A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words - Art and Activism: Contemporary printmaking from Oaxaca, Mexico

×

Expand

Taller Artístico Comunitario, installation view of “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words – Art and Activism: Contemporary Printmaking from Oaxaca, Mexico,” 2022

at Penticton Art Gallery, Penticton, B.C. (photo by Ron Marsh, courtesy Penticton Art Gallery)

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Art and Activism: Contemporary printmaking from Oaxaca, Mexico

Opening Friday July 8th 7:00 - 9:00 pm!

This exhibition is focused on the incredible work done by two of the leading artist collectives from Oaxaca, Mexico comprised of young art students and street artists. They employ multiple mediums including wood and linoleum block prints, large-scale graffiti murals, interventionist stencils, and wheat pastes. Both collectives owe their roots to the Asamblea de Artistas Revolucionarios de Oaxaca (ASARO) which was formed in 2006.

ASARO was part of a broader social movement, part of which advocated for higher teachers' salaries and access to school supplies. They exercise their collective voices through artistic interventions taking their art to the streets and public spaces. They believe in collective social action utilizing modern conventions in graffiti, printmaking, and contemporary communication through social networking.

From these beginnings Colectivo Subterráneo and Taller Artístico Comunitario have firmly established their own place in Oaxaca's rich cultural history attracting international attention as well as state-sanctioned support for their artists' workshops while also using their notoriety to teach Oaxacan youth the importance of publicly expressing and exhibiting their perspectives on the visual landscape.

Colectivo Subterráneo www.instagram.com/subterraneos.oax/?hl=en

We exist, because we resist. For the oppressed, for the invisible, for those who wanted to bury, the underground, we exist. Subterraneos is a graphic art collective, focused on social problems that are not seen by today's society and that are hidden from the sunlight. Focused on murals and monumental graphic art.

Taller Artístico Comunitario (T.A.C.)

www.instagram.com/urtarte_oaxaca/?hl=en

Community Artistic Workshop (TAC) which is the physical space from where they work co laboratively giving workshops, talks and other artistic activities under the pretext of a social struggle. By obtaining a permanent workshop, the collective has produced different graphic projects in large format to be taken to the streets of the city of Oaxaca mainly because of the political situation in that state, given that it is a highly politicized territory where there is a great deal of inequality of opportunity and social backwardness in general, a state that is being deprived of its natural resources, their traditions, clothing and culture in general.