When Intisar Abioto ’08 addressed the packed Zilkha Gallery, she used language as a medium of movement as well as of verbal power, exclaiming, “Minority…is not a real word because we’re here!”
Abioto spoke to an assemblage of more than 100 students gathered for the February 14 opening of “Skittles,” the second annual art show displaying work by Wesleyan student of color artists. Framed by a wall of luminescent photographs, Abioto said of her own work: “I decided that I could do something bigger than I thought I could ever do before.”
On the wall to her left, Luz Burgos’ ’09 horned Puerto Rican mask expands into the space surrounding it, feeling both menacing and celebratory. Burgos, who entitled the 2006 work “Mi Carribe,” created it to honor the African influence in her Puerto Rican heritage. She describes her process of constructing masks as ongoing. Burgos likened her piece to those worn during traditional Puerto Rican celebrations to inspire both fear and laughter, especially in children. In the written description of her piece, she explains that, “Art is said to be universal except it is a limited world, which makes it difficult for people of color to rise to the top.”
Grateful for the outlet of the collective of artists that assembled to create the show, Maya Barros-Odim ’10 performed a spoken word piece introducing the exhibit.
“Art is such a sweet word,” she said“a belief reflected in the entirety of the exhibit, which exudes both vibrancy and a re-appropriation of traditional images.
This balance is manifested in many of “Skittles’” works, including a series of mixed media portraits, a photo collage built into a white t-shirt, a pastel-and-marker homage to Jean Michel Basquiat, and a mixed media collage by Consuelo Gonzales ’08 that refutes the cowboy and Indian images typical to the New Mexican art with which she grew up. The collage builds vivid flowering cacti around a system of black and white magazine cutouts of children playing cowboy around an earth-toned image of the Virgin de Guadalupe (the patron saint of Mexico). Gonzales uses changes in scale and a gradation of saturated, soft colors to suggest the fullness of her vision of New Mexican culture.
Sonia Louise Davis ’10 describes her three explosive photographs as conveying “moments when color moved me to stop.” Davis’ work creates a strong sense of foreground, framing fiercely-colored objects under scaffolds and through raindrops, a celebration of image for the pure purpose of recognizing the capabilities of natural light. A series of three black and white paintings by Kara Rutledge ’09, entitled “Vacant House” (2007), showcase an abandoned house on Pine Street that is at once decaying and full of light, in honor of her brother who passed away last year.
Abioto described the importance of the art show as an opportunity for “seeing so much art that would otherwise be hidden from view.” She hopes that the exhibit will eventually be large enough to be housed in the main gallery space in the Zilkha Gallery. Priya Ghosh ’09, who assisted in the creation of the art show last year, also stresses its necessity. Ghosh, like other artists whose work is showcased in the exhibit, considered becoming a Studio Art major, but eventually decided otherwise. Other artists included in the show have made the same decision, which Ghosh says is “telling that there is something off with the [Studio Art] department.”
Both she and Abioto served on the planning committee for this year’s show, and are looking to provide opportunities to display more student art. On the future of the show, Ghosh says that it can “only go forward from here.”
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