Cattle in the Amazon: Despised Invaders to Prized Possessions
October 10 – November 27, 2013
Barbara Hinshaw Memorial Gallery, Grove House and the McConnell Living Room, McConnell Center
Works by Jaider Esbell (Macuxi), with additional paintings by Carmesia Emiliano (Macuxi), Barto Patamona (Patamona), Luiz Mateus (Patamona), Amazoner Okaba (Wapixana), Mario Flores (Taurepang), Isaias Miliano (Macuxi), and Diogo Lima (Macuxi)
Funded by the Art+Environment Program, Pitzer College presents a unique exhibit of artwork from the Brazilian Amazon. The Exhibition features paintings by indigenous artist Jaider Esbell and other Amazonian artists that touch on themes surrounding nature, sustainability and development. The exhibit opened in October of 2013 in the Barbara Hinshaw Memorial Gallery and the McConnell Living Room at Pitzer College.
Esbell’s paintings explore the cosmologies and historical experiences of the Macuxi Indians. His work illuminates how the introduction of cattle in the Macuxi territory affected the environment and the ways that Macuxi Indians have understood and responded to both the cattle and the ranchers.
Esbell lives in the state of Roraima in the northern Brazilian Amazon. He is spending the 2013-2014 year at Pitzer as a visiting artist and professor. A geographer as well as an artist, Esbell uses different forms of visual means to synthesize elements of Macuxi cosmology, history and the natural world.
The exhibition takes place in conjunction with the anthropology course, Run to the Forest, co-taught by Associate Professor of Anthropology Leda Martins and Esbell. Curated by Jean M. Pitzer Professor of Anthropology and Professor of History Daniel Segal, Cattle in the Amazon runs from October 10 – November 27, 2013 at both the Grove House and the McConnell Living Room.
The exhibition is also funded through the Pitzer College Art Galleries, Pitzer’s Office of Study Abroad and International Programs, and the College’s Institute for Global/Local Action & Research.
Emerging Artist Series #8: Danielle Adair: On the Rocks in the Land
The documentary-performance-video installation, On the Rocks, In the Land took place in the Lenzner Family Art Gallery (Sept. 19-De. 6, 2013). This exhibition analyzed the role of the “tourist-observer,” within contemporary “conflict zones,” and questioned how a “tourist” perceives and experiences sites of historic and contemporary political significance. The project incorporated experiences of and around the peace lines of Belfast, the Berlin Wall, the Stone Walls of New England, the US-Mexican border in Ciudad Juarez and the Occupy Wall Street Movement. By highlighting these sites, the exhibition explored the notion of play as a persistent and ethical form of resistance in relation to the physicality of a wall as defined by these specific locations. Although exploring the intersection of place, politics and play in these sites, the project resists the urge to enforce a dominant narrative, seeking instead to excavate unfamiliar forms of resistance and protest.