2016 CLOSURE EXHBITION /COMMUNITY EVENT
de las cenizas nacemos arrastrando los escombros volvemos a armar el mundo apreciando sus trozos de lo roto rehacemos una acuarela a color de lo roto rescatamos hermosura en resplandor somos los cuates rascuaches y soĂąamos con esbozos que retraten el planeta que repiensen el cosmos buscamos ideas chidas que lleguen al mero fondo con nuestras manos forjamos el futuro con asombro -Matthew Sibley
About Rasquache............................................01 Sofia Quintero.................................................02 El Cayuco Son Jarocho...................................04 Artists..............................................................05 Works..............................................................07 Acknowledgements.........................................22
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Rasquache, endorsed by the Sofia Quintero Art and Culture Center (SQACC) was launched for the first time on June 2016, in San Francisco Cuapa, Cholula, Puebla, Mexico. The location of the residency is of particular importance because of its cultural richness and relevancy to the artist, Federico Cuatlacuatl's experience as an undocumented immigrant in the U.S. Federico immigrated to the U.S in 1999, at the age of seven to reunite with his parents after being separated from them for almost five years. After sixteen years growing up as an undocumented immigrant and unable to return back to Mexico, he was finally able to travel back to his hometown, San Francisco Cuapa, in the summer of 2016. The purpose of his travel to Mexico was to host and establish the Rasquache Residency at his parent’s house which has been unoccupied for more than twenty years. This project is a continuity of Federico's current artistic research which strives to disseminate topics of immigration, cultural sustainability, and social art practice. Furthermore, this project is an extension/expansion of SQACC's mission to build binational artistic/community relationships in Puebla, Mexico.
The artist residency takes on the name of Rasquache as a reference to the history and ownership of the property as well as emphasizing the cultural importance of the region. Rasquache Residency embraces and honors the traditions and culture of Cholula region as a means to comprehend marginalized sectors in Latin America which may lead Latinos to migrate illegaly to the U.S. By embracing such tradtions and culture, Rasquache strives to bring forth visibility and awareness of a positive attitude towards the current sociopolitical instabilities of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Although artists in the residency will not be expected to adopt a rasquachismo approach/process to their work, we see this as an opportunity to expand and build onto rasquachismo ideals by engaging in artistic works that produce positive attitudes by inverting negative sociopolitical and cultural connotations. In this sense, the residency doesn't necessarily focus on challenging artists to embrace a rasquachismo artistic process but rather to emphasize the adoption of rasquachismo attitude and ideals striving to rediscover and reconstruct community empowerment and artistic/academic agency for social change within marginalized and minority communities, both in the U.S and in Latin America.
The residency closure exhbition/community event celebrated works from artists in residence, visiting artists, workshops, and honored the town of Coapan. The Cocina de Humo Gallery consisted of various installations, video projections, ceramics, poetry, digital prints, and drawings. The outdoor patio also had a collaborative installation of a neon pink truck with an electronic toy totem. El Cayuco Son Jarocho was invited to perform their music for Coapan while the community also baked bread and pizza throughout the event. Exhibitions/community events will also take place in Toledo, Ohio and Chicago at the Mexico Solidarity Network. The purpose of these exhibitions will be to promote transborder artistic endeavors and to build binational dialogues of pressing realities. Rasquache is an ambitious project seeking to be ever growing and hosting exhibtions/events as a way to to promote the growth of the artists and the residency as well as emphasizing the role and integration of our communities.
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The Sofia Quintero Art and Culture Center is a 501(c)3 non-profit Latino art organization founded in 1996 by members of the Mexican American community to support the artistic expressions of the local Latino Community. The center was named after Sofia Quintero, the daughter of migrant farm workers who settled in the Toledo area. In her short life, Sofia was the first Latina to be voted into the Toledo Board of Education and was elected President of the Board. Her life was cut short by illness, but her joy of Latino culture and her determination continues through the efforts of the Sofia Quintero Art & Culture Center, it's board members and active community members. The Sofia Quintero Art & Culture Center serves as an oasis for neighborhood residents and local artists. Through events and programs, SQACC provides interest, awareness, and education about Latino art, heritage, and culture. The SQACC Board of Trustees comprises of Latinos and non-Latinos with an interest in preserving Latino Culture and community involvement. Since its founding, SQACC has and continues to build partnerships with the local city government as well as both local and international individuals, organizations, and educational institutions to provide opportunities for community development and advancement for its residents.
Mission The Sofia Quintero Art and Cultural Center Inc. (SQACC) strives to be a premier, regional, and Latino based organization that advances the important roles that art and education play in everyday lives. SQACC supports and gives voice to the artistic and educational expressions which advance community development, responsibility and social equity, cultural diversity, global awareness and stewardship, as well as the empowerment of the Latina and Latino identities.
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EL CAYUCO SON JAROCHO Based in Puebla, Mexico the Cayuco Son Jarocho plays traditional Jarocho genre music rooted in history and culture of Mexican states such as Veracruz, Oaxaca,and Tabasco. This style of music is a fusion of indigenious, Spanish, and African music inlfuences. Son Jarocho is often performed by an ensemble of musicians engaging its listeners with humorous verses in the lyrics. Some common instruments for Son Jarocho include: The jarana jarocha, a guitar-like instrument, is used to provide a harmonic base; the quijada which is made from a donkey jawbone; and the requinto jarocho which is another small guitar-like instrumed usually tuned to a higher pitch. El Cayuco is led by Abraham Vazquez and accompanied by other performers and singers. Rasquache was honored to include El Cayuco Son Jarocho as part of our community event, where everybody was able to enjoy a live performance and participate in dancing.
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2016 VISITING ARTISTS/ SCHOLARS
AMY YOUNGS - Biological Art, Interactive Sculptures and Digital Media Associate Professor of Art Art and Techonology, Department of Art The Ohio State University
KEN RINALDO - Interactive Installations,
Trans-species Communication (robotics, bio art, animation, 3D modeling and broad art practices & technology) Professor of Art Art and Techonology, Department of Art The Ohio State University
LEO HERRERA - Sociology
Ph.D Candidate Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla
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2016 Artists
MATTHEW SIBLEY Poet, Latin American
KARINA A. MONROY Art & Anthropology
Literarcy Critic, and Translator
CHRISTINA ERIVES Cermaics
SA’DIA REHMAN Video & Collage
JAIRO BANUELOS Drawing, Sculpture, & Performance
FEDERICO CUATLACUATL - Digital Arts, Computer Animation, and Socially Engaged Work Assistant Professor of Art Department of Art and Design University of Arkansas at Little Rock
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AMY YOUNGS Amy M. Youngs creates biological art, interactive sculptures and digital media works that explore relationships between technology and animals – human and non-human. Research interests include: interactions with plants and animals, technological nature follies, constructed ecosystems and seeing through the eyes of machines. She has created installations that amplify the sounds and movements of living worms, indoor ecosystems that grow edible plants, a multi-channel interactive video sculpture for a science museum, as well as videos and community media projects. Youngs has exhibited her works nationally and internationally at venues such as the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand, the Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre in Norway, the Biennale of Electronic Arts in Australia, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Spain and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. She was awarded an Ohio Arts Council grant for her work and has published articles in Leonardo and Antennae. Her work has been profiled in the books such as, Art in Action, Nature, Creativity & our Collective Future. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an Associate Professor of Art at the Ohio State University, where she teaches new media and eco art courses.
REBAR IN BLOOM
“The exposed rebar protruding up out of many architectural structures in Puebla, Mexico was an aesthetic that challenged me. At first, my North American eyes read it as unfinished and dangerous, but as I continued to look and listen, my perception shifted. I began to see the rebar as armatures of possibility. They are fingers that reach out into the sky and accept new bricks of construction as they come. They are frameworks for potential growth. To honor these structures, I attached hand-crafted flowers to them. These were constructed out of repurposed plastic bottles that once held soda and water. It was important to me to create the flowers in a manner that embraces that rasquache attitude of making do with what is at hand. The process of transforming a waste material into a colorful arrangement of flowers was a way for me to shift an aesthetic of waste into one of celebration.” “As I began to attach these constructed flowers to the rebar structures in the yard of the Rasquache Residency, a crew arrived to set up the tents for the opening fiesta. To rig up the tents, they attached ropes to the exposed rebar, further transforming these structures – and teaching me about – an aesthetic of use, possibility and celebration.”
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ARTIFICIAL UNDEAD
“I found a worn out plastic plant in the trashcan behind my house. I considered its lifespan: beginning as oil formed 3.4 million years ago, toxically transformed into polymers, molded into a fraudulent version of life, headed to a landfill where it will never reenter the carbon cycle again. Would it end up in the ocean? Or in the bodies of future generations of birds or humans? I brought the plastic plant with me to Mexico in my luggage to explore the persistence of plastic. Photographed next to other plastic objects I encountered throughout the state of Puebla, the plastic plant foregrounds the multiple ways that plastics are used, overused and ever-present. Cotton and wool fabrics now have everlasting plasticized versions, and twig brooms have competition from manufactured polymers. Traditional materials and methods are being eclipsed by plastics. These colorful materials appear to be the festive, inexpensive copies of well-loved things in our lives; yet in actual fact, they are energy-intensive, deadly to life and sure to outlive us.”
“Artificial Undead and Fake Flower”
“Artificial Undead and Church Flowers”
“Artificial Undead Meeting”
“Artificial Undead Overtaking Flesh and Fiber”
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KEN RINALDO
Ken Rinaldo is internationally recognized for his interactive installations blurring the boundaries between the organic and inorganic and speaking to the co-evolution between living and evolving technological cultures. His work interrogates fuzzy boundaries where hybrids arise. Biological, machine and algorithmic species and their unique intelligences are mixing in unexpected ways and we need to better understand the complex intertwined ecologies that these semi-living species create. Rinaldo is focused on trans-species communication and researching methods to understand animal, insect and bacterial cultures as models for emergent machine intelligences, as they interact, self organize and co-inhabit the earth. Rinaldo’s works have shown and commissioned by museums, festivals and galleries internationally such as: Nuit Blanche Canada, World Ocean Museum Russia, Ars Electronica Austria, Lille International Arts Festival France, la Maison d’Ailleurs, Switzerland, Vancouver Olympics Canada, Platform 21 Holland, Transmediale Berlin, AV Festival England, Caldas Museum of Art Colombia, Arco Arts Festival Spain, Te Papa Museum, Wellington New Zealand, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Seville Spain, Kiasma Museum Finland, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Pan Palazzo Delle Arti Italy, V2 DEAF Holland, Siggraph Los Angeles, Exploratorium San Francisco, Itau Museum Brazil, Biennial for Electronic Art Australia and the National Center for Contemporary Arts in Russia.
“In the yard of the Rasquache Residency, was an old rusty truck that Federico’s uncle had wished to fix up. We felt it could rise from the dead and still have some art spirt. We decided to collaborate and paint the truck bright-pink and bring it back to life. We found robotic, bump-and-turn toys and deconstructed them. I wanted the toys to manifest their spirit in machine drawings. The toys produced two drawings one eerily displaying a skull. In the spirit of Rasquache, two distressed gilded frames; one that held a mirror and another that held a reproduced painting, were used to frame the machine drawings.” “The robotic toys were further deconstructed and LEDs were rewired into a repurposed curtain rod from the house. Bits of toys were snipped and attached to other parts to remix and create the full totem. The Angel of Car Death, (Carro Angel de Muerte) now rises from the empty hood of the pink truck, where the motor would be. It needed feathers to reflect the turkeys and chickens
in every Coapa yard and angel wings in every home-shrine, and I asked Matthew Sibley, a artist resident with excellent Spanish, if he could ask the uncle and Aurelia Xique for waste chicken feathers. Soon Federico’s’ 73 years old grandmother arrived at the door with a bag of freshly plucked chicken & turkey feathers. I felt badly that perhaps the chicken had been plucked for this artwork, though happy it would not go to waste, where free range chickens are part of many family meals. Federico purchased more colored feathers in Cholula and I glued them to the totem and wings of opening moving car doors, which gives the appearance of an angel moving her wings. LEDs illuminate the angels face and the work exhibits the sequences of fading machine sounds, from each deconstructed toy. The robotic toys are wired and controlled with an Arduino micro controller and old power supplies purchased from the corner electronic junk store.”
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“Additional new works are called the Cholula, Coapan and Mexican Murmurations. I was able to take photos of birds and butterflies from tropical regions including Cholula, Cancun and Coapa and create 8 new Murmuration works where color and light/dark value of photos give rise to form in 3D software which is further manipulated to create abstractions of the colors of these natural flora and fauna. These were then printed on metal and exhibit vibrant colors and illusory abstractions derived from Mexican nature.�
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MATTHEW SIBLEY
Born in Roanoke, Virginia in 1988 early on he developed a passion for music and reading,however his longest lasting passion began in middle school when he started studying the Spanish language. This interest led him to pursue both a BA in Modern Languages,Spanish from James Madison University and an MA in Romance and Classical Studies, Spanish from Bowling Green State University. During his studies he traveled to both Spain and Mexico to further immerse himself in the language. Mexico in particular captivated him with its cultures, art, and landscapes, as well as its unique variety of Spanish. His experience in both countries further inspired his poetry, leading him to publish “Atomic sunrise/Alba atómica” in the 2011 James Madison University Spanish Poetry Workshop anthology, “No hay drenaje (en México)” in la Blogoteca de Babel (2014) at Bowling Green State University, and “Aquí hay” which is pending publication in the literary magazine Blasfemia in San Luís Potosí, Mexico.
“During my two month stay in San Francisco Cuapan my work has taken on many different forms ranging from a poetry workshop that I taught with the middle and high school students to poems of a variety of topics to entries in a glossary that was focused on describing the most characteristic traits of the town. First of all, the workshop that I taught was mainly focused on an introduction to poetry and how to find beauty in everyday object through Pablo Neruda’s odes. The students read the odes (specifically the ones written about apples and potato chips) while they were eating said snacks to experience the feeling that the poet was describing. Then, they chose an objet that they wanted to write an ode for and they started to write. Through this activity they were able to become more familiar with poetry as a tool that allows us to understand and appreciate the world that surrounds us.” “Secondly, I worked on writing three different types of poems during my stay in Cuapan which ranged from free verse to romances to odes. My poetry work here culminated in two final projects: a series of romances dedicated to the hills, volcanoes and mountains in the area and a series of odes to everyday objects in collaboration with artist Karina Monroy. In regards to the series of romances, the main idea was to portray the stories, anecdotes, and myths that people from Cuapan were telling me about the 6 hills that characterize the views in the town (el Iztaccíhuatl, el Popocatépetl, el Tecajete, el Tlacuaquilo, el Xaltepec y el Zapotecas). The form of the romance poem in particular helped to give the poems a certain touch of musicality and veneration that the stories that people from Cuapan told me deserved. In regards to the odes, these poems were based on the wooden frames with inlayed sculptures that the artist Karina was working on which evoked the idea of an altar portraying three everyday objects: spoons, bricks, and rope. These odes praised said objects and sometimes were written before the frames were created so that Karina could be inspired by the odes and other times I was inspired by the frames that she had already created.” “Lastly, I also worked on writing a glossary that collected information about the typical things from San Francisco Cuapan, in other words, plant and animal life from the area, the names of places, typical tools, etc. Every since the beginning the idea behind this project was to leave the glossary open as a continuous community project in which any inhabitant of Cuapan or any future artist that comes to visit Rasquache Residency can collaborate. Personally, I wrote entries that mainly focused, once again, on the hills around here. The glossary has drawings for each entry of which, I did the monochromatic ones and the artist Jairo Banuelos did the polychromatic ones. The collaboration with Jairo Banuelos really helped to make the drawings stand out more and serves as just the first example of the type of collaborative work that glossary aspires to achieve. The idea is to later leave the glossary in an area that is easily accessible to all (for example, the library in town hall) so that it can include the most amount of collaborations possible.”
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Oda a la Cuchara cuchara tú que para todo sirves revuelves retazos agitas habas picas pedacitos machucas migajas mezclas mole sacas sopa metes mordiscos tú que a todos les sirves de tu sagrada corona a abuelos y a nietos a tíos y a sobrinos a padres y a hijos a ricos y a pobres a trabajadores y a teporochos tú que nunca dejas de servir ¿quién puede destruir tu lustrosa hondura? aunque te embarren aunque te oxides aunque te rasquen aunque te fundan nomás te convertirás de nuevo en otro halo brillante
TLACUAQUILO
Alma Rota
Su nombre parece tener alguna relación con la alimaña del tlacuache aunque este origen está por comprobarse y tampoco se han visto tlacuaches por el rumbo. Al pie de este cerrito pedregoso se encuentra la secundaria Rafael Sánchez donde vive una perra amable que le dicen Canela. El día que subimos el cerrito supe por David que se cuenta que hay una cueva entre huizaches debajo de un pequeño despeñadero en donde se les aparece el chamuco a los chamacos que se atrevan a asomarse a la boca de la caverna. El superficie del Tlacuaquilo, como ya queda dicho, está colmado de piedras y peñas y mientras nos trepábamos a sus cimas, nos encontramos una peña con forma de sillón donde se pueden acomodar hasta 2 o 3 gentes. Por otro lado, también había por allí un diminuto santuario con una crucecita de plástico, madera y papel raído. Una tumba sin rastro ni rostro de quién se recuerda con la dizque lápida o quién había fallecido. De no ser tumba debe de ser nomás otro recordatorio religioso de la santa omnipresencia de los que abundan en Cuapan.
tu alma se cayó al suelo y se rompió en mil cachitos de algún modo se tiene que rearmar zurcir remendar tu espíritu despedazado pero tal vez sólo así el cosmos te permite renacer repensar reinventar si antes naciste de barro ahora nacerás de totomoxtle y serás indestructible hasta la próxima rotura
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FEDERICO CUATLACUATL Born in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico, Federico Cuatlacuatl immigrated to Indiana in 1999, and grew up as an undocumented immigrant. Federico is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He received his BFA at Ball State University in 2013, with a major in computer animation. Recently Federico received his MFA in May 2015, at Bowling Green State University specializing in digital arts. Federico’s work reflects on current realities of Hispanic immigrant diasporas in the United States and strives to bring forth awareness, change, advances, and cultural sustainability. His research is primarily concerned with the current social, political, and cultural issues that Hispanic immigrants face in the U.S. He has participated in numerous exhibitions including the 2014 National Wet Paint MFA Biennial at Zhou B. Art Center in Chicago. Federico’s most recent independent short animation film, “Fin De”, has been screened in various national and international film festivals including: Columbus, Ohio; Canada; Finland; Athens, Greece; Bemidji, Minnesota; Delph, United Kingdom; Lucknow, India; Paris, France; and Azires Islands, Portugal.
“NO COLONIZATION ZONE” - Acrylic on truck hood “Coapan Sin Tiempo” - 5 minute video/animation
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CHRISTINA ERIVES Christina Erives was born in Los Angeles, California. She received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from California State University Northridge and her Master of Fine Arts from Pennsylvania State University. Christina Erives’ work deals with her memories of growing up in Los Angeles, California. Creating a variety of hand built ceramic objects she aims to construct prolific installations that narrate her experiences. The malleability of clay allows her to form objects that evolve much like a story that can change overtime in its telling. As a Mexican American her narratives aim to embrace the practices of a new generation. Her interest in these ideas based on heritage & family traditions develops from her fear of the culture being lost and forgotten. Learning from ancient cultures through ceramic artifacts, ceramics plays the role of a material for preservation. With these objects of seeming permanence she aims to make a mark in time to be kept in the history of ceramic objects.
“My pieces are informed by my experience in San Francisco Coapa. Through the use of various objects I aim to render narratives about communities & families. Rather than simply recreate the objects that facilitate the story I wanted to create something that could help foster the essence of my experience in further places. There were a lot of beautiful moments where I would go out on an errand into town and without fail end up being invited in for a drink or some food. There was not only kindness & generosity to be felt in this small town but a sense of slowing down time to enjoy one another. Big cities tend to be really face paced, people are always on the run with their coffee to go so for my project I wanted to create these forms that forced a person to carefully stay in one place & enjoy a drink from their cup with more patience. The pinch pots are inspired by the simplicity of the Jicara drinking vessels traditionally used for cacao. They have no handles or flat bottoms so they must be held until a drink is finished. They are painted with various colors & text derived from around the town. The second set of cups I incorporated a variety of handles to be able to pass around a warmer drink with ease to friends. These cups sit on top of an embroidered cloth with images that relate to a few of the things I experienced in the community. Ideally I would like to one day build upon this idea and create a fully functioning table setting and invite people to come sit eat & drink. My goal is to take this simple act of kindness so customary in Coapa and place it in settings that tend to overlook the community that passes them by day to day.�
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LEO HERRERA Leo Herrera received a bacherlor's degree in Political Science and a master's degree in Sociology from Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. He is currently a Ph.D candidate in the Sociology department of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Herrera is author of "State Violence and Social Rebellion in the Battle of the APPO" (UVP , 2013 ) and Co- coordinator of "The Tortuous trails of Latin America. State Violence and Rebellion" (BUAP , 2014 ). After completing his Bacherlos degree, Herrera became a collaborator in the newspaper "Noticias . Voice and image of Puebla and Tlaxcala". Herrera is currrently a collaborator at ladobe.com.mx and somoselmedio.org Leo Herrea has a passion for photography and is interested in covering migration, social movements, human rights and violence. “Acompanando Pasos” (Accompanying Steps) is a series of images captured between 2011 and 2015 in the Mexican states of Veracruz, Tabasco, Chiapas, and Puebla which attempt to transmit a glimpse of a reality that thousands of Central American immigrants live through Mexico. These immigrants get on the “beast” (a cargo train) that goes through Mexico, running risks of getting hurt or runned over, avoiding organized crime and border patrol. This series is also a window into real life experiences, of shared dreams and pain, it is a visualization of the beginning of hope and the entrance to hell. These images show the solidarity betwen diverse organizatiosn and humans joining to aliviate the weight of a long journey. These works are the result of five years of activism for human rights, doctorate thesis research, and photo journalist work which strives to bring awarness of the tragic immigrant experience in Mexico.”
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KARINA MONROY Karina A. Monroy was born and raised in Southern California and will be receiving her B.A. in Art and Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in spring 2016. As a young Chicana artist studying Art and Anthropology, Karina explores ways in which her two fields intersect, inform and challenge each other. Issues of identity, feminism, cultural representation and reclamation are prominent subjects within her work. She explores these topics primarily through metal-working, wood-working and needlework as these skills have been historically gendered within society. In combinig these skills, Karina aims to disrupt assumptions about female/male roles within spaces.
“Aquí es costumbre que cuando entras a una casa te persignas” said Don Federico as he faced the altar inside our temporary home. He crossed himself, kissing his own hand once he was finished. Inside the homes of San Francisco Coapan you will almost always find an altar. The aesthetics of these altars differ from home to home. Some more elaborate than others, some dedicated to La Virgen de Guadalupe, others dedicated to Christ, some hung up on the walls, while others take the form of tables with elegant clothes draped over. One thing that is notably consistent however, is the presence of framed photographs, sometimes of the saints that these altars are dedicated to, but most often to deceased family members. In Milagro Cuadros, I intended to explore the concept of “the frame”, and what it means to place a photograph or object within a quadrilateral restriction. I asked: How and why does a frame elevate the importance of an object or memory? And most importantly: What deserves to be framed?
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“With these questions in mind I created three crude frames, each dedicated to seemingly mundane or unimportant objects that are a part of the everyday life of San Francisco Coapan. La Cuchara, El Tabique, y el Mecate. In creating these sacred frames for discarded or forgotten items, I hoped to bring attention to their significance to the community of San Francisco Coapan. In doing so, perhaps a greater appreciation would be given. With this process of elevating the overlooked, I recognized parallels between these forgotten objects and the town of San Francisco Coapan. Este pueblo es muy pequeño, y tal vez la gente fuera del pueblo no saben que existen la gente de aquí, tal vez es lo ven como un pueblo olvidado. Pero en estando aquí en estos meses, puedo decir, que como la cuchara, como el tabique, como el mecate, este pueblo está lleno de vida, porque es la gente que usan la cuchara, trabajan el tabique y enredan el mecate que les dan vida.”
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Jairo Banuelos Jairo Banuelos was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Having grown up within a family of artists, Jairo’s path led him to study art at the University of California Santa Cruz, where he will be receiving his B.A. in Studio Art in spring of 2016. As a young Mexican-American man, experiences of racial discrimination jolted Jairo into a rejection of his own cultural heritage. This cultural rejection ceased upon visiting his grandfather’s home in San Marcos, Jalisco, Mexico. During this visit, looking through his grandfather’s handmade ceramic sculptures, Jairo felt a strong connection to his own art and rediscovered the beautiful culture that was always around him. The narratives of struggle, both personal and of others are reflected within Jairo’s work. In exploring issues of class, gender and culture, he hones in on stories of individuals. Through high detailed rendered drawings, he hopes to display the hidden emotions of those individuals, inviting the viewer to take notice of their experiences and struggles. Jairo’s sculptural work similarly focuses on these issues of struggles, as they investigate how marginalized groups are deprived of certain privileges. Recycled, broken and discarded materials are utilized and reclaimed within his sculptures in order to represent the power of marginalized groups, and their abilities to overcome a broken sociopolitical system.
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“Maize y Cacao is a sculptural drawing that represents the value and importance between a resource such as agriculture and cultural traditions in the small town of San Francisco Coapan. Batches of dried corn husks were gathered and dipped in water and flatten with boards of wood before stitching them together. Once the husks were dried again, images of Cacao preparations and drinking of Cacao were drawn with ink and watercolor.” “Agriculture plays an important role for the community in San Francisco Coapan and is a resource for the people to survive and thrive on. For example, in Coapan, a vast majority of the land is used to grow corn (maize). Corn is eaten almost daily and used to make tortillas, tamales, quesadillas, Cacao, and other delicious foods. Many of the rich traditions in Coapan include food. One important tradition involves the making of a drink known as Cacao. Cacao is a traditional chocolate drink that was once only served to kings and is now served during festivals and other events to everyone throughout Puebla. During religious festivals, women gather together to prepare large tubs of Cacao that is whisked with a wooden molinillo and served to community of Coapan. Typically, the chocolate drink is served with painted decorated traditional gourd bowls known as jicaras as they did during Mesoamerican times to help preserve the flavor. To make cacao, you have to be considered a cacao maestra. To become a cacao maestra, they often have to prepare the drink for numerous events. Flower headbands are given to younger generations of women on their journey to learn how to make the chocolatey drink and become maestras. It is a combination of elders and the younger community working together to pass on these traditions and keep them alive. Maize and cacao are just two examples of the many rich stories, history, food, and cultural traditions that together help shape and run the small town of San Francisco Coapan.”
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Sa’dia Rehman
The poet, Agha Shahid Ali talks of his double loyalty to English and Urdu and he reveals his “simultaneous love of Urdu and of English. Neither love is acquired; I was brought up a bilingual, bicultural (but never rootless) being. These loyalties, which have political, cultural, and aesthetic implications, remain so entangled in me, so thoroughly mine, that they have led not to confusion but to a strange, arresting clarity.” (The Rebel’s Silouette, xii). For Sa’dia Rehman’s work and practice, this clarity is illuminated and reconstructed formally by mark-making, dismantling, and reassembling through drawing, collage, video and performance. Rehman’s work is autobiographical by sourcing images from an archive of family photos, video from VHS family footage, personal objects and found materials. Rehman (b. Queens, NY) has shared work internationally and nationally at venues such as Twelve Gates Gallery (2014) Taubman Museum (2013), Queens Museum of Art (2012), Jersey City Museum (2010), Grey Noise Gallery (2008) and Exit Art (2007). Rehman was selected to participate in LMCC's Artists Summer Institute (2011) and residencies at the Bronx Museum of Art (2008) and National Gallery of Art, Islamabad, Pakistan (2006) and featured in publications such as ColorLines Magazine, The NY Times, Harper’s Magazine and Art Papers. Sa’dia Rehman is currently pursuing a MFA at Ohio State University (2017).
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“My two-month stay in San Francisco Coapan inspired this experimental video. The majority of the footage is shot in San Francisco Coapan in addition to Cholula and the highway from Cuetzalan to SFC. This video is a fictional and disjointed narrative based on my interactions with 4 to 16 year olds and the community adults about their journey within Mexico and within the USA. They shared their desire to stay or leave home; the desire to preserve or replace language; the desire to rebel or assimilate culture; and the desire to remember or forget time. These are visually and formally achieved through a dream-like journey by overlapping blurred images, accumulated bright colors, and cacophonous sound.” “Esperame” (Wait for me) - Color Video, 3:51
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Rasquache is infitnely greateful to the Sofia Quintero Art and Cultural Center in Toledo, Ohio for officially endorsing the residency as part of their programming and their immense support to make everything possible. A big thank you to our visiting artists and scholars that took their time and talent to join us in Coapan. The residency would not have been as successful without our extraordinary artists in residence. A big part of the residence was the importance and value of our local community, Coapan. Rasquache is immensenly grateful to Coapan for such a warm welcoming to our stay, engaging in our artistic endeavors, and for being supportive in our first launching of this ambitious project.
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