Restoring Territory and Memory: Displays of visual archives in Michoacán

Project Type: Phase 2 Projects - Commissions (Sep 2022-Sep 2023)

---

Project Region: Central and South America

---

Description

Synopsis and Position

Based on current research on local visual archives in indigenous Purhépecha communities of Michoacán, this project proposes to organise and mount three photographic exhibitions in the region. The exhibitions, planned in close collaboration with local photographers and cultural promoters, build on contemporary initiatives that delve into visual archives and seek to actualize them through ingenious forms of public circulation.

Objectives and Methods

Together, these three exhibits seek to nourish ongoing efforts to restore community memory following historical processes of territorial,cultural and economic dispossession provoked by natural disasters, as well as by the Mexican state and by increasing drug related violence in the region. Main research methods include interviews, participant observation and collaborative curatorial activities, photographic exhibits and archive preservation workshops.

Workshops and Events

Three photographic exhibits in November 2022, June 2022 and August 2022, in communities of the Purhépecha Meseta and Sierra. One of them will itinerate around the region. Three workshops on archive preservation and one on curatorial activity, dates to be defined.

Activities

The first exhibition (Nov-dec 2022) is based on historical photographs that Purhépecha photographer Prisciliano Diego has collected from local families in an attempt, in his words, to “document our history from our own ways of looking.” The second one (May-July 2023) brings together a selection of studio portraits and landscape photography by 10 contemporary Indigenous photographers working in the region and with whom we have previously collaborated. The third exhibition (August 2023) proposes a conversation between scientific, anthropological and local photographic and documentary archives on the Paricutin volcano’s emergence in 1943 and its current territorial and social aftermaths.

Legacy IF page:https://imaginingfutures.world/projects/restoring-territory-and-memory-displays-of-visual-archives-in-michoacan/