| Dates: | born 1975
| | Biography: | Born in Chiapas, Mexico.
Lives and works in Chiapas, Mexico
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1998 Fotofest '98: Looking at the 90's,
Vine
Street Studios, Houston, Texas
Vision Femenina/'Feminine Vision,
University of Massachusetts, Lowel &
Amherst
1997 Territories Singulares: Fotografia
Contemporanea Mexicana, Sala de
Exposiciones del Canal de Isabel II,
Madrid (and toured)
Campo Visual: Vision Indigena de la Vida
Campesina en Chiapas, Cafe La Selva,
San Cristobel de las Casas
1996 Mayan Views, Cambridge
Multiculture Arts Center, Cambridge,
Massachusetts
Dia de los Muertos, Mexican Fine Arts
Center Museum, Chicago
1995 Africus: Johannesburg Biennale,
Johannesburg
Nuestra Cultura Indigena de los Altos de
Chiapas/Our Indigenous Culture of
Highland Chiapas,
Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum,
Chicago
1994 Fotografos Indigenas/Indigenous
Photographers in Chiapas, Adams
House, Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts
Distant Voices, The Puffin Space, New
York
FURTHER READING
Camaristas: Fotografos Mayas de
Chiapas/Mayan
Photographers from Chiapas: Obra
Colectiva, Collective Work,
Archive Fotografico Indigena 1998 | | | Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | | Date of source: | 1999 |
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| | Description: | Maruch Sàntiz Gómez lives in an
isolated community in Chiapas in the
south of Mexico. The region has a
history of struggle for independence, and
its political climate continues to be
tense. In the artist's village, however, life
goes on much as it has for generations.
Local traditions are very much a part of
everyday reality, while the world of mass
media - and certainly that of
contemporary art - is unknown.
Not so long ago Sàntiz Gómez took part
in an education programme organised by
her local church. It was not considered
appropriate that she should develop
literacy skills, since that would have had
a destabilising effect on her family. (Her
husband, for example, had no
opportunity for such luxuries.) Instead
the nun gave her a camera with which to
record her world. There was no training
in the conceptual or compositional
possibilities of photography: simply
basic instruction in the practical use of
the instrument. What followed was
entirely her own creative application of
the medium. She decided to document
the traditional wisdom of her people.
These well-known sayings provide
practical advice for almost any situation.
For example:
To call back home a lost dog, you place
a small clay jar in the middle of the
doorway, you tap the mouth of the jar,
saying the name of the dog three times:
Come, here's your house! Come here's
your house! Come here's your house! is
what you say. The dog will come back
the next day or the third day. If you don't
have a jar you can blow into a gourd
three times.
In each case the artist has expressed
these ideas through objects that
everyone would have in their home. The
photographs - which are mostly very
direct and focused - are not illustrations
of the sayings, but rather concrete
manifestations of their application. In the
case of the lost dog, the jar and the
gourd are centrally framed in their place
by the door, and seen from above as if
from the kneeling position of a person
about to tap the jar.
| | Description Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | Description Source Date: | 1999 | | Gender: | female | | Type: | person |
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