Cal Humanities

"The understanding of a culture comes from hearing the language, tasting the food, seeing personal interactions, experiencing the traditions, and so much more in context."

— Elizabeth Laval & Candice Pendergrass, Sikh Youth Public History Project

"The understanding of a culture comes from hearing the language, tasting the food, seeing personal interactions, experiencing the traditions, and so much more when it is in context."

— Elizabeth Laval & Candice Pendergrass, Sikh Youth Public History Project

Visualizing Language: Oaxaca in LA profiled by LA Times and NY Times

Artist Dario Canul from the Oaxacan collective Tlacolulokos at work in the Central Library. Photo Credit: Al Seib/ LA Times

California Humanities recently supported an exhibition entitled Visualizing Language: Oaxaca in LA, as part of the Pacific Standard Time: Latin America/ Los Angeles initiative by the Getty.

Los Angeles Times reporter Deborah Vankin reported on the opening of eight murals at Los Angeles Downtown Public Library by the Oaxacan artist collective Tlacolulokos entitled “For the Pride of Your Hometown, the Way of the Elders, and in Memory of the Forgotten.”

Vankin: The location of the Tlacolulokos murals is a pointed statement unto itself: They hang directly below narrative murals about California’s early history created in 1933 by Dean Cornwell, whose pastel renderings show Native Americans bowing down to European colonialists. Tlacolulokos’ vibrant burgundy and gold hues scream against Cornwell’s quiet palette. The new murals say: “I have a voice. Listen up. I am here.”

Al Seib’s photographs for the LA Times captures the process of creation by Tlacolulokos collective members, the curators experience of the installation, while also offering a sense of how the piece responds to the mural above in the rotunda. The murals are visibly a site-specific project– as they generate inquiry into modes of historical narrative creation.

Please read the entire article here at LA Times.com.

Also, New York Times writer Holland Cotter covered the larger exhibition– The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Latin America/ Los Angeles, (abbreviated to LA/LA) featuring Visualizing Language: Oaxaca in LA’s murals as their feature image.  The piece, published September 21, 2017, contextualizes this work in the larger constellation of exhibitions, events happening across Southern California this fall. See the article, “A Head-Spinning Hope-Inspiring Showcase of Art” here.

California Humanities’ Felicia Kelley wrote about two other projects which California Humanities funded and are part of this expansive showcase: “From Latin America to Hollywood: Latino Film Culture from 1967-2017” and “Sacred Art in the Age of Contact”.  Read that blog piece here.