The Teaching of the Hands, 2020
Panoramic video installation, 5.1 surround sound, 47 minutes
Narrated by Juan Mancias
The Teaching of the Hands overwrites colonial history with Native cosmology, consciousness, and resistance against ongoing forms of erasure and exploitation. Narrated by Juan Mancias, Chairman of the Esto’k Gna/Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, the film layers oral histories, scenes of environmental violence, reenactments, archival footage, and archeological artifacts, weaving thousandsof years of regional history. The Teaching of the Hands is part of the artists’ larger body of work, The Blessings of the Mystery, which intersects environmental memory with Native Peoples’ agency.
Commissioned by Ballroom Marfa. Lead support was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and VIA Art Fund. Major support was provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation; and Kevin Sherman. This presentation of The Blessings of the Mystery is supported by The Beall Family Foundation and Getty.
Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas
Measuring the Immeasurable, 2020
Hanging sculpture, vintage and contemporary surveying tools, and artifacts, Dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artists
What is lost through the process of reducing Grandmother Earth to straight lines, numbers, and economic value? Measuring the Immeasurable addresses this question by examining the US Public Land Survey System (1785). This ordinance appropriated and divided Native territories into private plots, forcing the Original Peoples of this country from their homelands. In the artwork, vintage and contemporary land surveying tools float above visitors’ heads like a “wrongful collection of useless relics.” Measuring the Immeasurable is part of the artists’ larger body of work, The Blessings of the Mystery, which intersects environmental memory with Native Peoples’ agency.
Carolina Caycedo is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Her practice and research focus on the future of shared resources, environmental justice, energy transition, and bio-cultural diversity. Through contributing to community-based construction of environmental and historical memory, Caycedo seeks ways of preventing violence against humans and nature.
David de Rozas is an artist-filmmaker and educator based in Los Angeles. His interdisciplinary research advocates for social and environmental justice by exploring the politics of memory as an embodied method and affective medium to conjure forms of collective resistance and restitution.
Juan Mancias, the Tribal Chair of the Carrizo Comecrudo in Texas, was born in Dimmitt and raised in Plainview. Today, he uses his own indigenous knowledge to focus on decolonizing both tribal people and others.
Commissioned by Ballroom Marfa. Lead support was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and VIA Art Fund. Major support was provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation; and Kevin Sherman. This presentation of The Blessings of theMystery is supported by The Beall Family Foundation and Getty.