Noche Negra: Algunas Fotógrafas en México / Some Women Photographers in Mexico
A Presentation by BMC/MX Project Director Eric Baden
Thursday, August 17, 2023 – 8pm
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center {120 College Street}
Free to Attend
An evening presentation of works by twenty women photographers closely associated with Mexico. Spanning a century to include the present day, the works of these photographers resonate with contemporary issues in the arts and speak to broader cultural, societal, and political concerns. Linkages to Black Mountain College will be highlighted.
Program in conjunction with Black Mountain College and Mexico (June 2 – September 9, 2023).
Eric Baden is a photographer and from 1994 to 2022 was professor of photography at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina. He is the founding director of photo+, a multidisciplinary arts event held in Asheville, North Carolina.
About the Exhibition
Black Mountain College had important links to Mexico that until now have been little investigated. Two crucibles of 20th-century creativity, BMC galvanized and inspired artists and intellectuals from around the world, while Mexico’s innovations and age-old traditions—in fine and applied arts, architecture, poetry, music, performance, and more—dovetailed with, and indeed drove, global impulses toward modernism and beyond. Among the many key BMC figures whose lives were importantly touched by experiences in Mexico were Anni and Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa, John Cage, Jean Charlot, Buckminster Fuller, Carlos Mérida, Robert Motherwell, Charles Olson, Clara Porset, M. C. Richards, and Aaron Siskind. In turn, engagements with BMC have played a role in shaping contemporary approaches to art making in Mexico; BMC/MX features work by numerous Mexican artists who have in some way responded to this legacy.
The project Black Mountain College and Mexico examines these artistic reciprocities. The exhibition includes original visual works and sound installations by prominent contemporary Mexican artists alongside vintage works by BMC artists and relevant archival materials—all highlighting the ways in which ideas and modalities are translated across materials, space, and time. Related programming, collaboratively conceived with Mexican counterparts and the Latinx community of North Carolina, includes “Bizarre Sabado:” a series of weekend presentations and performative actions taking place over the course of the exhibition.
Black Mountain College and Mexico offers new historical research and a significant effort toward inclusion and understanding of multiple perspectives. In short, the project is an investigation into modes of communication—the arenas in which new ideas and alliances may take form.
Lourdes Grobet, Blue Demon at home, 1980. Tina Modotti, Anita Brenner in profile, 1926
Mariana Yampolsky. Huipil de Tapar, Oaxaca 1962. Venegas-Percevault Archive, courtesy Yvonne Venegas.