Maria Thereza Alves: Colonial Practices and Cultural Repression by the Municipality against the Community Museum of the Valle de Xico but “It is our 25th anniversary and we are still here.”
Free and open to the public; online only.
*Please note, this lecture will be presented live by our cosponsor, the Berkeley Center for New Media, at 12:30pm PT. Please register for the live afternoon lecture at https://berkeley.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VyJNbhBESe6dn6HS2bXxNA.*
**This lecture will also be re-streamed at our original 6:30pm PT event time. Please register for the evening viewing of this lecture at https://berkeley.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_z7X5V53HSL-2eob-hyFWVA.**
The Valle de Xico Community Museum in the State of Mexico celebrates 25 years of resistance this year. Maria Thereza Alves has worked with the museum since 2009 and through collaborations the installation, The Return of a Lake, was made. The museum was closed by the municipality in 2019 by what the community considers an illegal act. The museum requests dissemination of this situation. As a result, further collaborations resulted in performative works and the on-going project, Son del Pueblo, an attempt through social media not only to re-make artifacts that are no longer accessible to the community but also to make the collection available beyond Xico.
Presented by the Berkeley Center for New Media as part of the Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium and the Indigenous Technologies Initiative in partnership with the Center for Latin American Studies. Co-sponsored by Spanish & Portuguese, the Center for Race and Gender, the Arts Research Center, and The American Indian Graduate Program.
Maria Thereza Alves, (Brazil, 1961) has participated in the Sydney Biennale (2020), Toronto Biennale (2019), Manifesta 12 in Palermo and 7 in Trento, Sao Paulo Biennale (2016 and 2010), Berlin Biennale 8, Sharjah Bienale (2017) and dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012, Taipei Biennale (2012), Guangzhou Triennale 3 and the Second Havana Biennale. She has had a solo exhibit at MUAC in Mexico City and a survey exhibit at CAAC in Seville. Alves is the recipient of the Vera List Prize for Art and Politics 2016-2018.
In 1978, as a member of the International Indian Treaty Council, Alves made an official presentation of human rights abuses of the indigenous population of Brazil at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Alves was one of the founding members of the Green Party of Sao Paulo in 1987. Recent books are Recipes for Survival published by University of Texas Press and Thieves and Murderers in Naples: A Brief History on Families, Colonization, Immense Wealth, Land Theft, Art and the Valle de Xico Community Museum in Mexico published by Di Paolo Edizioni.