The Silver City Museum is pleased to announce that the museum will host the New Mexico debut of the exhibition Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra "Calidad," by Delilah Montoya. The exhibition will open at 4 p.m. on Friday, June 15, 2018 and be on view until September 30, 2018. The first look at the exhibition will be a special opening reception on Friday, June 15, 2018, from 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. to which the public is invited. Admission is free; donations greatly appreciated.
Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra "Calidad" is an ethnographic art project. It examines the roots of Colonial Heritage Families by photographing and DNA-testing their descendents. Nuestra "Calidad" refers to racial categorizing as expressed in the Colonial Casta Painting of New Spain. This 18th century tradition was first developed as paintings of medieval race hierarchy depicting family racial and class types and ultimately developed into endless racial permutation that took place in the colonies.
Montoya's intimate everyday portraits and genetic analysis shed light on the instability of identity, and the ways we construct our own histories.
Sixteen family Casta portraits have been photographed and genetically analyzed. The prints are imaged as dye sublimations on metal. Each metal portrait is inserted into a wooden curio box placed above a laser-etched panel illustrating a world map of each family's migration out of East Africa. Flanking the map are test tubes filled with multi-colored sand so to visualize each Casta family's biogeographic heritage. A web page is accessed with a smart phone QR code application reader or phone camera that can scan a QR label embedded on the surface of the exhibition portraits. The web page contains the Casta family's DNA results and opens with a monolog of a family member speaking about their family portrait and their test results.
Artist Delilah Montoya is a long-time resident of New Mexico, the ancestral home of her mother's family. Her work is grounded in the mestizo/a borderlands experience, bringing together forms and practices from Aztec Mexico, Spain, cross-bordered vernacular traditions, both Native- and Anglo-American customs, together in the cacophony of the contemporary Chicano/a –Mexicano/a – Hispano/a experience in New Mexico.
As a photographic printmaker, dabbling in processes from collotype to digital imaging and video production, Montoya pushes both technical and conceptual boundaries. Her work explores different ways of conceptualizing, representing, and consuming the Southwest, from her own perspective as a feminist Chicana artist from a matriarchal family. It is about syncretism, ancient and ongoing mestizaje.
The exhibition Contemporary CastaPortraiture: Nuestra "Calidad," features a companion catalog published by Arte Publico Press that includes the portraits and an essay by Delilah Montoya, Professor of Photography and Digital Media, School of the Art, University of Houston, "An Artistic Biography," by Holly Barnet-Sanchez, Associate Professor Emerita Modern Latin American, Chicano/a, and Latino/a Art History Department of Art and Art History, University of New Mexico, The "(E)Quality of Nuestra 'Calidad'" by Surpik Angelini Transart Director and "Restaging Casta and Demystifying Genetics in Delilah Montoya's Nuestra 'Calidad'" by Mia Lopez Assistant Curator at DePaul Art Museum, DePaul University, Chicago. Catalog available for purchase in the Silver City Museum Society Store.
The Silver City Museum creates opportunities for residents and visitors to explore, understand, and celebrate the rich and diverse cultural heritage of southwestern New Mexico by collecting, preserving, researching, and interpreting the region's unique history. Admission is free; suggested donation $5. For more information, please contact the museum at (575) 538-5921, info@silvercitymuseum.org, or go to the museum's website. www.silvercitymuseum.org.