Cultural Cannibalism
Through paint that looks like skin to dragons made of feathers, six local artists explore ideas of cultural absorption, depletion, and transcendence.
Opening reception: Friday, April 8, 2022, 5-8 pm
Artist talk: Thursday, May 5, 6-7:15 pm
Exhibition closes: Saturday, May 28, 2022, 5 pm
Gallery hours: Monday - Saturday, 9-1 or by appointment
Free admission and parking
Cannibalism in its literal sense, the ritualistic consumption of another human, is one of society’s fundamental taboos. Historically it was so reviled that the implication of cannibalism was used to dehumanize groups as “savages.”
Cannibalism as metaphor, however, is celebrated, particularly when it applies to culture. We binge Netflix. We devour ideas. We remix TikTok videos and seek out fusion cuisine.
Six desert artists — Cito Gonzales, Adriana Lopez-Ospina, Kim Manfredi, Flávia Lima do Rêgo Monteiro, Joyce Rooks, and Hector Salas — draw on their histories and heritage to present new artworks in “Cultural Cannibalism” at the Coachella Valley Art Center.
Cito Gonzales, a Chicano artist, builds large dragons out of bones, teeth, seeds, minerals, feathers, acorns, and shells, using the flesh of figs and dates to bind them together. These dragons are guardians, female and protective of the earth, drawing strength from the lives that went into creating them. Gonzales lived off-grid for 26 years near Tuolumne County, CA, learning his craft from a Lakota friend who made drums. Shaping the contours of leftover cowhide led to the creation of the dragons.
Adriana Lopez-Ospina has witnessed the commercialization of her Colombian homeland, where the traditional handcrafts of the Wayuu people are ripped off, imitated, and packaged into tamer, “curated” versions for the market. Filling a room with clouds of wool batting, dye, thread and machinery, Lopez-Ospina confronts our responsibility as consumers, questions the long-term implications, and vividly conveys the torment of seeing culture stripped and sold.
Kim Manfredi employs treasured objects belonging to her Italian immigrant ancestors and from her own life, shrouded to represent the whitewashing necessary to assimilate, and juxtaposed with her collages which are informed by Rauschenberg and woven from memories and remnants. The result is a dialogue representing the journey of choice and sacrifice that enabled her to achieve a position of privilege and define her own identity.
Flávia Lima do Rêgo Monteiro’s series, Como Você (“I am like you / I eat you”), uses layers of acrylic paint suspended without canvas, creating a flexible material that looks like skin. A quartet of artworks fuse wild and sacred references, sinuous as the snake that swallows its own tail. The title speaks to our primal desire to connect deeply with others, absorbing their essence until boundaries seem to vanish.
Joyce Rooks didn’t think much about the Aunt Jemima syrup on the kitchen counter when she was a young girl in the 1960s. Her family went out to eat at Sambo’s; her grandmother told her to speak “proper English so she’d get along in the world.” Later, she began to collect art, objects, and ephemera depicting African-Americans. These images, oppressive and overwhelming, shock us today — but at one time they were considered as accurate and lighthearted as Shaquille O’Neal grinning on the front of a cereal box or the sombrero-wearing charro on a Tapatío bottle. Who owns the right to portray culture with humor? When does caricature pave the way for racism? What is the price of erasure?
Hector Salas was born and raised in Indio. After serving in the Marine Corps, he went into acting, finding himself initially cast as a soldier, then a cowboy, Mexican cartel member, and terrorist. Drawing on his veteran benefits, he attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), graduating in 2020. His performance will traverse the experience of growing up in a country club, his firsthand involvement with the landscaping industry, and the cannibalization of bodies sustaining the desert economy.
“Cultural Cannibalism” is curated by Susan Myrland, a freelance writer and curator.
Between 40 and 60 items including tree limbs, animal bones, teeth, seed pods, minerals, feathers, acorns, seashells, palm dates, paint. 2017-2022.
AWAKEN YOUR DRAGON, COME TOGETHER, AND GUARD AND PROTECT WHAT TRUE WEALTH IS!
Wool, thread, wire, dye, paint, steel. 2022.
As a Colombian-American artist, when I heard the term “Cultural Cannibalism” I immediately thought of tourist shops and commercial products made to imitate the work of the indigenous people of Colombia. These replicas are admired, while Wayuu people selling their originals in the street are often ignored.
We have been conditioned to believe that our choices as consumers are small and innocent. The reality is that choosing a counterfeit can build up to eradication of whole livelihoods. What is left is a commercialized whisper of cultural memory that eventually fades when the trend no longer serves its purpose. Draining a community of all it has to offer is intentional from the fashion industry to make a profit. Additionally, marketing plays a key role in the hyper-curation of culture, ultimately shaping the way we consume and interact. It blurs the lines between distinct communities and reduces them to stereotypes — or worse, tries to erase origins by claiming ideas as new. While industry bears part of the blame, consumers are complicit as bystanders, and equally culpable in choosing to complete the cycle through their buying power. Steal, produce, market, consume, repeat.
I chose to represent this cycle of draining, whitewashing and thoughtless cannibalization of culture through pattern and material similar to those used by the Wayuu indigenous people who live in the La Guajira peninsula, a desert area in the northeast of Colombia.
Collage, statuary, fabric. 2021-2022.
My artwork is a manifestation of self inquiry. Italian Americans did what they could to assimilate into the new-world. My family chose to whitewash our Sicilian heritage. It was a survival technique. Like all whitewash, the material covers but it is only a temporary and transparent veil. This imperfect covering created opportunity but also fostered a life filled with double messages.
Who am I?
What is true for me?
These questions became central to my life and art-making.
Made out of the Ordinary includes a series of collage paired with icons.The collage is anchored in the lineage of Robert Rauschenberg who, using found objects and castoff materials, created a way to make sense of the world. The paired heirlooms are gathered from my personal collection of treasured things. The veiled objects illustrate what is in my mind and how my visual language is colored by that.
The conscious drive to assimilate contributed greatly to my privileged position. As a result I am free to explore identity, make art, and embody a life of self discovery.
Acrylic paint suspended on branch. 2021-2022.
Serpents are prominent in myths about the origin of the world and mythologies of different cultures. They evoke strong human reactions, visions of life and death. Desert and tropical. Snake rebirth through shredding skin, a symbol of immortality.
Sculpture and painting, organic and artificial, human and animal. These works are made of multiple layers of acrylic paint, the process of painting on paint. They are malleable, as if they have lives of their own, like living organs or beings as they grow in my hands. Presentation depends on specific, individualized, support systems. A perfect fit. A fold, a curl, a levitation, a spill.
Items from her personal collection. Acquired between 1978 and 2022; assembled 2022.
History doesn’t exist to make us feel bad, history is here to teach. Many times, it’s hidden or changed so it’s our job to discover, learn, acknowledge and try not to repeat mistakes of the past. We are living history.
Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice (May 20, 1808 – September 19, 1860) was an American performer and playwright who performed in blackface and used African American vernacular speech, song and dance to become one of the most popular entertainers of his time. He is considered the "father of American minstrelsy.” Rice's "Jim Crow” character was based on a folk trickster of that name that was long popular among black slaves but the character as portrayed by Rice popularized the perception of African-Americans as lazy, untrustworthy, dumb, and unworthy of integration. The name became used for the "Jim Crow laws" that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States between the 1870s and 1965.
Jacket, hat, shovel. 2022.
Hector Salas designed a wonderfully absurdist performance, Passive Income, that would have addressed the cannibalism underpinning the pampered, counterfeit landscapes that mark this desert. Each day across the Coachella Valley, bodies — most of Mexican descent — are tapped to mow golf courses, dredge lakes, prune rose bushes, and tend numerous other plants that couldn’t exist here without irrigation. In turn, those ponds and vegetation shelter wildlife and attract tourists who drive the economy. But at what cost?
Unfortunately, Hector could not be here to deliver his performance. He is healing from a cancer diagnosis. He is 34, with a wife and two young daughters, and a military veteran.
This jacket, which he made, holds a place for him, just as we are holding a place in our hearts for his successful treatment and full recovery. — Susan Myrland