"Por Oaxaca" opens Satuday, May 24, at Insitute Library

The Institute Library
847 Chapel St., New Haven, (203) 562-5045
Por Oaxaca
May 24—June 21, 2014.
Reception: Sat., May 24, Noon—2 p.m.

Press release from Catalina Barroso-Luque

Por Oaxaca is the end stage of the Postal Art Project organized and curated by the Mexican artist, Catalina Barroso-Luque, who sent a seemingly straightforward photograph taken in Oaxaca, Mexico to a selection of local and international artists in China, Mexico, England and Connecticut and asked them to respond.

The show features works by Phil Lique, Kevin Van Aelst, Isabelle Gressel, Ivan Mendez Vela, Panachai Chaijaratat, Maria Lara Whelpley, Susan McCaslin, Martin Roberts, Justin Rodier, and Sophie Aston.

Artwork by Phil Lique

The responses received were unexpected and varied. The apparent diversity of works stemming from the same image brings out issues of cultural tourism, analog vs. digital technology, image-media mediation over our engagement with reality, cultural aesthetics, and the prevalence of a western hegemony over contemporary artistic production.

Also on view, in the Main Reading Room, is a display of Postales Mestizas, by Catalina Barroso-Luque. The artist has fashioned these small-scale works out of collaged, collected post-cards and other found images, and her own discarded photo-prints. They are an intuitive recycling of the artist's physical and mental imagery that aims to bring into question the boundaries between personal and collective memory.