Karen Miranda-Rivadeneira “The mountain I am, Urku ñuka kani” and Athena LaTocha “In the Wake of…”
BRIC
[Image: Athena LaTocha. Photo: Courtesy of the artist]
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BRIC Contemporary Art invites you to the opening of Athena LaTocha: In the Wake of… and Karen Miranda-Rivadeneira: The mountain I am, Urku ñuka kani.
Working on the floor of an immense studio, Athena LaTocha created In the Wake of … over a 55-foot long expanse of photographic paper, vigorously layering water, ink, soil, and other materials across its surface, and marking it with impressions of rocks and such industrial detritus as metal scraps, concrete bricks, and tire shreds. LaTocha works with a largely abstract language in the elaboration of immersive works that express her profound relationship with the land. She conveys time and space as deeply layered, relentlessly impacted by natural and human forces, and often, by traumatic cultural and social histories.
Karen Miranda-Rivadeneira: The Mountain I am, Urku ñuka kani contains two elements, a composite video and a large-scale handmade ceramic musical instrument. The video documents the artist, also known as Koyoltzintli, performing a series of rituals in which she introduces herself to the landscape of Ulster County, New York, the place she was quarantined over the past year. Miranda-Rivadeneira enacts alli kawsay, a Kiwcha word for balanced living with the earth, something learned from years of watching her mamita enter a new landscape and salute. This act of harmonizing with the landscape becomes a form of “languaging” using Walter Mignolo’s term, a disruptive space between being and belonging, thinking and writing. Drawing on the air or on the ground, in an impermanent mark made with stones, mud, ice and branches, these simple iconographies echo ancestral pictographs that are universal, ancient, and urgent. These videos aim to address our intersectionality with the earth, the responsibility to acknowledge the first stewards of this land and the natural environment.
Media
Schedule
from September 29, 2021 to January 09, 2022
Opening Reception on 2021-09-29 from 17:00 to 20:00
Please RSVP for a one-hour time slot for our opening reception event