SUBVERSIVE KIN: THE ACT OF TURNING OVER
SUBVERSIVE KIN: THE ACT OF TURNING OVER
Curator: Elisa Gutiérrez Eriksen
Artists: Tatiana Arocha, Bel Falleiros, Christine Howard Sandoval, Karen Miranda Rivadeneira
Gallery: Abrazo Interno Gallery
Dates: March 4 - April 2, 2021
Opening Recpetion: March 4, 2021, 6 - 9PM
Closing Recpetion: April 2, 2021, 4 - 8PM — Sign un using the Eventbrite Link
This exhibition brings together a group of female-identified artists whose practice stems from their embedded relation to land and to original practices and traditions from their places of birth or ancestry. Spanning video, photography, poetry, installation and painting, the works of these artists suggest the need to reconsider the place of human beings in the world and proposes a repositioning where nature and humans have agency and enact a shared subjectivity.
This exhibition was initially scheduled to be presented in April 2020, and was postponed in accordance with the world efforts to stop the spread of the Coronavirus. The current happenings in the world have added an underlying aspect to this exhibition as it puts in perspective our connections with the land and with others, and invites us to think of radical hope to create structures of care that stem from our relationships with what is sacred to us.
The artists in the exhibition have spent time with native communities, learning about their ancestors, and rebuilding a vision and cosmology that allows them to actively turn over to a different path, and to share and transmit knowledge. The notion of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and the need of imagining “new” relationships between people and nature are at the core of this exhibition, and aim to contribute to the restoration of our relationship to the land through sharing different ways of connecting with each other, to nature, to our ancestors, as a whole.
“It is said that should the remaining people choose the path toward life, they will turn back along the road from which they have come and begin to pick up the pieces that have been scattered along the road– remnants of language, the old stories and songs, seeds and ragged patches of plants, wandering animals and birds, and together they will be put back together again.” — Robin Wall Kimmerer
Restoration and Reciprocity: The Contributions of Traditional Ecological Knowledge
As artists, poets, women, these artists set the space to think in terms of reciprocity, establishing relationships instead of ownerships, and reminding that our relationships are transformed by our choice of perspective.
TATIANA AROCHA is an interdisciplinary artist from Bogotá, Colombia based in Brooklyn, NY. Arocha grew up in the midst of nature, camping since childhood with her family across the diverse ecological regions of Colombia. Her art practice involves creating layered detail, graphic compositions, and application of digital techniques learned in her earlier professional career as a graphic designer and illustrator. She has exhibited around the world, with solo shows at Sugar Hill’s Children Museum for Arts & Storytelling and The Queens Botanical Gardens, and group exhibitions in New York at BRIC, Smack Mellon, Wave Hill, and The Wassaic Project, as well as the Lightbox Exhibition Project for MTA in the NYC subway from 2017-2019. In 2019, she received the Sustainable Arts Foundation individual award for mixed media. She has participated in LABverde Art Immersion Program located in the Brazilian Amazon, Centro Selva in the Peruvian Amazon, Arquetopia in Puebla, Mexico, and closer to home at Wassaic Project in New York, and Zea Mays Printmaking Residency in Massachusetts. Tatiana Arocha,
BEL FALLEIROS is a Brazilian artist whose practice focuses on land identity. Starting with her hometown, São Paulo, she’s worked to understand how contemporary landscapes and their monuments (mis)represent the diverse layers of presence that constitute a place. Walking is core to her practice and to her first solo show at CAIXA Cultural São Paulo, as well as her residency at the Sacatar Institute in Bahia, Brazil (2014). Since arriving in the U.S., she has worked to create spaces for grounding and connecting people, including a site-specific installation at Pecos National Park, New Mexico (2016), an earth-work at Burnside Farm, Detroit (2017), and functional sculptures in collaboration with Tewa Women United, during the Santa Fe Art Institute’s Equal Justice Residency (2018). She is currently part of the Monuments Now show at Socrates Sculpture Park and a More Art Engaging Artist Fellow (New York). Beyond her studio practice, she participates in collaborative projects across the Americas connecting art, education and autonomous thinking. She is a teaching artist at Escuelita en Casa, Garner Arts Center and Dia:Beacon.
CHRISTINE HOWARD SANDOVAL is an interdisciplinary artist of Obispeño Chumash and Hispanic ancestry. Her work challenges the boundaries of representation, access, and habitation through the use of performance, video, and sculpture. Howard Sandoval makes work about contested places, such as the historic Native and Hispanic waterways of northern New Mexico; the Gowanus Canal, a Superfund site in New York; and an interfacing suburban-wildland in Colorado. Howard Sandoval has exhibited nationally and internationally; at The Museum of Capitalism (Oakland, CA), Designtransfer, Universität der Künst Berlin (Berlin, Germany), El Museo Del Barrio (NY), and Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY). Her first solo museum exhibition debuted at The Colorado Springs Fine Art Center in May 2019, during which time she was the Mellon Artist in Residence at Colorado College. Sandoval has also been awarded residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Triangle Arts, and The Vermont Studio Center. She holds a BFA from Pratt Institute (NY) and an MFA from Parsons The New School for Design (NY). She is currently Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Praxis in the Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University (BC).
KAREN MIRANDA-RIVADENEIRA grew up along the shores and mountains of Ecuador. Her work focuses on memory, geo-poetics and storytelling through collaborative processes and personal narratives. Intersectional theories, and earth-based healing inform her practice. She has exhibited widely among places The Portrait gallery at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, DC, Queens Museum, she has participated in the Musee Quai du Branly biennial and received their artist in residence fellowship in 2017. She is currently a master mentor for the Woman Photograph mentorship program, she is a recipient of the We, Women Photo Award and is an artist in residence at BRIClab.
ELISA GUTIERREZ ERIKSEN is a Mexican Curator and Arts and cultural producer with 10 years of experience working and collaborating with artists and institutions to produce and curate art pieces, exhibits, festivals and cultural events. As Cultural Specialist at the UNESCO Field Office in Mexico she developed projects and curated exhibitions concerning the relationship between culture and migration, audiovisual heritage, and others relating to social sciences and the environment. Prior to that, she was Head of Exhibitions of the Alas y Raices program at the Ministry of Culture in Mexico between 2010 and 2013, where she curated and produced over 20 exhibitions and over 10 site specific installations. She started her curatorial practice as Assistant Curator of the 100m3 Gallery in Mexico City. Among other projects, she has collaborated with the International Human Rights Art Festival in New York and the International Contemporary Animation Film Festival ANIMASIVO. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, where she works as Programs Manager & Curator at NARS Foundation.