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...
Collectors’ Favorites is an episode of local cable program from the mid-1990s in which ordinary people were invited to present their personal collections—a concept that in many ways anticipates current reality TV shows and internet videos...
De sino à sina (From Bell to Fate) is a six-channel sound installation by Carla Zaccagnini exploring the relationship between modern Brazil and its colonial past...
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...
Made in cast bronze, Two Eyes Two Mouths provokes a strong sense of fleshiness as if manipulated by the hand of the artist pushing her fingers into wet clay or plaster to create gouges that represent eyes, mouths and the female reproductive organ...
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...
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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...
In his evocative Landscape Paintings, McMillian uses second-hand bedsheets, sourced from thrift shops, as his starting point...
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*...
Bowers’ Radical Hospitality (2015) is a sculptural contradiction: its red and blue neon letters proclaim the words of the title, signaling openness and generosity, while the barbed wires that encircle the words give another message entirely...
Johanna Calle’s Abece “K” (2011) is part of a series of drawings (compiled into an artist book called Abece ) based on the alphabet...
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...
Vertical Horizon by Wito Wibowo addresses a media scandal in 2010 that took over the cultural milieu of Indonesia...
Three men with their backs to each other, dressed similarly in dark colors, stare straight at the camera...