Carlos Museum Winter Exhibits (Fridays)

From the venue:

Picture Worlds: Greek, Maya, and Moche Pottery

 

By juxtaposing Greek, Maya, and Moche traditions, this exhibition invites conversation about the ways in which three unrelated cultures visualized their society, myths, and cosmos through their pottery. Who made and used these vessels? Which stories did they depict, and why? How did artists shape these accounts? Could images convey more than words? Each vessel displayed in this exhibition is a “picture world,” full of expressive possibility.

Exhibit

Maa Laxmi

 

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In celebration of Diwali 2024, the Carlos Museum has installed Manjari Sharma’s large-scale photograph of the Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity, Maa Laxmi in the Christian Humann Gallery of Asian Art. The work was purchased this year in honor of 2023 Woolford B. Baker Service Award Winner Ellen Gough and is a companion to Sharma’s Lord Vishnu, also in the collection. Both works are from the artist’s Darshan series, which was exhibited at the Carlos as part of the 2020 exhibition, Transcendent Deities of India: The Everyday Expression of the Divine.

The experience of darshan is considered reciprocal—a spiritual connection between a deity and devotee. Having moved to the U.S. from Mumbai to earn her BFA in photography, Sharma felt distanced from the rituals she had grown up with and began reexamining her relationship to her culture after a decade of being away. Challenging the traditional role of her medium, she sought to use the camera to “turn multidimensional memories of sculptures and ornamental paintings of gods into two-dimensional photographs.” By recreating the concept of a darshan in a contemporary setting and drawing parallels between the museum and the temple, Sharma asks the viewer to confront and contest the historic notions of preservation and presentation of Hindu deities. Returning to India to make these images, Sharma carefully selected models and a team of thirty-five Indian craftsmen who created props, sets, prosthetics, make-up, costumes, and jewelry to exacting specifications. The images are presented in deep and elaborately embossed hammered brass frames inspired by a temple-like setting.
Exhibit

Nicholas Galanin

I Think it Goes Like This (Gold)

For Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast such as Galanin (Tlingít and Unangax̂), the totem pole is a ceremonial object used to celebrate events, depict stories, and document family lineage. In I Think It Goes Like This (Gold), a seemingly Indigenous-made totem pole is covered in gold leaf but lies dismantled on the ground. Contrary to the viewers’ original understanding of the object, this is not a cultural tool of memory-making and community. It is a carving by an Indonesian artist created to sell as a souvenir to tourists in Alaska. Through his intervention of destruction and reassembly to the original carving and application of gold leaf, Galanin creates dialogue about the economy of cultural appropriation while reclaiming the work as Indigenous art. 

About the artist

Examining the complexities of contemporary Indigenous identity, culture, and representation, Nicholas Galanin works from his experience as a Tlingít and Unangax̂ artist. Embedding incisive observation and reflection into his oftentimes provocative work, he aims to redress the widespread misappropriation of Indigenous visual culture, the impact of colonialism, as well as collective amnesia. Galanin reclaims narrative and creative agency, while demonstrating contemporary Indigenous art as a continually evolving practice. As he describes: :My process of creation is a constant pursuit of freedom and vision for the present and future. I use my work to explore adaptation, resilience, survival, dream, memory, cultural resurgence, and connection and disconnection to the land.” Galanin unites both traditional and contemporary practices, creating a synthesis of elements in order to navigate “the politics of cultural representation.” Speaking through multiple visual, sonic, and tactile languages, his concepts determine his processes, which include sculpture, installation, photography, video, performance, and textile-based work. This contemporary practice builds upon an Indigenous artistic continuum while celebrating the culture and its people; Galanin contributes urgent criticality and vision through resonant and layered works.

Exhibit