October 27, 2022
@
5:00 pm
–
6:30 pm
Caleb Duarte and Mia Eve Rollow are multidisciplinary artists and frequent collaborators whose individual practices and community collaborations focus on radical resistance. From 2009-2014, they co-founded and directed EDELO (En Donde Era la ONU / Where the United Nations Used to BE). A centripetal community and artistic space of collective activities in Chiapas, Mexico, the project challenged the notion of a traditional ‘artist residency’ by placing visiting artists alongside rural autonomous communities that have long been creating a rich visual culture, using performance, theater, and poetry to demand drastic social, political, and economic change.
One project that came out of EDELO was Zapantera Negra, a collaboration between Emory Douglas (former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party), muralist Rigo 23, artist and activist Saúl Kak, and Mia Eve Rollow. Zapantera Negra united autonomous Indigenous communities, Zapatistas (EZLN), and the revolutionary aesthetics of the Black Panther Party aesthetics in order to investigate how two powerful emancipatory movements crafted works of art that resisted racial capitalism and colonialism’s many forms with insurgent style.
Caleb Duarte and Mia Eve Rollow will be artists-in-residence at the Institute of Arts and Sciences 2022-23.
Artists (Tab to skip section.)
Artist
Caleb Duarte
Caleb Duarte migrated from Northern Mexico to the farm working communities of the Central Valley in California. His sculptural performances, installations, and paintings confront issues of institutional encounter, the use of the body in distinct political and artistic movements, and art’s pedagogical possibilities. He has collaborated with autonomous indigenous Zapatista communities, communities in movement, and working children and refugees. A professor of sculpture at Fresno City College, his work and performances have been widely shown in the United States and internationally.
Artist
Mia Eve Rollow
Mia Eve Rollow makes site-specific work that cultivates terrains of spiritual, social, and cultural resistance. Working in globally engaged collectives of artistic practice, she incorporates healing strategies from pre-colonial practices and uses magical realist aesthetics to explore the psyche. Engaging whole communities, these projects aim to counteract eugenic civic paradigms and connect art to radical political strategies for liberation. Rollow received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A cofounder of EDELO, she is a lead artist in other notable collaborations such as Zapantera Negra, Embassy of the Refugee, and Embassy of the Disabled. Select presentations include the Creative Time Summit and Queens Museum, and she is the recipient of the State of Maryland Independent Artist Award.
