The exhibition explores immigration, border politics, and generational trauma through performance, video and photography.
Announcement
Boston, MA —
Emerson Contemporary, Emerson College’s platform for visual art, proudly presents Emilio Rojas: tracing a wound through my body, the first survey of the contemporary and multidisciplinary practice of artist Emilio Rojas (c. 1985 Mexico City). On view from September 21 to November 6, 2022.
Curated by Laurel McLaughlin, the exhibition questions what borderlands, memories, temporalities, and politics do traces conjure in their indexicality or ephemerality? And, how these traces might embody the vicissitudes of trauma and resilience. Recognizing the act of tracing dualistically, it reexamines the instrumentalization of Rojas’s body within his practice. Simultaneously, the exhibition reckons with the compounded political and colonial traces impressed upon marginalized bodies, abstracted geopolitical territories, public monuments, and collectivities.
The exhibition brings together Rojas’s works spanning the past decade, including live performances and performance-films, ephemeral documents of past performances, photography, installation, poetry, and recent performances in his “The Dead Taste Sweeter than the Living” series in a meditation upon “the trace”—or that which is left behind.
For Rojas, such reckonings render palpable what Chicana, queer, and feminist theorist and poet Gloria E. Anzaldúa acknowledged as heridas abiertas, or “open wounds,” with the potential for healing. View the artist’s website.
“We are honored to bring his work to our campus,” said Dr. Leonie Bradbury, Emerson Contemporary’s Distinguished Curator-in-Residence. “Rojas’ exhibition comes to us at a time of continued adversity and a growing humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexican border as each day thousands of people try to cross the border, often risking their lives and/or that of their children. Tragically, 2022 is already the worst year on record for migrant deaths at the border, making Rojas’ critical works relevant as ever.”
View press images.
tracing a wound through my body invites visitors to navigate the Emerson College campus to see a main exhibition in the Media Art Gallery (25 Avery Street, free and open to the public, Wednesday-Sunday 12-7pm) and additional works staged in the campus locations of Little Building Lobby (80 Boylston Street), 2B Lobby (2 Boylston Place), the Tufte Building entrance stairwell (10 Boylston Place), the Huret & Spector galleries (10 Boylston place, Tufte 6th Floor), and the Iwasaki Library in the Walker Building (120 Boylston Street, 3rd floor). Visitors should stop by the Media Art Gallery first to receive instructions for accessing the additional locations.
The exhibition is accompanied by a series of free public programs and an open-source digital bilingual exhibition catalog featuring new poetry by Rojas and Pamela Sneed, an interview with Ernesto Pujol, and essays by Valeria Luiselli, Ethan Madarieta, Laurel V. McLaughlin, Rebecca Schneider, and Mechtild Widrich with Andrei Pop available on Emerson Contemporary’s webpage. Emerson Contemporary will publish a printed version of the catalog later this fall.
Public Programming
Thursday, September 22, 5–7:30 PM
Artist Reception
Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery St. Boston, MA 02111
Friday, September 23, 2–4 PM
Performance of A Vague and Undetermined Place (a Gloria), 2019
Location: Boylston Place Alley. 10 Boylston Place, Boston, MA 02116
Saturday, September 24, 2–4 PM
Performance, A Vague and Undetermined Place (a Gloria), 2019
Location: Boylston Place Alley. 10 Boylston Place, Boston, MA 02116
Friday, October 14, 12–1 PM
“Go Back To Where You Came From” A Performance-lecture by Emilio Rojas
Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, MA 02111
Friday, October 14, 7–9 PM, doors open at 6:30 PM
Panel discussion Emilio Rojas in Conversation with Tania Bruguera, moderated by exhibition curator Laurel V. McLauglin and Book signing.
This event is sponsored by the Emerson College Public Art Think Tank
Location: TBD
Friday, October 14, 4–8 PM
One-on-one performance, A Manual to Be (to Kill) or To Forgive My Own Father, 2015–ongoing
Location: The Iwasaki Library, 3rd floor, Walker Building, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, MA
Saturday, October 15, 12–4 PM
One-on-one performance, A Manual to Be (to Kill) or To Forgive My Own Father, 2015–ongoing
Location: The Iwasaki Library, 3rd floor, Walker Building, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, MA
Sunday, October 16, 12–4 PM
One-on-one performance, A Manual to Be (to Kill) or To Forgive My Own Father, 2015–ongoing
Location: The Iwasaki Library, 3rd floor, Walker Building, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, MA
Emerson Contemporary is the College’s platform for showcasing contemporary visual art. It is focused on presenting living artists, their ideas, experiments and creative practices in the areas of media art, performance art and emergent technologies, while critically examining these works in their social context. Dr. Leonie Bradbury is Emerson Contemporary’s Distinguished Curator-in-Residence and the Henry and Lois Foster Chair of Contemporary Art Theory and Practice.
Photo credit: Emilio Rojas, Heridas Abiertas (to Gloria), 2014–ongoing. Digital photograph printed on banner, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.
About the College
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, opposite the historic Boston Common and in the heart of the city’s Theatre District, Emerson College educates individuals who will solve problems and change the world through engaged leadership in communication and the arts, a mission informed by liberal learning. The College has 3,780 undergraduates and 670 graduate students from across the United States and 50 countries. Supported by state-of-the-art facilities and a renowned faculty, students participate in more than 90 student organizations and performance groups. Emerson is known for its experiential learning programs in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, the Netherlands, London, China, and the Czech Republic as well as its new Global Portals, with the first opening last fall in Paris. The College has an active network of 51,000 alumni who hold leadership positions in communication and the arts. For more information, visit Emerson.edu.