Xar - Sueño de obsidiana
2020 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
13:06 minutes
Edgar Calel
The point of departure for Xar – Sueño de obsidiana by Edgar Calel is a poem that the artist wrote in Maya Kaqchikel. Made in collaboration with Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Pereira dos Santos, the film was shot while in lockdown in Brazil, where Calel found himself during the first outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film shows Calel ambling around the empty Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion designed by Oscar Niemeyer to host the São Paulo Biennial in 1954. This iconic modernist building is located in the Ibirapuera park next to the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art; the artistic center of one of the biggest metropolises in the world today. In the work, Calel imagines the site before the ideological apparatuses—that of a nation-state, of modern and contemporary art, and their institutions—were instated. That is to say, Calel’s work attempts to visualize the site as used by the Indigenous people who populated it before. For that purpose, he resorts to transmutation and the possibility of seeing the building through the eyes of a jaguar, pointing at the importance of the personhood granted to nonhuman entities in many Indigenous cosmologies. In the film, Calel appears with a sweatshirt he has worn in other works with the names of the 22 Mayan languages embroidered in it. His voice recites a fragment of the poem Sueño de obsidiana in Kaqchikel, which is in turn informed by dreams he had during his stay in Brazil and the bodily experience of transit during challenging times. Making any attempt at translation is a mere approximation. At the same time, this work is a way for Calel to communicate through time and space with his ancestors. A huge painting with the word “kit” is hung from one of the pavilion’s balconies. The word was used by his late grandmother to communicate with different birds who lived around her house; it is now used by Calel to communicate with her.
Edgar Calel is a Maya Kaqchikel artist and poet from the midwestern highlands of Guatemala. His work delves into the cosmology of his people and how it uncomfortably interacts with Western epistemologies and systems of value. His practice often interrogates the relationships between indigeneity and its representation in the modern world, negotiating the untranslatability of specific ways of being in the world and the words that name them. Inevitably, this leads to a position of resistance to specific forms of symbolic and physical violence and discrimination Indigenous people endure in Latin America. Calel describes his practice not as art—a nonexistent word in Maya languages—in the Western sense, but as Naoj: a conflation of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. His work manifests as a communal form for production that involves his whole family and is connected to the activities that produce and maintain life in Chi Xot.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
Tanatchai Bandasak
2019Central Region by Tanatchai Bandasak is a meditation on materiality and time-based media centres on the mysterious, prehistoric ‘standing stones’ of Hintang in Northern Laos: little-studied megaliths which have survived thousands of years of political change and the cataclysmic carpet-bombing of Laos by the United States during the Cold War...
© » KADIST
Karan Shrestha
2017After the decade-long conflict (1996-2006) that ended with Nepal becoming a Federal Democratic Republic, political unrest and weak governance continued to mark the country’s future as daily life repeatedly witnessed ruptures...
© » KADIST
Pichet Piaklin
2021The Wings by Pichet Piaklin is a creation story of fragility, where the desire for freedom is mired in blood red by the inculcation of faith and violence...
© » TATE EXHIBITIONS
American Artist
Vija Celmins | Hatton Gallery See the work of Latvian-American artist Vija Celmins at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle ARTIST ROOMS Vija Celmins takes an in-depth look at the artist’s works on paper...
© » KADIST
Nguyen Trinh Thi
2021The essay film How to Improve the World by Nguyen Trinh Thi takes us into an indigenous village of the Jrai people in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, in Gia Lai province...
© » SLASH PARIS
Gildas Le Reste — & Guests — Catherine Putman Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris Login Newsletter Twitter Facebook Gildas Le Reste — & Guests — Catherine Putman Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris English Français Home Events Artists Venues Magazine Videos Back Previous Next Gildas Le Reste — & Guests Exhibition Drawing, print, painting Gildas Le Reste, Notes de voyage #1, 2023 Ink on paper mounted on canvas Gildas Le Reste & Guests Ends in 27 days: January 27 → March 9, 2024 Galerie Catherine Putman has pleasure in making a double invitation to Gildas Le Reste as both artist and exhibition curator...
© » KADIST
Lala Rašcic
2018In Greek mythology, Arachne was a talented mortal weaver who challenged Athena, goddess of wisdom and crafts, to a weaving contest; this hubris resulted in her being transformed into a spider...
© » KADIST
Li Xiaofei
Combined into a single two-channel HD video, Li Xiaofei’s Ponytail and Chongming Island II are silent portraits of the women assembly line workers at a Chinese kitchenware factory...
© » ANOTHER
The Story Behind Iconic 90s Images of Cameron Diaz, Heath Ledger and More | AnOther As his new exhibition opens in Milan, Michel Haddi tells us the story behind some of his most famous images of Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Moss, Janet Jackson and more December 11, 2023 Text Gary Grimes Michel Haddi , the legendary French-Algerian fashion photographer, is a big believer in the importance of first impressions...
© » KADIST
María Teresa Hincapié
1989In the performance video Vitrina , María Teresa Hincapié stood inside a storefront window in downtown Bogota, unannounced, for eight hours a day, wearing a uniform and initially carrying out cleaning chores...
© » SLASH PARIS
Gildas Le Reste — & Guests — Galerie Catherine Putman — Exposition — Slash Paris Connexion Newsletter Twitter Facebook Gildas Le Reste — & Guests — Galerie Catherine Putman — Exposition — Slash Paris Français English Accueil Événements Artistes Lieux Magazine Vidéos Retour Précédent Suivant Gildas Le Reste — & Guests Exposition Dessin, estampe, peinture Gildas Le Reste, Notes de voyage #1, 2023 Encre sur papier marouflé sur toile Gildas Le Reste & Guests Encore 27 jours : 27 janvier → 9 mars 2024 La galerie Catherine Putman est heureuse de proposer une double invitation à Gildas Le Reste, comme artiste et commissaire d’exposition...
