THE BLESSINGS OF THE MYSTERY: CAROLINA CAYCEDO & DAVID DE ROZAS

May 26 - September 04,2022

From Ballroom Marfa: "Ballroom Marfa presents The Blessings of the Mystery, a multidisciplinary exhibition on view May 26, 2022. The opening celebration will be held the following weekend on June 4, 2022. Artists Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas have created a new film and series of installations rooted in West Texas. The project crystallizes the artists’ research into the connections and tensions between the cultural, scientific, industrial, and socio-political forces across locations like the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, the Amistad Dam on the Rio Grande, and the Permian Basin oil fields. The presentation centers around The Teachings of the Hands, a single-channel film that depicts the region’s complex histories of colonization, migration, and ecological precarity from the perspective of Juan Mancias, Chairman of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. The video-installation combines observational and experimental documentary with oral histories, reenactments, and archival footage. The film’s narrative grows out of the land where both Indigenous and settler knowledge have been historically produced. Weaving together scenes from the present day to 4,000 years in the past, The Teachings of the Hands highlights the environmental memories and cosmologies of interconnected places across Texas. The artists’ pull from different materials and sources to expand on concepts in the film–they create immersive installations of surveying flags and tools, render several series of drawings and collages, and select from a collection of original watercolors from the 1930s by artists and amateur archaeologists Forrest and Lula Kirkland that depict the ancient rock art of the Lower Pecos. On loan from the Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin, these rarely seen plein air paintings document the original forms and vibrant colors of murals that were still visible in the 30s, before flooding, erosion, and human interaction damaged or destroyed them. The Blessings of the Mystery emerges from Caycedo and de Rozas’s multidisciplinary practices, which are centered around environmental justice, encounters between history and memory, and Indigenous rights and cosmologies. For this exhibition and its iterations across Texas, Caycedo and de Rozas investigate the transformation of Somi Se’k* by way of industry, infrastructure, and private property. *Somi Se’k means the Land of the Sun and is the way the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe refers to the land known as Texas. The Blessings of the Mystery is organized by Laura Copelin, former Director & Curator, with Daisy Nam, Executive Director & Curator, Ballroom Marfa. The exhibition traveled to the Visual Arts Center (VAC) at The University of Texas at Austin in September 2021 and to the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso in January 2022. The VAC presentation was organized by MacKenzie Stevens, Director, and the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts presentation was organized by Kerry Doyle, Director. Lead support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and VIA Art Fund. Major support is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation; and Kevin Sherman. Generous support is provided by The City of Marfa and the Texas Commission on the Arts. Exhibitions at Ballroom are supported by The Brown Foundation, Inc.; Fairfax Dorn & Marc Glimcher; Virginia Lebermann & Family; Lebermann Foundation; Ballroom Marfa’s Board of Trustees, International Surf Club, and Ballroom members."

On View: May 26, 2022 | 1-4 pm

Ballroom Marfa 108 E San Antonio Street
Marfa, TX 79843
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