Learning from plants, rocks and waters: Counterstories from earth beings amid multiple crisis





How can we rethink human relationships and the human-nature relationship through the means of art? How might artistic practices change the way we live? The project is the result of a collective experiment that draws on ancient mestizo and indigenous practices from the Amazon and Andean regions to promote plural ecological values of coexistence with other beings on Earth. 
Through shared experiences and learning processes, works in various media such as video, installation, drawing and sculpture were created. The artistic mediation program took place in the form of talks, workshops and rituals that were developed for an interested public.

https://esel.at/termin/115377/von-pflanzen-steinen-und-gewssern-lernen-communi-tea-herbarium-sandleiten
https://sohostudios.at/events/von-pflanzen-steinen-und-gewassern-lernen/

The Ritual issue. Art as Healing Praxis 2018

Parabol Art Magazine Nr. 9
Curated by Verena Melgarejo Weinandt & Imayna Caceres
(Vienna / Berlin / Lima)
Size: 40 ✕ 58 cm

Participating Artists: Vivian Zurita, Sergio Zevallos, Sophie Utikal, Mariel Rodríguez, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Maque Pereyra, Antonio Paucar, Eliana Otta, Sandra Monterroso, Ana Mendieta, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, Marissa Lôbo, Alfredo Ledesma, Alessandra Dos Santos, Pêdra Costa And Taís Lobo, Imayna Caceres, Gloria Anzaldúa






 


In curating this printed issue, we approached the artistic and theoretical reflections of two guiding figures: the Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta and the Chicana author and artist Gloria Anzaldúa. For Anzaldúa, her job as an artist “is to bear witness to what haunts us, to step back and attempt to see the pattern in these events (personal and societal) and how we can repair el daño (the damage) by using the imagination and its vision.” In turn, for Mendieta, art’s greatest value is its spiritual role: “My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy that runs through everything: from insect to man, from man to spectre, from spectre to plant, from plant to galaxy.”

We presented the works, exploring their connections between each other and the invocations they summon. The works invoke a stitching of wounds, of moving selves, and of spiritual activism. They refer to cosmovisions of interrelation, of trans and afro spiritualities, of Andean transformations, and indigenous reparations. They braid connections: caring for the dead in underworld journeys, exorcising whiteness with poisonous cures, and channeling communal spirits. They seek to activate ancestral knowledge and universal energies—a politics of the ritual towards healing revolutions. The invited artists share a deep preoccupation with the intersection of political, sexual, ecological, and spiritual realms. Their works push the association between third-world, racialized, gendered bodies and colonial history, political activism and ancestral references, sexual politics, and mystical sources.
 
Participating Artists: Vivian Zurita, Sergio Zevallos, Sophie Utikal, Mariel Rodríguez, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Maque Pereyra, Antonio Paucar, Eliana Otta, Sandra Monterroso, Ana Mendieta, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, Marissa Lôbo, Alfredo Ledesma, Alessandra Dos Santos, Pêdra Costa And Taís Lobo, Imayna Caceres, Gloria Anzaldúa.

Thanks to Verena Melgarejo Weinandt who invited me to co-curate, to Margarethe Makovec of < rotor > association for contemporary art who linked us to section a, and to the people of section a for the enthusiastic support. Thanks to the suggestions of Miguel López and Arturo Higa, and to Manuel Carreon Lopez of kunst-dokumentation.com.

Back/s Together 2018









Back/s Together: Gloria Anzaldúa, her drawings, our connections to her
Co-curated with Verena Melgarejo Weinandt
Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ)
Maysedergasse 2/4. Stock
1010 Vienna

Drawings, text fragments and rarely known audio recordings by Gloria Anzaldúa were exhibited together with the work of artists, who linked to Abya Yala, relate in their work to the concepts developed by the Xicana author. 

Anzaldua’s drawings come from transparency drawings, notes and diagrams she had presented in the mid 1990s in workshops and lecture “gigs” throughout the USA. The artists –PoC, indigenous, Black, queer and trans– draw inspiration from several of Anzaldúa’s known theoretical reflection such as borderlands, Auto-historia, making faces/ haciendo caras, Coyolxauhqui Imperative, Coatlicue State, or indigenous mythologies and story-telling. All the displayed works by Gloria Anzaldua are part of “Between Word and Image. A Gloria Anzaldúa Thought Gallery” curated by Julianne Gilland from the Benson Latin American Foundation in Texas. Back/s Together is the second part of the ongoing project “Armando Vo(i)ces” from Verena Melgarejo Weinandt.

Participating artists: Nadia Bekkers, Imayna Caceres, Lía García, Marissa Lôbo, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, Rurru Mipanochia, Maque Pereyra, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Fannie Sosa, Sophie Utikal, Yos Piña Narvaez.

Opening: January, 24 2018 19:00
Dates: January, 24—February 24, 2018
Workshop Yoggaton by Maque Pereyra: Sat. January 27, 12:00
Fotos: kunst-dokumentation.com
https://www.vbkoe.org/2018/01/18/exhibition-backs-together/?lang=en 
 
Thanks to Verena for inviting me to co-curate and for taking on the difficult task to bring the work of Gloria Anzaldúa to a wider audience in Vienna.

Curating as Anti-Racist Practice 2017



In "Curating as Anti-Racist Practice" Imayna Caceres, Sunanda Mesquita, Sophie Utikal took the invitation of the editors to talk about their experiences and their aims with the project Anticolonial Fantasies / Decolonial Strategies. Read more in Publications.

Decolonial Borderlands: Reflecting Colonialism in the Art Academy 2017









An exploration of strategies by Black and People of Color artists from different diasporas in the Academy of Fine Arts who expose through their own experiences how coloniality lives through all dimensions of life: its impact on bodies marked by the social construct of "race", social class, gender, sexuality, disability or spirituality, among other intersections. The works speak of the need for decolonizing the art academy, pluralisation of knowledge production, and how to effect change in discursive, social, political, and material realities. Another recurrent theme of the participating artists is the own manifestation and reconfiguration of the self, disrupting the hegemonic attempts of making their bodies and stories invisible.

With Works by: Jean-Pierre Cueto, Anti*Colonial Fantasies, Amoako Boafo, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, Rini Mitra, Sophie Utikal, Mariel Rodríguez , Sunanda Mesquita, Stephanie Misa, Gerardo Montes de Oca, Hansel Sato, Ruby Sircar, Pêdra Costa, Colectivo Trenza, Maira Caixeta, Mzamo Jama Nondlwana and more. Rundgang of the Akademie der bildenden Künste, 19.-22.01.2017.

Curated by Imayna Caceres and Sophie Utikal.
Workshop organized by Sunanda Mesquita.

Anti*Colonial Fantasies / Decolonial Strategies 2016


 

 
 




Anti*Colonial Fantasies / Decolonial Strategies involved artists from different diasporas, students and lecturers of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, who occupy themselves with a critique of the consequences of colonialism –including in Academia– and the quest for transforming this reality.
The project included an art exhibition, performances, workshops, talks, as well as a publication.

Working with various media—performances, videos, installations, paintings, photographs, drawings, and writing—as well as participatory formats, the artists expose ways in which colonialism persists today. Raising questions of race, sexuality, gender, spirituality, space, and time, the artists shared decolonial forms of knowledge production and strategies of resistance.

The start of the project was an open call for artistic positions that dealt with Gloria Anzaldua’s notion of borderlands and autohistoria. We sought to address and open questions in regards to: how colonialism in Austria impacts parts of our multiple subjectivities, how coming from histories of migrations is lived on a daily basis; the occupation of situated experiences at the borders as people of color; how structural othering manifests, the role of the educative institution in the colonial project and what has seeped through to the present time, what the curricula says about what is considered as valuable knowledge; and how to open these topics starting at the body and reclaiming other spiritual dimensions, emotions, and rituals.

With contributions by: Amoako Boafo, Sandra Monterroso, Imayna Caceres, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Stephanie Misa, Gerardo Montes de Oca,  Sophie Utikal, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Cana Bilir-Meier, Pêdra Costa, Daniela Ortiz, Sunanda Mesquita, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, Tatiana Nascimento, Ezgi Erol, Firas Shehadeh, Hansel Sato, Rini Mitra, Mariel Rodríguez, and Eduardo Triviño Cely.

Talks by Yuderkys Espinoza and Daniela Ortiz.
Workshops by Tatiana Nascimento and Darkmatter (Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian).

Thanks to Jean Pierre Cueto who invited us to apply, and Nicole de Fleurs.
 
Curators: Imayna Caceres, Sunanda Mesquita, and Sophie Utikal.
Friday Exit, Vienna. 20th June 2016

The project has been presented in:

—Dunkle Energie. Feministisch Organisieren, Kollektiv Arbeiten.X SPACE / WE DEY Vienna
—University of Arts Linz
—University of Vienna
—Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
—Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
—T.I.C.T.A.C. Taller de Intervenciones Críticas Transfeministas Antirracistas Combativas, Barcelona
—Kritische Künstlerische Praxis – Semper Depot
—Anticolonial Fantasies / Decolonial Strategies. Ed. Zaglossus
—Curating as Antiracist Practice. Ed. De Gruyter

https://www.facebook.com/anticolonial-fantasies/

Wer Hat Angst vor dem Museum? 2015
















Who is Afraid of the Museum? : An Excavation of Colonial Wounds
Co-curated by Imayna Caceres Pêdra Costa, Marissa Lobo, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt
Projektleiterin: Verena Melgarejo Weinandt
Fotos: Kunstdokumentation.com
Exhibited at: Weltmuseum in the context of Wienwoche 2015, Vienna, Austria.

Participant artists: Ayrson Heráclito, Daniela Ortiz, Sergio Zevallos, Katia Tirado, Sandra Monterroso, Älexis Johñson, Pêdra Costa, Alessandra Dos Santos, Michele Matiuzzi, Marissa Lobo, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, Imayna Caceres, Erika Trejo, Alfredo Ledesma.

Review in DerStandard

Who is Afraid of the Museum?