Description
“Wearable Codex,” 2023, Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza. Image transfer (some color) on canvas, 72 x 678 x 1 cm. Getty Research Institute, 2023-B119. © Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza
Speakers: Dr. Idurre Alonso, Head of Modern and Contemporary Collections, Getty Research Institute, and Dr. Steven Zucker, Smarthistory
In response to the 2022 exhibition “Reinventing the Américas” at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, artists Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza reinserted Indigenous knowledge into a space largely devoted to Eurocentric views of the Americas. They created a foldable codex, similar to pre-Hispanic manuscripts created in the ancient Americas, though their version is large with cloth straps allowing a person to wear it. The “Wearable Codex” features images from ancient American codices like the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, the Codex Borgia, and the Florentine Codex, and reflects Indigenous knowledge that was largely destroyed during colonization. Cortez’s and esparza’s performance with their artwork, in which they wore the codex and walked through the galleries, challenged the historical record as presented by Europeans and reminded audiences of the fact that knowledge existed on the continents long before the arrival of colonizers.
Now part of the Getty Research Institute’s collections, “Wearable Codex” continues to challenge the Eurocentrism of the archive and shows that historical collections can be brought into conversation with contemporary art as an ongoing process of repair and cultural memory.
Beatriz Cortez is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores memory, migration, Indigenous knowledge, and speculative futures.
rafa esparza is an artist based in Los Angeles whose work engages histories of land, labor, Brown and queer experiences, and Mesoamerican forms of knowledge.
This video was made possible by the GRI Council.
Links:
“Wearable Codex” at the Getty Research Institute:
https://primo.getty.edu/permalink/f/19q6gmb/GETTY_ALMA21250961220001551
Reinventing the Americas: Construct. Erase. Repeat.
https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/reinventing_americas/index.html
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