Black Mirror/Espejo Negro

ISBN-13: 9780938989349 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 128 str.

Pedro Lasch

Opis

The provocative three-part project "Black Mirror/Espejo Negro" by the artist Pedro Lasch encompasses a museum installation, photographs of the installation, and this bilingual book, including many of the photos, the artist s statement, and critical commentaries. The project began as an installation commissioned by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University to accompany the exhibition "El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III." In a gallery adjacent to the exhibit of Spanish Golden Age masterpieces, Lasch placed black rectangular mirrors on the walls, each with an image of a Spanish Renaissance painting behind it. Pre-Columbian stone and ceramic figures, chosen by Lasch from the museum s permanent collection of Meso-American art, stood on pedestals facing toward each mirror and away from visitors entering the room. Viewers were drawn into a meditation on colonialism and spectatorship when, on looking into the black mirrors, they saw the pre-Columbian figures, seventeenth and eighteenth-century Spanish priests and conquistadores, themselves, and the contemporary gallery environment. The book "Black Mirror/Espejo Negro" includes full-color reproductions of thirty-nine photographs of the installation, as well as the text that Lasch wrote to accompany it. In short essays, scholars reflect on Lasch s work in relation to current debates in art history and visual studies, race discourse, pre-Columbian studies, postcolonial theory, and de-colonial thought.

"Contributors." Srinivas Aravamudan, Jennifer A. Gonzalez, Pedro Lasch, Arnaud Maillet, Walter Mignolo, Pete Sigal"