Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly

The exhibition Monarchs sees the defense of Standing Rock and the threat to build a border wall as continuous issues that pose challenges to people native to the Americas who have been separated by conceptual categories of indigenous, immigrant, and assimilated. Like the butterfly, which takes four generations to make the complete migratory path navigating its way through the center of the United States by drawing from inherited knowledge, these artists also pull from ancestral and cultural memory to reveal the deep conceptual legacies underpinning abstraction, reorient historical and art historical narratives, and explore centuries-old trade routes that moved aesthetics in addition to goods. Monarchs considers how objects, still and moving images, sound, and performances made by artists living in the path of the butterfly reveal their identities through form, process, and materiality rather than through content. To create the exhibition, Bemis Curator-in-Residence Risa Puleo looked to the butterfly for inspiration for the exhibition’s primary themes:

Migrations: The length of the Monarch's migratory path is over 3,000 miles long, and unlike any other butterfly, the Monarch makes this path twice. The butterflies cross two international borders and dozens of states. Rodrigo Valenzuela explores the landscape of migration along the U.S.-Mexico border while Sky Hopinka, Francisco Souto, and Wendy Red Star employ road trips as their means of moving across the United States. Other types of movement including immigration to displacement, itinerancy, nomadism, and also the condition of being immobilized are explored by William Cordova, Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez, Marty Two Bulls Jr., and Cannupa Hanska Luger. Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez and Harold Mendez examine how objects were moved across centuries-old trade routes, bringing aesthetics and styles with them across vast expanses of space.

Inheritance: No one butterfly completes the trek from the U.S.-Canada border across the U.S. to the butterfly forests of Michoacán, where individual butterflies often return to the same Oyamel Fir tree as their ancestors. They do so by drawing from knowledge inherited from butterflies who forged the path before them. Artists in Monarchs also pull from ancestral and cultural memory speaking to an inherited means of production and genealogy of form. Truman Lowe transforms the basket weaving techniques taught to him by his parents while Margarita Cabrera learned the craft of copper hammering of Santa Clara del Cobre, a town in Michoacán. Ronny Quevedo, Rafa Esparza, and Carlos Rosales-Silva incorporate building materials such as drywall, adobe, and plaster respectively into their paintings as an homage to constructing buildings and working-class labor.

Transformation: Over the course of its life, the Monarch butterfly takes on radically different forms, transforming from egg to caterpillar, chrysalis, and, finally, butterfly. Artists like Jeffery Gibson, Mary Valverde, Donna Huanca, and Ivan LOZANO explore how costume and textiles join forces with performance to form the basis of sacred ritual and ceremony that provide passageways to the spiritual.

Exhibiting Artists: Gina Adams Carmen Argote Natalie Ball Margarita Cabrera Juan William Chávez William Cordova Rafa Esparza Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez Guillermo Galindo Jeffrey Gibson Sky Hopinka Donna Huanca Truman Lowe Ivan LOZANO Cannupa Hanska Luger Salvador Jiménez-Flores Nicholas Galanin & Merritt Johnson Rodolfo Marron III Harold Mendez Mark Menjivar Ronny Quevedo Wendy Red Star Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez Josh Rios & Anthony Romero Guadalupe Rosales Carlos Rosales-Silva Sarah Rowe Edra Soto Francisco Souto Marty Two Bulls Jr. Rodrigo Valenzuela Mary Valverde Dyani White Hawk Nathan Young Sarah Zapata

Mark Menjivar: Stations

Stations, a satellite exhibition by Mark Menjivar is presented at El Museo Latino in collaboration with Bemis Center for Contemporary Art as part of Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly.

Stations presents the annual historical memory event in Santa Marta, El Salvador that commemorates their fleeing violence, living in refugee camps and successfully repatriating to their homeland in 1989. Each year altars are created by community members in El Salvador that commemorate these events. The photographs and text in Stations tell the story of farmers in the region of Cabañas, and especially those of the Santa Marta, Peña Blanca and El Zapote communities. Stations is on view at El Museo Latino from December 7, 2017–February 24, 2018.

Tour Schedule

Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, FL (May 24–August 5, 2018)

Blue Star Contemporary and Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, TX (October 4, 2018–January 6, 2019)

The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS (March 7–June 2, 2019)