Manuel Mendive
dal 15/11/2013 al 25/1/2014
Segnalato da
15/11/2013
Manuel Mendive
Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami
Things That Cannot Be Seen Any Other Way. The exhibition traces Mendive's drawing, painting, sculpture, and performances from the early 1960s to the present, with special attention paid to certain themes common across his work, including religion, identity and memory.
Curated by Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz
Manuel Mendive Hoyo (Havana, Cuba 1944-) creates paintings, sculptures, and objects that capture the rhythm of the orishas, ancestral spirits of Africa that are the source of his imagery. For today's world, Mendive continues to appropriate, transform and adapt the visual language of Africa as a means of conveying its rich mythology to a new audience, informed less about its ritual than about its aesthetics.
Centered on the fifty-year career of this prominent Afro-Cuban artist, Things that Cannot be Seen Any Other Way: The Art of Manuel Mendive is the first in the United States to focus on Mendive's long-time incorporation of the visual and material culture of the Afro-Cuban religion.
Born in 1944, Mendive attended Cuba's national fine arts academy, San Alejandro. Now regarded as one of the foremost contemporary artists in Cuba and the Caribbean, he began his career in the early 1960s. Mendive paved new ground by moving beyond his predecessors' reliance on mainstream Western art forms, such as Cubism and Surrealism, and incorporating visual elements rooted in the Yoruba historical religious and visual traditions of West Africa into his painting. A substantial body of literature has highlighted the religious references in Mendive's work, yet little has been written of substance on the manner in which Yoruba themes were incorporated into the underlying artistic and religious philosophy, omissions this exhibition seeks, in part, to remedy.
The exhibition traces Mendive's drawing, painting, sculpture, and performances from the early 1960s to the present, with special attention paid to certain themes common across his work, including religion, identity and memory, as well as the production styles into which his work can be categorized. In chronicling the iconography of Afro-Cuban art in conjunction with an examination of the influence of both Western and African artistic practices on Cuban art, the exhibition explores issues of creolization, hybridity and syncretism through the twentieth century to the present day. It also highlights the role played by politics of identity, race and resistance by African descendants in indigenous works of art.
According to Carol Damian, Director of the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, "Manuel Mendive unites man's body to the earth that generated him, to the plants and animals, water and sky, to Mother Nature in which he is a creature among creatures, and in which he finds the reason, time and space of his very existence. It is a totalizing concept of art in which the pictorial mixes with that of the body and soul to reach an intense emotional height, where art and spirit reflect harmony and peace of mind."
In all, the exhibition will include more than 50 of Mendive's paintings, 4 of his sculptures and one of his tapestries, along with a mask installation. This exhibition is a project originally conceived by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs in association with The California African American Museum, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University, and Fundación Amistad; Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz, Director of the Orbis Africa Advanced Research Center, Department of Art & Art History, Stanford University, is curator.
The Performance Procession:
The central idea of the Waters (Homage to the Waters) performance procession is a reflection on the importance of water for the development of different cultures and their presence and symbolism for African, Asian and Western religions up to the present day, highlighting the need for this element to ensure the life of man and of nature; water as a central, vital energy, and as a living and eternal element. It attempts to tell the story of water as a journey that is developed by research relating to the subject from different philosophical, religious, cultural and social angles, proposing an anthropological vision that goes beyond the presence of water in a specific culture, such as the Yoruba culture which, in this case, goes to the essence of mankind, its feelings and its personal stories.
The performance procession begins in the courtyard of the Graham Center building on the FIU campus, where a group of people who are in the audience will tell the story of water with megaphones in order to amplify their voices. They will use different media, such as recorders or cell phones that will allow listening to the texts in Spanish and English. These people will act as old fashion minstrels that will repeat the stories, but in this case, using modern technological media. There will also be actors, dancers and musicians who will be listening or reading these texts during their procession toward a sculpture, aguas del rio, that will be covered by a tapestry made by the artist. The tapestry will be removed by the dancers and taken into the Frost Art Museum, and placed on a wall that is provided for this purpose. Mendive is known worldwide for his performance processions, and this one will be conducted only once.
The exhibition, which runs from November 16, 2013 through January 25, 2014, is organized by the Fundación Amistad; the performance procession will be held on Saturday, November 16, at 4 pm, beginning at the Graham Center and proceeding to the Frost. An opening reception will follow the performance procession, from 5-8 pm, at the Museum. The reception is open to the public and free of charge.
Image: Mito de la Creacion (Myth of Creation) 1985, Mixed media on heavy paper, 20 x 25 1⁄2 inches, Courtesy of Ramon and Nercys Cernuda Collection
Press contact:
Emmett Young - Marketing & Communications Assistant Director T: 305.348.4799 E: emwiyoun@fiu.edu
Gabriella Portela - Marketing & Communications Coordinator T: 305.348.3892 E: dportela@fiu.edu
JeanCarlos Fernandez - Marketing & Communications Assistant T: 305.348.3689 E: fernajea@fiu.edu
Opening Reception: November 16, 2013, 4:00 - 8:00 p.m.
The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum
10975 SW 17th Street Miami, FL, 33199
Hours:
Tuesday- Saturday: 10am-5pm
Sunday: noon - 5 pm
Monday Closed
Admission is free.