Join us on Tuesday, April 4, 2023 from 5-7pm in the Mabel Smith Douglass Library to view the exhibition, To Translate the Unfathomable, and for a reception and an artist’s lecture by 2022-23 Estelle Lebowitz Endowed Visiting Artist, Sandy Rodriguez!
Rodriguez’s recent work consists of maps, botanical studies, and figural compositions painted in hand processed watercolors on amate paper with techniques, forms, and pigments of Mesoamerican manuscripts produced by the Mexica people and other Mexican natives in the first century after the Conquest of Mexico (1519-21). Part of her solo exhibition focuses on over two dozen preparatory works for Mapa for Malinche and our Stolen Sisters (2021), a recent commission of the Denver Art Museum of a large-scale map of Mexico and portions of the U.S. Southwest that traces the life of Malintzin, an Indigenous woman who served as translator for conquistador Hernán Cortés. Popularly known as La Malinche, her legacy looms large over Mexican culture—she is both commemorated as a feminist and reviled as a traitor. The exhibition is curated by Tatiana Flores, Director, Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities and Professor of Art History and Latino & Caribbean Studies, and advised by Camilla Townsend, Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Rutgers Working Group of Hemispheric Indigenous Studies. It will be on view in the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Galleries at Douglass Library through April 7, 2023.
Sandy Rodriguez is a Los Angeles-based Chicana artist. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Creative Capital grant, the Caltech-Huntington Art + Research Residency, and the City of Los Angeles COLA Master Artist Fellowship. Her work forms part of important museum collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Amon Carter Museum, and the Denver Art Museum.
SPONSORS
The Lebowitz program is funded in part by the Estelle Lebowitz Memorial Fund, endowed in 1999 by Professor Joel Lebowitz, Director of the Center for Mathematical Sciences Research, Rutgers University, in honor of his late wife, artist Estelle Lebowitz. Sponsored by the Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities, Department of History, and the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. Co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, Department of Art History, Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Institute for Women’s Leadership, Rutgers Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies, and The Language Center. The Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series is a program of CWAH in partnership with Rutgers University Libraries.
Image: Sandy Rodriguez, (detail) Mapa for Malinche and our Stolen Sisters, 2021