17:57 minutes
Clarissa Tossin’s film Ch’u Mayaa responds to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House (constructed 1919–21) in Los Angeles, an example of Mayan Revival architecture. By re-appropriating the structure as a temple and imbuing it with a dance performance based on movements and postures found in ancient pottery and murals, the choreography takes its influence from the house’s design and the body positions on ancient Maya ceramics and buildings. A pulse, breathing, and a pre-Columbian clay flute are among the sounds on the soundtrack. Tossin mimics how the Maya civilization might have used a temple or ceremonial structure by employing Hollyhock House as a stage. The home is re-signified as belonging to the Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican architecture lineage by the movement of a female dancer. The title, which translates as Maya Blue , refers to the ancient azure color seen on Mayan ceramics and paintings portraying dancers, which is widely renowned for its weather resistance and ability to withstand the passage of time.
Clarissa Tossin’s photographs, videos, and installations are active investigations into the workings of urban planning and labor politics. The artist draws poignant parallels among historical events, creating engaging narratives that are also often subversive. Many of her works are concerned with what could be called a topography of place. Focusing on the promises, legacies, and failings of modernity, globalism, and utopian idealism, much of her work concentrates on cultural and economic connections between the United States and Latin American countries. Tossin’s most recent artwork, Archaeology of the Present, investigates the link between Indigenous civilizations and current Los Angeles via the lenses of gender and appropriation.
On Fire by Runo Lagomarsino comprises twenty pieces of parchment, each of which has had the contours and map of Brazil burned in stages...
Yo también soy humo (I am also smoke) is a 16mm film that has been digitized to video...
This series of photographs, Sobre la igualdad y las diferencias: casas gemelas (On Equality and Differences: Twin Houses) , taken in Havana in 2005, belongs to a wider group of works that the artist has been developing over many years, generally titled Bifurcaciones y encrucijadas (Forking Paths and Crossroads) ...
With a habit of reading eight to ten books at the same time, Chong paints his two-foot tall novel covers through referencing an extensive reading list (accessible on Facebook) he has kept since 2006...
In Fordlândia Fieldwork (2012), Tossin documents the remains of Henry Ford’s rubber enterprise Fordlândia, built in 1928 in the Brazilian Amazon to export cultivated rubber for the booming automobile industry...
On Fire by Runo Lagomarsino comprises twenty pieces of parchment, each of which has had the contours and map of Brazil burned in stages...
Yo también soy humo (I am also smoke) is a 16mm film that has been digitized to video...
This series of photographs, Sobre la igualdad y las diferencias: casas gemelas (On Equality and Differences: Twin Houses) , taken in Havana in 2005, belongs to a wider group of works that the artist has been developing over many years, generally titled Bifurcaciones y encrucijadas (Forking Paths and Crossroads) ...
Van Gogh’s 'Starry Night over the Rhône' will return for the first time to the city where it was painted Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Adventures with Van Gogh blog Van Gogh’s 'Starry Night over the Rhône' will return for the first time to the city where it was painted But did Vincent really wear a hat fringed with candles when he was working? Martin Bailey 8 December 2023 Share Van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhone (September 1888) Credit: Musée d’Orsay, Paris Adventures with Van Gogh Adventures with Van Gogh is a weekly blog by Martin Bailey, our long-standing correspondent and expert on the artist...
In this two-channel video installation, Spaniards Named Her Magdalena, But Natives Called Her Yuma , Carolina Caycedo gathered footage during numerous research trips to dam sites in the Harz Mountains, Saxony, Westphalia and the Black Forest in Germany interspersed with images of the Rio Magdalena region in Colombia...
SEE WHAT SEE: BOYS' LOVE (BL) DRAMAS | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints November 13, 2021 By Lainie Yeoh I grew up in an era where queer films were rare exceptions and it was your holy gay-af duty to watch all the ones you could access...
Aesthetica Magazine - Curator Interview: 130 Years of Native Photography Curator Interview: 130 Years of Native Photography In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now is a major exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, spanning 130 years of work by First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Native American photographers...
MUM , the acronym used to title a series of Rogan’s small interventions on found magazines, stands for “Magic Unity Might,” the name of a vintage trade magic publication...
While his works can function as abstract, they are very much rooted in physicality and the possibilities that are inherent in the materials themselves...
Conceived as a large-scale mural-like projection, Color of History, Sweating Rocks is a neo-futuristic, hybrid film that combines cinematic language, collage, animation, and inventive forms to highlight the plight of the peoples of the Sahara—and refugees in general—who have been displaced by oil-mining....
In the series Horizons (2010), Lipps uses appropriation to riff on Modernism’s fascination with abstract form...
In Fordlândia Fieldwork (2012), Tossin documents the remains of Henry Ford’s rubber enterprise Fordlândia, built in 1928 in the Brazilian Amazon to export cultivated rubber for the booming automobile industry...
Matthew Buckingham presents a narrative directly connected with a highly symbolic site in the United States, the Mount Rushmore Memorial*...
San Pedro is a seaside city, part of the Los Angeles Harbor, sitting on the edge of a channel...
During her research on primitive currencies and cultural cannibalism, Cuevas came across the Donald Duck comic book issue “The Stone Money Mystery,” where Donald goes on a quest to find missing museum objects...
Calle’s drawings all inhabit received forms but alter them to call attention to specific qualities...
Kimbell Art Museum acquires important cultural touchstone of Olmec art Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Museums & Heritage news Kimbell Art Museum acquires important cultural touchstone of Olmec art The jade statuette of an Olmec ruler holding a baby were-jaguar will be exhibited as the centrepiece of the Texas museum's ancient American collection Theo Belci 14 December 2023 Share Standing Figure Holding a Were-Jaguar Baby (around 900BC-300BC) Photo: Justin Kerr., courtesy of the Justin Kerr Maya archive, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, DC The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, has acquired Standing Figure Holding a Were-Jaguar Baby (around 900BC-300BC), a jade statuette at the centre of Olmec civilisation studies since the mid-20th century...
Acquisitions round-up: the Städel Museum in Frankfurt shows off its Honoré Daumier bequest Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Museums & Heritage news Acquisitions round-up: the Städel Museum in Frankfurt shows off its Honoré Daumier bequest Plus, Olmec statuette becomes Kimbell Art Museum’s “most significant work of ancient American art” and Madrid’s Museo del Romanticismo buys an early Goya Hannah McGivern 9 February 2024 Share Honoré Daumier's Don't you dare! (1834) © Private Collection Daumier bequest from Hans-Jürgen Hellwig Städel Museum, Frankfurt The Städel Museum’s new show of 120 graphic works by Honoré Daumier (1808-79), running until 12 May, is drawn entirely from the collection of the Frankfurt arts patron Hans-Jürgen Hellwig...