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OAXACA: AQUÍ NO PASA NADA is an exhibition and public billboard that responds to the social-politica conflict that erupted in Oaxaca between 2006 and 2007, featuring photography, visual art, videos, and a sound installation by artists living and working in Oaxaca, Mexico.Film Series: Galeria de la Raza AND La Pocha Nostra present Oaxaca: Aqui no pasa nada [OAXACA: Nothing Is Going On Here], an exhibition featuring some of the most daring contemporary artists living and working in Oaxaca. The exhibit captures the social-political conflict that erupted in Oaxaca in the summer of 2006 when Mexican president Vicente Fox sent the army into Oaxaca —using the highest level of military force— to silence the state’s popular teachers’ uprising. The exhibition will consist of photography by Antonio Turok, a selection of videos by the artist collective Resistencia Visual curated by Isabel Rojas (Director El Pochote Cine Club, Oaxaca), a sound installation by Radio Plantón, and drawings, stencils and a public billboard that will be created on site by Demián Flores. In conjunction with the exhibition, on Wednesday, October 17, Galería and La Pocha Nostra will host an evening with the Oaxacan artists, Antonio Turok, Demian Flores and Isabel Rojas. The conversation will be moderated by the Chicano activist and theorist, José Palafox and performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Guillermo Gómez-Peña and members of his troupe La Pocha Nostra were in Oaxaca for three weeks in August 2006 conducting their annual “summer school” with a contingent of fifteen artists from around the globe, along with ten scholarship students from Oaxaca and Mexico City. Upon his return to San Francisco, Gómez-Peña immediately started developing this project in order to provide a brief respite and a platform for the invited artists to engage in a political and cultural dialogue with San Francisco’s arts community about the troubled circumstances that continue to plague Oaxaca. ABOUT THE ARTISTS: • Antonio Turok, an internationally acclaimed photographer, has photographed extensively throughout Central America and Southern Mexico for the past twenty years and has published two books, Imágenes de Nicaragua (Images of Nicaragua, 1988) and Chiapas: El Fin del Silencio (Aperture, 1998). Turok is a winner of the 1994 Mother Jones International Documentary Photography award and the recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and U.S./Mexico Fund for Culture for his work in Chiapas. He was the only photographer to take images of the Zapatista National Liberation Army as they occupied the colonial city of San Cristobal de las Casas in 1994 and was the first to photograph Subcomandante Marcos. • Demián Flores, an internationally acclaimed contemporary artist, will present work that reclaims the public exercise of stenciling inspired by the young artists who used graffiti to paint Oaxaca’s streets with images of political resistance, Embracing the stencil in a contemporary fashion, Flores employs the image of 19th century Mexican president and indigenous hero, Benito Juárez, to underscore the historical resonance of Oaxaca’s current situation. Flores is a graduate of the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas de la UNAM. He is currently a fellow at the Pollock/Krasner Foundation. • Resistencia Visual, an artist collective, will present a selection of videos curated by Isabel Rojas, Director of El Pochote Cine Club of Oaxaca, that includes footage of 13 up and coming video artists working in Oaxaca —Bruno Varela, Damián López, Mal de Ojo, Ana Santos, Carlos Franco, Hector Ballesteros, Demián Flores, Nadja Massun, Luna Marán, Juan Robles, Gabriela León, Lucero González, and Corrugated Films. • Radio Plantón will present a sound installation with projections and sound testimonials from the Oaxacan citizenry, public announcements with advice such as how to protect oneself from tear gas and directions on how to cross the zones of conflict in the city, which reflects the strong front that the local radio station had during the resistance movement. Oaxaca: Aquí no pasa nada was organized by La Curtiduría, an independent cultural space in Oaxaca, founded in 2006 to promote civic dialogue, as well as the artistic production and cultural exchange of contemporary art in Oaxaca. The exhibition is the result of what was developed after the onset of the social conflict, of the consciousness and courage that comes from individual action, and the transformation of reality made possible through community organizing. |  web design: expomas.com |
