FALL 2017: SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY
With objects, images, texts, and social projects by 12 contemporary artists from Guatemala, Acts of Aggression considers the many ways we construct and process experiences of community, especially within dystopic day-to-day realities. From affective processes of remembrance, solitude, play, misunderstanding, collaboration, and care, we experience myriad forms of encounter in our interactions with others. Through these shifting points of contact, connection, and disconnection, we outline the (ever-changing) parameters of our communities and define our own situations within them. Working 20 years after the official end of Guatemala’s civil war, the artists in Acts of Aggression navigate the reconciliation of historic with ongoing violence, challenge political amnesia, care for self and others, and build strategies for working through and around disastrous systemic failures. Acts of Aggression looks to small gestures, conversations, and ways of being to suggest their deep political relevance and argues that our attempts (and failures) to connect to each other constitute a resilience that has significant ramifications for how we might face life in the aggressive present. Acts of Aggression is curated by Laura A. L. Wellen, PhD. The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual (English/Spanish catalog).