'Tlali Nantli: Conexiones Con La Tierra'

“Encuentros, Convenings and Conversations,” a project of Las Maestras Center for Xicana Indigenous Thought, Art and Social Practice at University of California, Santa Barbara, in collaboration with the Centro Cultural de la Raza, Balboa Park in San Diego.

We are honored to host and present: "Tlali Nantli: Conexiones con la tierra" - May 6 through May 29, 2022, join us for the opening reception on May 6 at 5 p.m.

The relationship to land has been one of the most important connections that peoples across the world have upheld since the beginning of time. However, that connection was attempted to be disrupted due to the commodification of land enacted throughout the world by European forces. Today, systems of Neo-colonialism continue to enact policies to eradicate the sacred relationships that people hold to the land. This exhibition centers the nahuatl phrase Tlali Nantli which means Madre Tierra or Earthmother, to highlight the sacred relationships that peoples continue to uphold with the earth and all its creations on the Americas.

"Tlali Nantli: Conexiones con la tierra," brings together the works of Xicana, Cubana, and African American artists, Gina Aparicio, Nereida Garcia-Ferraz, Susy Hernandez, Gilda Posada, Celia Herrera Rodriguez, and Fan Lee Warren. Together, the artists offer an intergenerational political and practical narration of what it means to uphold the feminine energies on this earth. The works in this exhibition are tied together through the sacred elements of life: water, earth, wind, and fire. Together, the artists deliver a reminder of the important physical and spiritual relationship that exists between humans and the Earth.

This exhibition is the beginning of an intergenerational collaborative project between these artists that will culminate in a traveling collaborative installation, "Teo(tl)ria Xicana -An Assemblage of Energy." In the summer 2021 Celia Herrera Rodriguez invited these artists to come together, with the support of Las Maestras Center at UCSB, to talk about the possibilities of working together on a project that centered the feminine energy that emerges and is hyper-visible during times of crisis and chaos. Rodriguez invited the artist to join her in this project due to their skills, their politica, and their ways of working. Aparicio, Garcia-Ferraz, Hernandez, Posada, Herrera Rodriguez, Lee Warren, and Velencia are all artists that teach and work in the community and think about their work as an act of continuity. Teo(tl)ria Xicana -An Assemblage of Energy, the working title of the artistic collaboration will be a traveling installation that will be interactive with the communities in which it is mounted.

"Tlali Nantli: Conexiones con la tierra," is the first exhibition of each artists’ individual work, and serves as the first step towards the initial discussion creating in collaboration. The Centro Cultural de la Raza was chosen as the first site of this artistic collaboration in acknowledgment of the historical importance that activist-cultural spaces have held in our communities. We offer these works as a way to augment, re-occupy, revive and honor the ground created by community artists/activists over the last 50 years.

• Gina Aparicio (Xicana sculptor/ceramicist) living/teaching high school in Georgia
• Nereida Garcia-Ferraz (Cuban painter/photographer) living/teaching in Miami, Florida
• Susy Hernandez (Xicana painter, fiber sculptor, and performance) living/working in Davis, California
• Gilda Posada (Xicana printmaker) living/teaching UC-Davis
• Celia Herrera Rodriguez (Xicana painter, installation, and performance) living/teaching UC Santa Barbara
• Fan Lee Warren (African American painter and sculptor) living/teaching Oakland, at Laney College
• Jairo Valencia (Xicano) living/teaching at UC Santa Barbara and Hood Herbalism

Visit Centro Cultural de la Raza on Facebook