New Codex Oaxaca Immigration and Cultural Memory

Curator's Talk & Reception:Wednesday, April 26, 5:30pm
Wilson Hall's Concert Hall

In 2010 artist and curator Marietta Bernstorff began working with citizens of the San Francisco Tanivet, a small town in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, to make art as a way of exploring the effects of migration on their small rural community. The project continues to grow and over 40 artists have contributed textiles, photographs, engravings, and other ephemera representing the immigration experience. The traveling exhibition addresses important questions about the immigration experience: What are the implications for the state of Oaxaca, which has seen over one million inhabitants immigrate to the United States? What is happening to their land in Mexico and the family they left behind? How do we keep traditions alive within another culture? Has immigration changed the way we see ourselves as a culture? Marietta Bernstoff is a curator at the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, CA and founder of the MAMAZ (Mujeres Artistas y el Maiz) Collective, a group of women artists in Mexico and the USA.

Image: Julio Barrita, Broken Spaces, 2014, digital photograph on cloth