7-8 p.m. - Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly Lecture
Hudson Auditorium, NMOCA
Featuring artists Cannupa Hanska Luger and Salvador Jiménez-Flores
Explore the works of 42 artists throughout the first-floor galleries and the second floor New Media Gallery. Their artistic media ranges from traditional craft (beads, porcupine quills, hammered copper) to contemporary art processes (painting, photography, ceramics, new media) to unconventional elements (crayons, drywall, adobe, plaster). Like the butterfly, which takes four generations to make the complete migratory path navigating its way through the center of the United States by drawing from inherited knowledge, these international artists also pull from ancestral and cultural memory to reveal the deep conceptual legacies underpinning abstraction, reorient historical and art historical narratives, and explore centuries-old trade routes that moved people and aesthetics in addition to goods.
Featured artist Cannupa Hanska Luger (b. 1979) was raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian and Norwegian descent. He stated, “My practice is rooted in the traditions of generations before me and augmented by the requirements of survival. The tradition of making things work is what influences my practice most. I work with what I’ve got to make the object or moment that needs to exist. Given the legacies of cultural appropriation and annihilation brought on by colonization, the endurance of these traditions - both craftwork and the practice of making things work - is characterized by resilience, adaptability and survivance.” Now based in New Mexico, Hanska Luger graduated in 2011 with a BFA in studio ceramics from the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Mexican artist Salvador Jiménez-Flores was born in 1985 in Jalisco. Jiménez-Flores has produced a mixture of socially conscious installations, including public art and studio-based art. He said, “The move from a rural town in México to a major metropolis in the United States had a tremendous impact on my life. At first, art was merely a way of coping with the transition, but later, due to my limited English, art became my tool for self-expression. In my work I document this journey of adapting to living in the United States, all while looking back at what I left behind in México.” He currently lives in Chicago, where he is Assistant Professor in ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2014 he graduated with an MFA in Drawing from Kendall College of Art and Design, Grand Rapids, Michigan; in 2012 he studied at the School of Art Centers International in Florence, Italy; and in 2006 he earned a BAS in graphic design and digital media from Robert Morris University, Chicago.
Additionally, exhibiting artists Holly Wilson and Fidencio Fifield Perez are presenting at the Nerman’s Thursday Visiting Artist program on March 28 from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Hudson Auditorium.
This exhibition is curated by Risa Puleo and organized by Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska, where it was first presented December 7, 2017 to February 24, 2018. The accompanying catalogue is supported in part by the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Sandra Fossum, and Watie White.
For more information about the exhibition, refer to the Monarchs exhibition. Monarchs is open from March 7 to June 2, 2019.
Source: http://www.nermanmuseum.org/calendar/events/2019-03-07-monarchs-opening.html