Mariana Castillo Deball: Petlacoatl
November 16 - January 13, 2018-19
Installation View, Logan Center Gallery. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman
Mariana Castillo Deball explores representations of cultures through material artifacts. The artist’s research-based practice draws on a range of fields that include anthropology, archeology, and ethnography. In considering how cultural objects are staged, mediated, and valorized in the present, the artist creates a thoughtful dialogue between our contemporary moment and ancient history.
Deball has titled her first solo exhibition in Chicago Petlacoatl, taken from the Nahua word meaning “mat woven of snakes pointing in all directions.” The symbol of the petlacoatl was often included in ancient Mesoamerican divinatory calendars and functioned as an omen that presaged either the impending demise or rise of a ruler. The works on view include a series of watercolor drawings, extruded metal sculptures, modular concrete tiles, and plaster sculptures that respond to the tonalpohualli, a 260-day calendar system. Marking time through twenty distinct periods that each last thirteen days, the calendar was a tool for divination as well as a visual representation of spatial coordinates and ritual practices. For the artist, tools for measuring time and telling fortunes such as the tonalpohualli and petlacoatl are emblematic of the material and immaterial connections in indigenous knowledge systems between bodies, both human and nonhuman, and the world. Deball’s installation at the Logan Center Gallery extrapolates from these systems to explore sculptural practice expanded through space and time.
Deball is the Fall 2018 Tinker Visiting Professor in the Department of Visual Arts.
Mariana Castillo Deball: Petlacoatl is presented by Logan Center Exhibitions and curated by Yesomi Umolu, Exhibitions Curator with Katja Rivera, Assistant Curator and Alyssa Brubaker, Exhibitions Coordinator. The exhibition is made possible by support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Reva and David Logan Foundation, and friends of the Logan Center.
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About Mariana Castillo Deball
Mariana Castillo Deball works in installation, sculpture, photography, and drawing, exploring the ideologically constructed conditions under which artefacts appear in today’s culture. She takes on a kaleidoscopic approach to her work, culling information from various disciplines such as archaeology and science, and, through research and collaboration, creating works that arise from the collision and recombination of these different languages. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, USA (2018); Galerie Wedding, Berlin, Germany (2017); San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, USA (2016); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Mexico (2015); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2014); CCA, Glasgow, UK (2013); Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK (2013); Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City, Mexico (2011); and Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, USA (2010). Group exhibitions include the 8th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, Germany (2014); Documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (2013); and the 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2011).