1990s

Roberto Villanueva: The Anomaly of the Artist-Shaman

The performances conducted by the late Filipino artist Roberto Villanueva (1947–1995) prompted the effects and the facture of ritual. In 1989, a sprawling circular labyrinth constructed out of eight-foot runo reeds occupied the grounds of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) in Metro Manila. Inspired by a pattern found in the Cordilleran rice fields of northern Luzon, the labyrinth orchestrated a walk, or dance, toward the center, where one found a circular pit lined with river stones and presided over by totemic figures like the bulul, a carved wooden sculpture representing a guardian spirit. The center was an area resembling a dap-ay, a place for gatherings and rites, traditionally the foundation of Cordilleran learning. Archetypes: Cordillera Labyrinth, like many of Villanueva’s works, combined installation, chanting, magical invocations, and other ritualistic tropes drawn from Indigenous sources.

Sacred and Agentic Landscapes in Peruvian Contemporary Indigenous Art / Paisajes sagrados y con agencia en el arte indígena contemporáneo peruano

This essay by art historian Gabriela Germana Roquez delves into the significance of landscape in the art of the Sarhua community in the Peruvian Andes and the Shipibo-Konibo people in the Amazon. Through her analysis, Germana Roquez illuminates how these artworks depict, embody, and summon the landscape, emphasizing the active role of the natural world…

A Woman in the World: Everlyn Nicodemus

In the mid-1980s, over the course of three years and across three continents, feminist artist Everlyn Nicodemus (born 1954, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania) gathered together women to discuss their everyday experiences. From these conversations, which took place in Skive, Denmark; Kilimanjaro, Tanzania; and Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, she produced a series of seventy-five paintings and related poems that…

Materiality Against the Grain: Conspiratorial Materialisms and Afro-Diasporic Arsenal / Materialidad a contrapelo: materialismo conspiratorio y arsenal afrodiaspórico

On Conspiratorial Materialisms Firearms, Molotov cocktails, flags, and banners are some of the objects in an arsenal of protests and revolts. Alongside clenched fists and enraged bodies, these objects form an imaginary of human gestures associated with the uprising. Art historian and curator Georges Didi-Huberman dedicated the exhibition Uprisings (2016–17) to this theme, assembling artworks…

Performative Gestures and Limits of Resistance in Armenian Contemporary Art (1987–2008), Part III

The Fragile Body and the Damaged Subject: A Decade of Crisis and Resistance (1998–2008) If in the early to mid-1990s, performative actions in Armenia were, to a large extent, launched by situational or strategic collectives and groups as interventions—as correctives to institutional operations of the state and the artworld—and motivated by the desire to communicate…