Film & Video (Film & Video)

El Contorno (Outlines) is a three-channel video installation that features five actors performing a script—at times individually and at times in unison—choreographically moving across an indistinct urban space. As the view shifts from one performer to another we notice that they are all in close proximity and that the feed from all three channels was simultaneously filmed. The scene unravels with actors moving in and out of view in an elaborate negotiation between their bodies and the camera’s movements.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Escenarios (Sceneries) Maya Watanabe films forgotten wastelands through a series of 360° camera movements that highlight the dramatism and visual richness of terrain that would be otherwise forgotten. Her choice to depict these lands is a reference to the devastated geography that now grips her Peru after decades of destruction from a grueling Civil War—the second largest internal conflict in the history of Latin America. Through the videos of this post-conflict territory she alludes at once to the sombre episode in Peru’s recent history, as well as her memory of it: fragmented and contused.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Maya Watanabe’s video installation Bullet unfolds within the context of the Peruvian justice and forensic systems. During the Peruvian internal armed conflict that occured between the subversive group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the Peruvian military from 1980-2000, approximately 21,000 people, civilians, and guerilla fighters were killed. Most of the killings that were perpetrated by the military during this period of political upheaval were later deemed extrajudicial acts, and almost all of them were carried out with firearms.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Three men with their backs to each other, dressed similarly in dark colors, stare straight at the camera. They individually deliver sacred lines from the Torah, New Testament, and Qur’an in their representative languages: Old Hebrew, Greek, and Old Arabic. As the camera slowly rotates around the trio, the men begin to perform traditional manifestations of each religious cult: Torah Cantillations, Gregorian Chants, and tilawat of Al-Qur’an.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

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.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Vertical Horizon by Wito Wibowo addresses a media scandal in 2010 that took over the cultural milieu of Indonesia. Someone uploaded on a sextape of pop star Ariel Peterpan with model-actress Luna Maya recorded on a mobile phone. Several days later, another video of Ariel Peterpan and Cut Tari, an infotainment news presenter in Indonesia, surfaced on the Internet.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

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.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Sandra Monterroso’s video performance titled Corazón del lugar del viento (Heart of the Place of the Wind) is inspired by Seis Cielo (Six Sky), the only female Mayan ruler to be represented in classical Mayan stelae (historical monuments dedicated to the record of important events). As the artist impersonates the ruler and goddess, she performs a ritual of tying stones and an offering of clothing. Seis Cielo’s ties with the lineages of the prehispanic Tikal and Dos Pilas kingdoms were essential in understanding the role of Mayan women as mothers and wives, and especially as rulers and healers.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Presented as part of a recent group of works titled The Paradox of Healing, Rhombus for Healing No. 2 by Sandra Monterroso brings together several of the artist’s interests: the use of ritual and medicinal elements; the conciliation of Western and indigenous formal languages; and more recently, sewing as a recognition and celebration of her maternal lineage. The series as a whole and this painting in particular continue her interest in textiles as visual references and cultural tools to address her native Guatemala’s complex political and cultural histories.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Wind by Antonio Pichillá is a textile piece depicting the glyph that represents the element wind in the Mayan tradition. It is woven in the four colors of each of the cardinal points which, together, symbolize the entire universe. It is woven mostly with knots that the artist refers to as a “bond between two or more systems that also represents a closure […] the knot in the throat that submerges the voice.” This piece, like other works in Pichillá’s practice, is an attempt to reconcile the Maya Tz’utujil symbolic tradition with Western art historical categories and practices.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Mesoamericana (Economic activities) is part of a larger project titled Mesoamerica: The Hurricane Effect, which includes a video as well as series of hand drawn maps -based on historical cartography- that examine the effects of foreign power in Mexico today. Mesoamerica was home to a rich civilization that emerged around 10,000 years BC and out of which grew the rich Maya, Aztec and Zapotec cultures, among many others. These cultures were destroyed by the Spanish, who arrived in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

silentstar, delicacy by Duane Linklater is a replica of a baby pink hoodie that the artist wore as a teenager, embellished with hand-painted elements and band patches. From associations with punk and hip-hop to skater culture, the hoodie has a history of being adopted by youth-driven communities once relegated to the fringes, and being embraced by mainstream fashion as a practical article of clothing, which Linklater’s work complicates even further. The reproduction is made with dye extracted from cochineal insects.

Installation (Installation)

The work Sarta (String) by Reyes Santiago Roja is part of a larger series of works that examine the commercialization of the tobacco plant and its relationship to the meaning and use of tobacco by Native American tribes such as the Mayas, Aztecs, Incas or Tainos, which attributed spiritual qualities to tobacco such as the smoke carrying one’s thoughts and prayers to the sprits. In this work the artist studied the forms of tobacco leaves native to Latin America and recreated their shapes with commercial tobacco packaging from such global brands as Marlboro or Camel to the most popular Colombian brand Pielroja. The leaves made of the packaging material are lined up on a string as if they are hung out to dry as in traditional tobacco making processes.