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The
Cyber Arte Exhibition: A
Curator’s Journey Through Community and Controversy
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Tey Marianna Nunn, Ph.D When the exhibition Cyber Arte: Tradition meets Technology opened at the Museum of International
Folk Art in Santa Fe on February 25th, 2001, a
tremendous amount of press had already been written in such
publications as American Art, Art and Antiques,
Hispanic Magazine, and the Santa Fe New Mexican.
The reviews, prior to opening day praised this small exhibition
of less then 600 square feet for the cutting edge show that
it was meant to be-- and that it was. Few of them mentioned
the now famous piece by Alma López titled Our Lady.
CURATORIAL INTENT My original curatorial intent in
putting together the Cyber Arte exhibition was to highlight
the Hispanic and Latina/o arts and cultural presence on the
World Wide Web. (One of the handouts being passed around is
one from the exhibition with Latino arts and cultural websites
as well as Spanglish terms for the Internet published with
permission from the New York Times). I had originally
titled the exhibition “¿Y tu que?” which in Spanish means
“and you what?”-- a play on the Y 2 K craze. The show was
meant to open the 21st century in 2000 at MOIFA
but plans were put on the back burner because the director
at the time thought the Y2 K problem was just a fad. The secondary purpose of the exhibition,
as it was originally conceived, was to address stereotypes
of Latinos, technology, and art especially since we are one
of the “minority” groups greatly affected by the digital divide
that stems from the lack of computer access in schools and
homes--not only in New Mexico, but nationally. I had noticed
for a number of years that many traditional and contemporary
artists were looking towards the computer to either set up
their own websites or to create art. I was especially intrigued
by the fact that many of these artists experimenting with
technology were women. Sometimes in our culture women and
technology just don’t come out in the same sentence. I wondered
how these women negotiate the borders of identity as it pertains
to combining tradition and technology? Thus, Cyber Arte:
Tradition meets Technology was born. The exhibition
was one of the first in the country to highlight computer
art. Little did I know it would become a metaphor for tradition
meeting modernity, as well as many other issues, in Santa
Fe, New Mexico and beyond.
THE EXHIBTION For the exhibition, I chose the
work of four Hispana / Latina / Chicana artists: Teresa Archuleta-
Sagel, Elena Baca and Marion Martínez all from New Mexico,
and Alma López from California. These strong, talented and
intelligent women explore traditional elements by using technology.
Whether it is digitally rendering family photos to convey
family histories, or constructing saints out of computer parts,
each artist grapples with how to be modern and traditional
simultaneously. What I realized as the show went up is that
all four artistas were responding to high-tech modern times
and at the same time, they were saving tradition. (One of
the other exhibition handouts being passed around features
brief artist statements by the four women).
TERESA ARCHULETA-SAGEL Teresa Archuleta-Sagel from Española,
New Mexico is an award-winning traditional Hispanic weaver
represented in our permanent textile collection. A few years
back Archuleta- Sagel got environmentally ill from the weaving
process and as a result she had to set her weaving aside.
Needing a creative outlet she turned to the computer. Her
digital paintings and use of family photos and religious icons
provided for cathartic healing and expression.
ELENA BACA Elena Baca from Albuquerque also
uses family stories, photos and religious components in her
digital and print process. Along with these cultural elements
Baca has begun a series of “fakelifes” playing upon the stilllife
tradition found in both folk and fine art. In these pieces
she is making commentary on tradition and modernity- natural
and artificial.
MARION MARTINEZ Marion Martínez from Glorieta creates
religious images and traditional matachines masks from old
circuit boards and other computer parts she finds in “the
Black Hole” up in Los Alamos. For Martínez the process in
which she creates is very spiritual and devotional in the
same way the traditional santeros and santeras of Northern
New Mexico sculpt and paint their images in wood.
ALMA LOPEZ I first met Alma López four years
ago in Mexico City. I was drawn to her work and that of the
other artists specifically because they were combining traditional
folk and cultural iconography and recasting it to reflect
the 20th and now 21st centuries. Among
the works of Alma’s I chose for the exhibition were images
of women and the border including La Linea,
Santa Niña de Mochis, California Fashion
Slaves and Juan Soldado.
HISTORICAL IMAGES When I selected Alma’s Our Lady
for the exhibition, it was based on my knowledge of current
discourse, as well as that over the last 30 years or so, of
Chicana and Latina artists and writers who have strongly felt
the need to reshape and recast the image of the Virgen de
Guadalupe into something they can personally identify with.
As La Reina de las Americas (the Queen of the Americas) she
is an image that affects all of us. The Mexican image of La Virgen de
Guadalupe appeared in 1531. At that time, it was dramatically
changed from the image of the same name in Spain. She had
indigenous features and elements when she appeared to Juan
Diego on the hill of Tepeyac. Later in the early 19th
century and the Mexican War for Independence her image was
utilized to help Father Miguel Hidalgo and those who fought
for freedom from Spain. Around this time the colors of her
dress and cloak, as well as the wings of the Angel that appears
at the bottom of her feet, changed to reflect Mexicanidad,
or Mexican identity, with the colores nacionales (national
colors) of red, white and green. Later Cesar Chávez used
her image in the United Farm Workers (UFW) struggle for farm
workers rights. So, even before the recasting by contemporary
artists and writers, the image of la Virgen de Guadalupe was
used for political and personal statements and reflected the
changing times. In the 1970s Chicana artists such as Ester
Hernández with her Virgen de Guadalupe defendiendo
los derechos de los Chicanos and Yolanda López with her
triptych of her grandmother, her mother and herself rendered
as Guadalupe, interpreted the icon as much less passive than
the traditional image. Other images by these same
artists La Ofrenda and Tableau Vivant provided
very personal interpretations. Men got into the act too with
Alfredo de Batuc’s Seven Views of City Hall
and a soap package from Mexico featuring the folk saint El
Niño Fidencio dressed as Guadalupe. There is even Mita Curon’s
Guadalupe Baby. Finally, months before the Cyber
Arte exhibition opened, an edited version of Alma López’s
Our Lady appeared on the an award-winning cover of
a book, Puro Teatro: a Latina Anthology, published
by the University of Arizona Press. Armed with all of this
information and more, Our Lady was selected as an important
addition to Cyber Arte and a symbol of women negotiating tradition
with technology.
INSTALLATION AND OPENING The exhibition was installed in
the Contemporary Changing Gallery a space attached to the
Museum’s permanent Hispanic Heritage Wing’s Familia y Fé
exhibition. This Changing Gallery space had been mandated
by the original Hispanic community advisory board to showcase
contemporary artists and thus tradition, continuity, and change.
The adjacent larger permanent exhibition highlights two of
the most important components of New Mexican Hispanic life-
Familia y Fé--family and faith-- and is exemplified by extraordinary
pieces of Spanish Colonial art including santos and retablos
and a number of traditional images of La Virgen de Guadalupe.
I’d like to add that the Contemporary Changing Gallery is
the only gallery space dedicated to Contemporary Hispanic
Art in the entire Museum of New Mexico system comprised of
five museums.
THE PROTEST Three weeks after Cyber Arte
opened a protest started in full force-the objective to
remove the image of Our Lady from the exhibition and
the Museum. As the first wave of this very emotional protest
emotional from all sides-- gained energy- arguments of insider-outsider,
taxpayer funded institutions, church verse state, first amendment
rights, censorship and self-censorship, gender, sexuality,
education and class, as well as who had the right to use the
Guadalupe image, rose quickly to the surface. Even the Archbishop
of Santa Fe voiced his opinion in the press and called Raquel
Salinas, the model for Our Lady and a rape survivor,
a “tart” and a “prostitute.” The events of these first weeks
began an extremely difficult and painful year and a half for
me personally, for the artists, for my colleagues, and for
the community-- a period that has not entirely gone away.
One of the main protestors declared a “holy war” his words--
on the museum. The timing of his comments last year is especially
poignant today as they occurred just after the Taliban destroyed
the buddahs and Mayor Guiliani was calling for a decency committee
in New York City. As a sidebar, it is interesting to note
that the Museum of International Folk Art houses and cares
for the Archdiocese’s collections of religious objects but
this fact was rarely mentioned. I, along with the artists, my colleagues,
and supporters, received threatening phone calls, letters
and personal attacks. The artwork was called blasphemous
and sacrilegious. I was called insensitive and malicious.
I was accused of Cyber Porn and Catholic bashing. I was told
God would strike me down and I was even accused of not being
Hispanic. It was declared that I was starting a new religion
and promoting Satanism. Members of our own Board of Regents
called me and demanded that I go immediately into the gallery
and remove the piece. One Regent also told me that my decision
to include the piece was one of the greatest misjudgments
since that of Helen of Troy. Although supporters always outnumbered
those calling the “Bikini” Virgin blasphemous, one would have
never known it from the unbalanced and polarizing media coverage
(I can say that now that many members of the Press have since
apologized to me). A newspaper editorial came out saying that
the curator of the exhibition should have been more sensitive.
Of course those who know me laughed, as I am more often than
not too sensitive about everything. After reading that editorial
I must have cried for two weeks. Dozens of articles and political
cartoons followed. Some of the more difficult things that
were said included words to the effect that because I was
educated I had lost touch with my community and that I was
a thinker-- and not a believer. My integrity, my scholarship,
and my identity were all challenged, and for most of last
year, I was vilified in the local press. Because of my
unique family name the rumor also spread that I was the head
of a secret Vietnamese lesbian sisterhood. This by the way
was news to my husband who in turn was told he was sleeping
with the devil. On April 4, 2001, during the first
of two museum-sponsored public meetings on the issue, both
Alma López and I were effectively silenced by the protestors
and kept from ever giving our statements or telling our points
of view to the public. I’d like to read to you two brief
excerpts from the prepared statement I wrote for that meeting.
I am one of a handful of
Hispanic / Latina / o curators working in mainstream institutions
in the United States--in my case, the Museum of International
Folk Art. And, I am the only one in the Museum of New Mexico
system. As such I have a tremendous responsibility. I am charged
with the challenging task of interpreting and representing
our diverse and wonderfully multi-layered culture and
community. I have worked very hard to get this position in
order to provide Hispanic and Latino leadership and interpretation
within the Museum of New Mexico. In this position
of course I must be sensitive to Catholic Hispanics of Northern
New Mexico, but I must be equally sensitive to the large number
of Presbyterian Hispanics, the Sephardim, recently-arrived
immigrant populations, the Mexican and Central American populations,
Newyoricans, Cubanos, Puertoriqueños, Latinos and non-Latinos,
gays and lesbians, artists and non-artists, Nuevomexicanos
and yes—even people from California. My statement continued:
I do empathize
with the parishioners of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and
others who feel the piece “blasphemous” and I commend them
on their tireless crusade against “Our Lady,” but I never
would have selected the piece for Cyber Arte if I did
not strongly feel that it had an important and timely message
about Hispanic culture and especially about Hispanas and Latinas.
It certainly has created an important dialog within our community
and state. These words were never publicly
spoken until November 2001, when I testified in front of the
State Legislative Finance Committee who was threatening to
pull the Museum’s funding. This occurred seven months later
than I had hoped and one month after museum administration
closed the Cyber Arte exhibition early in the spirit
of reconciliation. As mentioned, my statement was originally
written for that first April 4th public meeting.
Alma and I were both scheduled to speak at that meeting but
were prevented from doing so. Law enforcement authorities
because of the extremely intimidating, emotionally charged
and possibly violent atmosphere canceled it. Upon news of
the cancellation, Alma and I were immediately surrounded by
people shouting “burn her, burn them.” We were escorted away
by security staff and U.S. Marshals who helped us get back
to the museum in a get-a-way car and motorcade. Things got worse before they got
better. Death and bomb threats continued--so much so that
the FBI was enlisted to bug and monitor our phone system.
Museum administration wrote a letter of apology to the archbishop.
The Committee on Sensitive Materials, which previously only
dealt with NAGPRA, issues met and considered whether “Our
Lady” was a ritual object. The Archbishop and many priests
sermonized from the pulpit against the museum and the artists.
The ACLU threatened to bring forth a lawsuit against the museum.
My “Danger Educated Chicana t-shirt” purchased at NACCS (National
Association of Chicano and Chicana Studies) made the six o’clock
news. Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), the same group
that is trying to rid Brazil of the Samba held a national
rosary rally and prayer vigil on museum grounds. The exhibition
closed early against the wishes of the four artists and the
curator. Nevertheless public hearings continued and lawsuits
were filed. The New Mexico State Legislature threatened to
pull our funding citing no separation of church and state
in New Mexico. A couple of state senators and representatives
also sponsored a memorial to investigate my qualifications
and to issue a censure of my behavior. Things did not begin
to quiet down until almost a year to the day of the exhibition
opening when a state district court judge issued a ruling
stating that the curator was not liable for not holding a
public hearing about including Our Lady before the
exhibition went up. The ruling went out on the national
Associated Press wire service. Addendum: On October 30, 2002, almost a year
to the day that Our Lady was removed and the Cuber
Arte Exhibition came down, a televised gubernatorial debate
was held. New Mexico’s three candidates for governor, John
Sanchez (Republican), David Bacon (Green Party) and Bill Richardson
(Democrat) were asked to respond to the following question:
“How would you have handled the Our Lady controversy last
year, when many Catholics protested an artwork on display
at the state Museum of International Folk Art that depicted
the Virgin clad only in flowers?” The candidates responded
in the following manor: Sanchez “I would have worked hard
to bring the two sides together but this is also a first amendment
rights issue. Bacon: “It is a 1st amendments
rights issue and I would have asked the museum to open an
exhibition showing the history and importance of Guadalupe
in Hispanic and Native American culture.” Richardson, former
Secretary of Energy and UN Ambassador, replied: ”I was personally
offended by the “statue” and I support the archbishop for
intervening in this situation.”
Copyright © 2003
Smithsonian Institution |
