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25.01.2019

Intervención: Índigo

Museo Textil de Oaxaca, Oaxaca, México
November 10, 2018 – March 24, 2019

Intervention: Indigo is a performance that was first presented on the streets of Brooklyn, New York by Laura Anderson Barbata in collaboration with Chris Walker, the Brooklyn Jumbies and Jarana Beat. The procession, began at the Bushwick police precinct, making its way through the neighborhood and ending in the area inhabited predominantly by artists. The performance occupied the public space by performers dressed in indigo-colored textiles.

Indigo is an ancient natural dye used in rituals of protection, power and spirituality. The garments were inspired by the Danza de los zancudos (traditional stilt dancers from Zaachila) from Oaxaca and the Dance of the Devils (Danza de los diablos) from the Afro-Mexican coast of Guerrero. The former takes place annually to honor the patron saints of Zaachila and to request protection, blessings and miracles. The latter is performed by African descendants of Guerrero to reaffirm their place in society.

Currently, the color indigo is used by almost all police forces in the world, thus, the color can be associated with protection, but also with repression. In this sense, the processional route of Intervention: Indigo from the police precinct to a neighborhood where artists live and work refers not only to physical displacement, but also to new ways of understanding. Through the unfolding of an artistic ritual, the protective and spiritual functions of indigo return it to the creative world. This creates a magical moment for all, but specifically empowers Afro-American peoples as they symbolically appropriate the public space. The color that once repressed them now protects them.

Intervention: Indigo is a call to action for the reoccupation of public spaces. It invites an acknowledgement of the violence that African American communities have experiencednot only in the USA, but all over the world. This work, presented for the first time in Oaxaca, seeks to remind us in Mexico of the original, public intervention, which created a living memory, a poetic space where bodies can move freely to occupy a protected, magical and transformative space.

—Text and curatorship by Ixchel Ledesma Guadarrama

Laura Anderson Barbata was born in Mexico City and works in Brooklyn and Mexico City. Since 1992 she has worked primarily in the social realm, and has initiated projects in the Amazon of Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Norway and the USA. Among them is her ongoing project The Repatriation of Julia Pastrana, initiated in 2004. She is also known for her project Transcommunality (ongoing since 2001), with traditional stilt dancers: The Brooklyn Jumbies from New York, West Africa and the Caribbean, and Los Zancudos de Zaachila, from Oaxaca, Mexico. This project has been presented at various museums, public schools and avenues, such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Modern Museum Fort Worth Texas; Museo Textil de Oaxaca, Mexico; Museo de la Ciudad de México; BRIC, New York and Rutgers University, among others.

Her drawings, photos, and projects have received awards by FONCA, The Lindbergh Foundation, The Carnival Comission of Trinidad and Tobago and The New York Foundation for the Arts.

Her work is included in several private and public collections, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; Landesbank Baden-Württemberg Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany; The Sprint Nextel Collection, Overland Park; Fundación Cisneros, American Express Co. Mexico; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Museo Jaureguía, Navarra, España. She has been featured in The New York Times, Sculpture Today by Phaidon Press, Kunstforum Germany, ARTnews, Artin America, ArtNexus, 160 Años de Fotografía en México-INBA, among others.

Currently she is 2016 Anonymous Was A Woman award recipient, The Estelle Lebowitz Endowed Visiting Artist 2016-2017, Center for Women and Humanities, CWAH,Rutgers University; Honorary Fellow at Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program, LACIS, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Fellow at Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary TBA21: The Current and member of Sistema Nacional para Creadores del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes in Mexico.

Ixchel Ledesma (n. México, 1988) is an independent curator and consultant from Mexico City with vast experience in assembling international transdisciplinary exhibitions. Her curatorial practice mainly revolves around exploring the relationships between body and territory through different artistic mediums. Her research touches on topics of migration, feminism, politics of visibility and space. She is interested in assembling exhibitions that put into question gender binary concepts and propose alternative dynamics of power between bodies and spaces. She has curated exhibitions such as: 2016 Infancia y eso, Magali Lara, Walden,Buenos Aires, Argentina; 2017, Lacaya: paisajes de la ruina, Paseo de las Artes Pedro de Mendoza, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Territorios Arte Textil Argentino 1970-1990, Walden, Buenos Aires, Argentina; 2018, Intervention: Indigo, Laura Anderson Barbata, Museo de Arte Textil, Oaxaca; Returning to the Present a Textile Exhibition, Instituto Cultural de México en Montreal. She has published in: Blog de crítica, Artishock, Nexos and Terremoto since 2013.

Currently, she is Award recipient of Ministerio de Educación Argentina from Fondo Nacional de las Artes del Ministerio de La Nación de Argentina and FONCA México. She has worked in international art galleries such as: Proyectos Monclova, Mexico; Ignacio Liprandi, Argentina and Walden, Argentina, where she was director until 2017.

Acknowledgements

*This exhibition was made thanks to the support of ”Comisión de Apoyos Especiales” of FONCA granted to the curator Ixchel Ledesma.

**Indigo dyed hand-woven cotton and brocade textiles by Habibou Coulibaly (Burkina Faso), courtesy of L´Aviva Home, New York.

***Indigo hand-dyed textiles and paper by Hannah Bennett, courtesy of Prof. Caroline Callenborn, Prof. Jennifer Angus and Prof. Mary Hark (University of Wisconsin, Madison). Latin American, Iberian and Caribbean Studies (LACIS Program), University of Wisconsin, Madison. Beaded leather, with shells and seeds by Hammer community (Ethiopia).

https://www.museotextildeoaxaca.org/

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