Marjorie Barrick Museum Podcast

Kevin Krall 0:00
The following is special programming aired in collaboration with the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art on the campus of UNLV. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and More, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

LeiAnn Huddleston 0:23
Hello, my name is LeiAnn and I'm the programming manager at the Barrick Museum of Art.

Manny Munoz 0:28
Hi, my name is Manny. I work in educational outreach and programming at the Barrick Museum.

LeiAnn Huddleston 0:33
Thank you all for joining through the radio today. We'd like to reflect on our month of programming around Ana Mendieta. Really quick for anyone listening today that may be unfamiliar with the work of Ana Mendieta. She was a Cuban born American artist born in 1948, known for using performance, video and photography to explore the connections between the body and the natural world. After her father joined counter revolutionary forces against Castro, Mendieta was removed from her home in Cuba with her sister in 1960 when she was 12 years old, through the Operation Peter Pan project, a US government asylum program for children to escape Cuba. During her time in the United States, Mendieta developed a unique visual language using the elements of fire, earth, and water to convey our collective relationship with the universe.

Manny Muñoz 1:29
Two works that expanded on these themes were "Esculturas Rupestres, Rupestrian Sculptures" 1981, and "Fundamendo de Palo Monte: Silueta Series (Gunpowder Works)", 1980. Both works were on loan to the Barrick Museum from March 25 through July 23 2022, through the Art Bridges Foundation. The Barrick was given the opportunity to develop community programs through the foundation, Aluminati Mendieta, and In Motion, performances inspired by Ana Mendieta. We are joined today by performance artists Yasmina Chavez and Aluminati member and artists, Mica Haji Sheikh, would you both like to take a moment and introduce yourselves and your practice?

Yasmina Chavez 2:15
Sure, hi, everybody. This is Yasmina Chavez, I'm a local performance artist. I would say I kind of call myself a time based media artist really, because I work with installation, photo, video, site specific performance and just performance in general, which all include the idea of time or the notion of time. I also teach at UNLV. I teach intermedia, which is what Ana Mendieta was kind of studying when she was at university. So um, yeah, I first heard of Ana Mendieta when I was an undergrad here at UNLV, studying new genres with Kyrsten Swinson and I really, really connected to her work as a first generation American. I understood displacement, I understood the sense that or longing for home, or not knowing what that is, or how to define it, I understood my body as, or I would say, I understood the world as a physical experience. Because my body affected the way I was perceived. I was treated as a brown person, as a woman, and especially seeing my family going through the same thing. So I was really, really inspired by her work. And actually, I'm sure a lot of the work I've done ever since has been influenced by her notions of using, how do you how do you transcend our constructed realities? How do you go beyond these notions of of, of nation when you are caught between these places? When you feel a really deep connection to the earth, and there's this symbolism in the idea of rootedness and, but that doesn't translate into these constructed notions of nation and home place, especially when your body is displaced. Not only visually but physically. So that's where that's that that's how connected I am and influenced in my work by her work.

Mica Haji-Sheikh 4:35
Cool. Cool, cool. Cool. Okay, hi guys. I'm Micah or MJ Haji-Sheikh, and I am a Las Vegas foundry metal and fiber artist. And I actually had kind of a vastly different experience. I didn't really know much about Ana Mendieta before coming into this project. So I learned a lot on the spot and had to do a lot of my own outside research to be prepared for our workshop to be prepared and also informed about everything that we were putting into this and what we were trying to get our viewers to receive from it. I do also feel a connection to her work. My grandfather immigrated from Iran when he was in his 20s. And so I've been able to witness a lot of his struggles and challenges really intimately. So that's been something that I've been reflecting a lot with through this process. And as far as Aluminati. Aluminati is a group of sculpture students and artists at UNLV, who use the foundry to cast objects that embody change and define an empowered future. We also like to say that we create molten metal magic, which I think is really special.

Micah Haji-Sheikh 5:44
That's what I have to say.

LeiAnn Huddleston 5:46
Thank you. That was great. From both of you both Yasmina and MJ. MJ really quick, because we kind of were brushing up on metal casting and working with Aluminati, it was an amazing partnership that I never really thought the Barrick would do. I mean, a metal casting workshop within the community is pretty, a unique set of programs, which was a wonderful opportunity to partner with you. How long have you been working in metal?

Micah Haji-Sheikh 6:13
So this is, oh my goodness, I just had my ninth pour, my ninth aluminum pour as of last week. So it's, it's been about two and a half, three years that I've been working with metal. I'm normally a fiber artist. But then when I started working in sculpture, and felt that attraction to working with hot metal, because it's so intimidating and strong. And there's a lot of culture where the people who work with metal are all male presenting, and I felt this need to kind of break into that space. And I'm very fortunate that through our our leader, our esteemed leader, Emily Budd, she really champions us to feel like not only is that attainable, but it's also something that, like you deserve to be able to do this, which is just freaking awesome, you know.

LeiAnn Huddleston 7:00
It kind of cuts through all that exclusivity that the foundry workers seem to kind of being conveying when we've been working with them. So that's wonderful that Aluminati exists as well as like Emily Budd is such a champion within the foundry for y'all. And I think it's just it's incredible. It's been a wonderful opportunity. But you both have kind of spoken about your different kind of approaches to Ana Mendieta, Yasmina you kind of knew about her from school and had a deep connection. Whereas MJ this was your first time getting introduced to Ana Mendieta. So I do kind of want to, MJ, I'll start with you, and we'll go to Yasmina. But what was that process like and kind of the development of that workshop with Alumnati Mendieta. What was that creative intake?

Micah Haji-Sheikh 7:45
Sure. So for myself, I've always kind of viewed myself as an artist. But now I'm kind of in the position where I'm having to market myself and do my own research and all this kind of stuff that you do in order to put yourself out there. So this was like my first, hey, if I want to do this, I need to do this for real. So I wasn't able to be here. At the time that we started doing all of our research for the workshop, the Aluminati members were invited to come view the exhibition at the museum. And we were able to see the videos of her work. And as well as, talk about her work collaboratively as we were moving forward in the workshop, and I missed out on a lot of that. So I felt a responsibility to try to understand that group perspective by myself. So it was a lot of like internet research and YouTube diving and reading about her in the books and just try to absorb as much as I possibly can. But it was a little bit different. Because here we're trying to do this collaborative process. And I'm currently isolated. So it was very interesting that kind of reflects a little bit about her own experience. And I feel a lot of what she was trying to say through her work was feeling I was feeling a little bit isolated, and not kind of where she felt like she originally should be in a way. So I felt a lot of that as I was trying to learn and it, just absorb rather quickly, as much as I could.

Yasmina Chavez 9:08
So it was an honor. Like, she's one of my heroes as an artist. And I was like, Oh my gosh. But like, I was also so excited because I'm like, Oh my gosh, I get to really explore some of her philosophies and things that I explore. But, you know, we're different people in different times. So how, like, how do I make it my own while honoring her, and I wanted to honor her so deeply. And the thing that's always stuck with me about her work is this, the ritual aspect of her work, and this idea of transcendence of connecting to the earth. One of the reasons I love Vegas and the Southwest is the desert, and I feel really really connected at a higher level in a spiritual form to the dirt, the rocks, the petroglyphs, there's something so vibrant and alive out there. And her work does the same thing, I feel that she, when she couldn't find an identity to root her into society, she still had her home in the earth, like society be gone, that changes that's always moving. I have home here, everywhere I go, I find home. And the more you connect through these ritual performances, the more I felt like she was finding her identity as the human, as a person, as something Nietzsche would say, the Overman, right, like above the human our humanity. So, um, when I was when I was, I ruminate a lot when I'm trying to think of a performance when I have something I'm working on, and I listened to music all day long. And, and this is, I was listening to my Spotify playlist in the shower. And.

Micah Haji-Sheikh 11:09
As you do.

LeiAnn Huddleston 11:10
Makes sense.

Yasmina Chavez 11:11
And actually a song came on, and I love to dance, movement is very much part of my practice and sort of a ritual part of it. And the song came on and it just all connected. I felt this love but also reluctant love, like unrequited love in the, in this the base of this rap song and also in, in sort of like also our, our relationship to the earth currently with climate change. And with a mass immigration and migration and globalization. It's just all becoming this like tornado of movement, and sort of the unrequited love, like a heartbrokeness to try to connect to love, don't go away. And I felt like oh, that's it. And from there, I was like, this is the movement. This. I felt like a silhouette in the shower. And I was like, This is what I want, I want to transcend from sort of quoting kind of a subject character into, through a ritual through a connection to the soil as being that transcendent, ritualistic, transcendent moment into a live silhouette. And that was how it sort of progressed. And I kind of wanted the music in this otherworldly like space, where I was singing the lyrics so that it was about me connecting or this beam that I was in encapsulating, connecting to the feeling. And it was just like, how do I grab on to that transcendental feeling? And how do I have it translate to everybody who's watching? So that's, that's kind of, that's kind of where I got that's, I mean, that was the the idea and the evolution of that that piece, and then the dirt goddess. How do you invoke the gods of the dirt? How does this love story, right? It's not gendered, that's all that you know. Just other worlds. So that was the idea and the connection to Mendieta. So.

Manny Muñoz 13:26
You talk a lot about like the ritualistic aspect of Mendieta's work and thinking back to your actual performance. You kind of had a procession entrance.

Yasmina Chavez 13:34
Yes

Manny Muñoz 13:35
Could you maybe walk us through kind of what happened during your performance for those who weren't able to be there?

Yasmina Chavez 13:42
I came out the back with a vacuum, and there was a few little piles of dirt. And I sort of imagined it as a narrative or a procession but it had narrative to it. So I was this character. Just kind of collecting this soil. And as I made my way into the main performance area, where everybody was sort of seeing or moving into, there was this pile of soil with a rose growing out of it, but it was dried, dead. The soil was also inside, inside in the museum. There's no sun nothing's gonna grow there. Everything was dead. The soil was very much alive though. It was wet, you could tell you know, it's potting soil. So it was like it was kind of like that moment of like, what is that? Of discovery. So my character noticed it, went to it, started touching it, started playing with it, connecting to it and then then it, in my narrative, that's when it was fully like, possessed, like there was a transition started like rubbing the dirt sensually on their body and really feeling it connecting to it. And then the music changed, the character did a back somersault and then slowly rose into these like undulating waves of silhouette movement, like, and just kind of moving around and sort of looking at the crowd, trying to show the love they're feeling, that connection to that other, to the soil, to the dirt that place the elevated existence. And, and then the music changed again. And they sort of woke up. And they started, they went back to their vacuum and their little cart that was full of these paper bags full of soil. They were hidden, but then they started, the character went around and gave the dirt away. So it was at that moment, I was asking, like, how do you relate to this gift?

Micah Haji-Sheikh 15:48
One of my favorite moments of your performance was when the character is leaving. And Yasmina performed barefoot, and that dried rose that was there in that dirt, the character steps on it, and it crunches and I remember just suddenly like feeling so enticed by that moment and feeling so connected in that moment. And I remember like I gasped very low. But it was, it was so just like you said, otherworldly. I feel like that really communicated very well with the audience because I remember feeling so just enticed and felt very intimate to that character. So.

Yasmina Chavez 16:31
Oh, awesome. It's great to hear. It's always great to hear.

LeiAnn Huddleston 16:36
It's great to have that feedback.

Yasmina Chavez 16:37
Yeah.

Micah Haji-Sheikh. 16:38
I don't know if you wanted it.

Yasmina Chavez 16:39
Yeah, thank you. Yes, I love feedback.

Manny Muñoz 16:42
You know, that's funny, because that recalls a moment during the Aluminati Mendieta workshop where as soon as you started doing the pour, or the Aluminati members did the pour onto the mold, the audience, like audibly gasped, as like, the molten aluminum was filling up the mold. Yeah. So in both kind of programs, we had kind of like this feedback happening in real time as the acts were happening, you know.

Micah Haji-Sheikh 17:14
Yeah.

LeiAnn Huddleston 17:15
And it's, it's great too because these were both community programs. But at the same sense, you have the same almost community interaction, like collaboration, where the Aluminati Mendieta workshop that took place on July 8, was an opportunity to collaborate with the community in order to create this wonderful aluminum sculpture piece. And then you also have during the performance event, you have a visceral reaction that you're engaging with, with the audience, especially with a lot of the performances that took place. Since we had five performance artists that were there, it was a very visceral and touching and personal experience for those in attendance.

Yasmina Chavez 17:58
Yeah, I'm so I'm so glad that you did a program with both live performance and live sculpture because that foundry is live sculpture. It's totally. And that was, I think, even though Ana Mendieta's was always a documentation and experienced documentation. It's still there's this sort of mythology that has grown out of it, of like people going to the locations where she performed and trying to find that there's still this sort of aura of wanting to participate and feel that because it's like, there. It's it's, it permeates that, that material documentation, you know.

Micah Haji-Sheikh 18:41
We talked a little bit about ritual. And in the foundry, we always kind of view it like, whenever we light up the crucible, we always try to set intentions. And we did that with the workshop as well, that's just in our foundry, that is something that just happens almost naturally, every single time. It's like, well, what do I want to put into this moment, whether it's an intention that you write on a piece of paper, or some flowers, or there have been ashes in a in a pour that we've done before, old love letters to a girlfriend, there's all kinds of things that we try to just kind of send through into our work and into the metal. And we also mentioned with Ana Mendieta's work, working with fire and water and earth and that's exactly what we do in the foundry. We're working obviously, with molten metal. But then, we also you have to have water because that's part of making sure that the crucible is reset and making sure that it's safe. And then the the coolness of aluminum that comes from the earth that is this endless renewable material, because you can just keep melting it and keep using it over and over and over again. And so I know when we were working through the workshop and trying to figure out what we wanted to do. We felt a lot of that going into this project.

LeiAnn Huddleston 19:56
I did want to kind of go and step back a bit. Because both of you have talked extensively of transformation, of transformants, Yasmina with your performance. But then also I know within the conversations leading up to the Aluminati Mendieta event that was absolutely always a part of the conversation, which was a newfound appreciation that I never really thought of as metal taking a transformation and being a part of that kind of trance modification. Where you're taking this, this thing that was once something else, and you're changing it entirely, but your auto, you're also like adding in those things into the crucible of what you've talked about with the love letters with these, these ashes and things like that, where it can be transformed into something else. And and the, the process just continues and recycles and continues. I love that you've kind of both addressed that. Even though they were different.

Yasmina Chavez 20:53
Well, yeah, it's I think like, for Aluminati, it was more like a visual. A witnessing of transformation.

Micah Haji-Sheikh 21:03
Yeah, absolutely.

Yasmina Chavez 21:04
So material world, the earth right? Transforming into these things. So you immediately connect it, like you can look around you and see how human beings have transformed the earth into this building, into this mic. And yeah, so you get that idea, you see it, you witness it.

Micah Haji-Shiekh 21:20
Definitely, a lot of how we pour, the materials that we start with are not always what we end up with. So sometimes you're creating molds from sand or you're creating it from wax. Or sometimes you create it from like silicone mold, like there's all these different processes that gets you into that kind of transformation. So it just, it's very cyclical, but it's also very sacred.

Yasmina Chavez 21:41
Yeah. I love I love so it's like, it that transcendence lives in chemistry. Yeah. Chemistry is that. Yeah. And I think with mine, it was maybe it's like, more performance art lives more in like, a poetry like a poetic space. And like, if especially if you use narrative, it's also in the characters in the in the relationship between the materials you're using in the space, as a museum. And in the way that, Do you have an audience? Are they participating? Because they're transforming with you. So how do you translate a transformation? Yeah, and I mean, it just, it's all about that live change. The changes that occur. And how do they speak to each other? How do you affect the audience?

LeiAnn Huddleston 22:34
I like what you said, paying witness to that transformation.

Micah Haji-Sheikh 22:38
And how do they transform with you. That was.

LeiAnn Huddleston 22:40
So I think, just in closing, I have a question for both of y'all. But in closing today, what are some things that you want to encourage the listeners as a takeaway from Ana Mendieta, or possibly from the performance or the Aluminati, Aluminati organization?

Micah Haji-Sheikh 23:01
I think for Aluminati, it's just being aware that we're here and that we exist, and we exist in this crazy space, because you would not expect us to be pouring hot metal in the middle of the summer in the desert. But yet, here we are, you know. So it's like, please do be aware that we're here and that it's a really awesome thing, you can definitely follow us on our Instagram. And try to get involved, we're trying to do more community events, because it's bringing people into this place that's normally inaccessible. Most foundry is usually industrial, and it's usually male run, and it's not always welcoming. And by making it more accessible and attainable, accessible in terms of being able to like go and witness it. We're trying to bring that more up to the front. And I think through Ana Mendieta, we were just able to illustrate that more centrally and intimately and through a new audience that we may not normally have in our space.

Yasmina Chavez 24:06
That's awesome. I love like, it's so great to have a program like that. And I'm going to look you up because I didn't know.

Micah Haji-Sheikh 24:14
Aluminati underscore UNLV.

Yasmina Chavez 24:17
And is it open to the public and people can come?

Micah Haji-Sheikh 24:20
So it's not usually open to the public. I know our next event is going to be at the Art Walk which is a public event. But we only have been functioning as the Aluminati for about two and a half years relatively, so we're rapidly growing for sure.

Yasmina Chavez 24:37
What I would want the community to take from from Ana Mendieta's work is well, it's kind of like the same thing with all art, like What is your relationship to the artist's maybe intention or beyond intention? How does? How does that work affect you and, and with hers especially, it's just so relevant right now, to me, it's just crazy relevant, but maybe it's always been relevant. Maybe it's just, it's part of our, it's just so human and these cycles of movement on the earth and but but now I think it's really important to think of your relationship with all the things that she talked about with nation, with place and with home. And with your physical experience of existing, not all of us have the same experience. And it's, it's just so sad that it's so affected by the way we look, by our physical appearance. When we all connect, especially if you think about as children, we connect deeply, to the soil, to plants, to animals, to everything around us. We know that's our first home, we build little homes and forts. And like, you know, we play with these, we are in a transcendental state the whole time as children because we can connect in a creative realm where it's like love, you can't be creative if you don't love something, right, if you're not inspired by it, and, and I think maybe when I think of and I think it's a love, they're love tokens, they're love tokens to her body, the earth. Her experience as a Cuban, as a woman, and as an American. And she created her own idea of it, and tried to share that with everybody sort of empowering us with it, through it. And I hope we can. I think her her work needs to like, I'm so glad it's coming back up, because it's so necessary right now.

LeiAnn Huddleston 26:58
Yeah, it's extremely relevant. I agree with you, especially to the time that we're in currently. Yeah, I don't I don't know how to follow that up. That's brilliant. That was. That was brilliant. Thank you so much for both of you.

Micah Haji-Sheikh 27:12
Thanks for having us.

Yasmina Chavez 27:13
Thanks for having us, for sure.

LeiAnn Huddleston 27:14
Oh, you're welcome. But I did want to also bring up that Ana Mendieta was on view from March until July of 2022 as a part of Still Motion curated in partnership with the Weaving Our Cultures Arts Festival. That is an ongoing partnership within our Center Gallery, where we invite them to curate an exhibition within that space that is more inclusive and representative of underrepresented cultures within the traditional museum space. I also would like to thank Art Bridges for sponsoring the programs, we would not have done it without that funding. This, these were incredible opportunities, and I hope that we formed lifelong partnerships with y'all. And Aluminati, like MJ mentioned, with that upcoming event is going to be I believe, at the Art Walk on November 4.

Micah Haji-Sheikh 28:06
I think so.

LeiAnn Huddleston 28:08
Yes. So mark that on your calendars now. It is always a wonderful time. It's a free event, definitely come on down.

Yasmina Chavez 28:14
And if I can plug.

LeiAnn Huddleston 28:15
Please do.

Yasmina Chavez 28:16
My intermedia students will also have something and I haven't figured that out yet. But um, we'll be part of Art Walk, which again intermedia was like very connect, is very connected to Ana Mendieta's studies. So.

LeiAnn Huddleston 28:26
Yes, it is.

Yasmina Chavez 28:27
So, we can come over. Yeah.

LeiAnn Huddleston 28:32
Well, I want to thank you all for listening. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. And please make sure to visit the Barrick Museum of Art once we reopen with a new set of exhibitions on September 2.

Kevin Krall 28:46
You've been listening to special programming aired in collaboration with the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art on the campus of UNLV. The content of this program did not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and More, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai