The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
2001 Campus Drive
Durham, NC 27705 United States