Fuego Eterno: Soberanías Visuales

Ruffin Gallery at the University of Virginia is pleased to announce Fuego Eterno: Soberanías Visuales, guest curated by Erika Hirugami, MA. MAAB. MPhil.

“Ayuujk (Mixe), Nahua, Maya-Ch’ol, Ñuu Savi (Mixtec), Otomí, Maya-Kaqchikel, P’urhépecha, Diidxazà, Maya-Tsotsil, Zapotec, and Sarhua, are but a few of the ancestral lineages that collide in Fuego Eterno: Soberanías Visuales. This project brings together the knowledge and aesthetic achievements of individuals whose ancestral lineage predates Spanish colonialism and who center millennia of inherited epistemologies within their contemporary practices. Fuego Eterno: Soberanías Visuales aesthetically departs from a critical interrogation of nation and citizenship as concrete hope to create sovereign solidarities. At the height of the Spanish Empire, it colonized over thirty-five modern nations. Fuego Eterno: Soberanías Visuales unites them to blur the boundaries of settler colonialism by bringing together artists and scholars from the contemporary nations of México, United States, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, Peru, Bolivia, Philippines, Chile, Jamaica, Ecuador, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea, and many others in an effort to shift toward a new paradigm of interdisciplinary scholarship that transcends borders, linguistics, fields of study, geographical segregation, and extractive colonial epistemologies, methodologies and knowledge making approaches.” —Erika Hirugami, Curator

Exhibiting artists: Marilyn Boror Bor, Edgar Calel, Andrea Chung, Darwin Cruz, Federico Cuatlacuatl, Elvira Espejo Ayca, Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, Scherezade García, Giovanni Fabián Guerrero, Porfirio Gutiérrez, Maruch Méndez, Isabel Rojas Williams, Kayla Sotomil, Lane Wilken, Venuca Evanán Vivanco, Salvador Xharicata

Opening reception: Friday, August 29, 5–7pm
Join us in Ruffin Hall for light refreshments to celebrate the exhibition opening

Symposium: Thursday, October 9, 9am–3:30pm
Join us at the Harrison/Small Special Collections Library Auditorium for a series of panel discussions and screenings by distinguished visiting artists, scholars, and UVA faculty.

Workshop and screening: Friday, October 10, 11:30am–2:30pm
A free workshop at Visible Records led by artist Venuca Evanán Vivanco followed by a short film screening. 

Closing party: Friday, October 10, 5–10pm
Party with us! Music by DJ Hellotones and dancing will be enjoyed by all at this catered event. Guest curators, scholars and exhibiting artists will be in attendance and there will be a performance from Marilyn Boror Bor.

About Global Spanish at University of Virginia
Global Spanish is a new paradigm of interdisciplinary research and creative collaboration that reaches beyond the geographical confines of traditional area studies to include all those places where Spanish is or has been spoken, across the Americas, Spain, the Philippines, North Africa, Equatorial Guinea, and beyond. It treats this ample linguistic space as a series of contact zones, attending not only to its Spanish-speaking inhabitants, but to the many non-Spanish speakers found there. Global Spanish recognizes creative work and community engagement as valid and necessary forms of knowledge-making, and rejects extractive colonialist models by co-creating knowledge with local partners situated across the Global South. 

Learn more about Fuego Eterno: Soberanías Visuales and Global Spanish here.

Press contact: Elena Yu, Ruffin Gallery & Visiting Artist Program Manager, University of Virginia Art Department, ruffin-gallery [​at​] virginia.edu.

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This exhibition and associated programming are supported by the University of Virginia (UVA) Department of Art, UVA's College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, UVA's Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures (IHGC), and the Peter B. and Adeline W. Ruffin Foundation.