OPEN LECTURE: Veneration and Wonder in Art and Research – Crossing Paths in Rural Mexico

Lecture by Professor Karin Becker and Artist Geska Brečević.

The point of departure is a collaboration between the Stockholm-based artists Performing Pictures and Talleres Comunitarios, a studio based in the Oaxacan town of Santa Ana Zegache where local artisans employ traditional skills in the restoration of religious artifacts. Informed by research based in visual ethnography, we trace the exchange of skills, knowledge, and aesthetic sensibility that took place, against a backdrop of religious, social, and political tensions that characterize everyday life in southern Mexico.

Through photographs and film clips we map the work of Performing Pictures from family portraits to venerative works in a journey that spans several continents, from the Croatian island of Rab to the village of Zegache, following paths that intersect in the encounter between personal and collective experience, and between art and research.