“Ceremony and ritual . . . goes hand in hand with storytelling,” American artist Nari Ward has said. During the 1990s, as issues of identity and representation emerged in mainstream discourse under the banner of multiculturalism, some artists drew upon their own histories of migration, spirituality, and intergenerational memory to express nuanced experiences of loss and otherness, community and belonging. The artists in this gallery weave highly personal narratives and cultural traditions into even the most abstract forms. In such works, they activate ritual gestures and everyday practices, like collecting and craft, to foreground the stories of resistance and survival that precede them, bringing history into the present.
Organized by Inés Katzenstein, Curator of Latin American Art and Director of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America, and Roxana Marcoci, The David Dechman Senior Curator and Acting Chief Curator of Photography, with Caitlin Ryan, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography, Julia Detchon, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints, Gee Wesley, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance, and Abby Hermosilla, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Curatorial Affairs.
