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Ella Powell: 

You’re listening to WTJU Charlottesville. On Friday, August 29th, the Global Spanish Art Exhibition, Fuego Eterno: Soberanías Visuales, will open at Ruffin gallery, showcasing work from 15 artists and 10 writers who share their indigenous and ancestral heritage from communities impacted by Spanish colonialism. For Arts This Week, we spoke to Erika Hirugami, co-curator of the exhibit with Professor Federico Cuatlacuatl.  

Erika Hirugami:  

I’m Erika Hirugami. I am an Academic curator based out of UCLA me and professor we’ve envisioned a project like this forever, but we’ve been like legitimately in the trenches of doing for about a year. The project brings together over 30 scholars and artists from all the contemporary countries that were originally colonized by Spain. The project has to do with a new initiative by UVA called Global Spanish that brings together scholars and in this case, also artists from all over Spanish speaking communities to talk about not just how indigeneity has thrived in spite of Spanish colonialism, but also our knowledge that comes from our ancestors that continues to permeate today. We’ve got Nawa people, we got Maya people, we’ve got Zapotec people. We’ve got Mayan K’ekchi to people. We have the Chazak people. We have so many great individuals here who are still utilizing the knowledge of our ancestors today. 

Ella Powell: 

How will the exhibit visually blend the work of transnational artists and scholars? Can you tell me about your curatorial process and how additional scholars have informed the final layout of the exhibit?  

Erika Hirugami:  

The scholars are kicking in with a publication. We’re starting a series of publications where we will have an art object that brings together other artists to create a one of a kind, let’s call it book, and then from there on, we will have an academic journal that we’ll bring together and weave together all of these. But you’ve got about 20 artists who will be a part of the exhibition. There’s now a mural up at UVA that we just finished, and then there’s performances, there’s video work, there’s installations, there’s paintings, there’s sculptures.  

Ella Powell:  

Can you describe how your work as a curator and scholar braids the “aesthetics of undocumentedness to challenge immigration policy and politics,” and also share how Fuego Eterno contributes to the large body of research and knowledge you’ve shared? 

Erika Hirugami:  

I think a lot about policy. When I do my curatorial research, beyond thinking about just the objects in the space, it’s also thinking about the individuals that I’m working with. So as an example, there are maybe more than seven undocumented individuals in this exhibition who have been or are undocumented at various countries all around the world. Marilyn Borodor, who is an artist who will be doing a performance and also has three artworks in the exhibition, including a tombstone, is talking about not undocumentedness, but the bureaucracy of existing as an indigenous person in Guatemala, and this reality where a lot of indigenous communities want to assimilate into whiteness, so much so that they remove their indigenous name for, you know, a whiter passing one. And so there’s a lot of overlap in between my research that has to do with immigration and white supremacy and citizenship and bureaucracy, and even just having an exhibition in Virginia at a time in which the tariffs are just, you know, politically running rampant is become something that I’m, like, very intrigued by, because an exhibition of this magnitude, when we thought about it, before this current administration, which something much easier to achieve than it has to become based on all of the policies that are also a part of the immigration policy of this country, whether we want to or not. The way we think of tariffs has to do with access to getting information out, access to goods both in and out of the country. And this isn’t that different, right? These are art goods, but these are also things that are being shipped from all over the world.  

Ella Powell:  

Fuego Eterno adopts a new paradigm of interdisciplinary scholarship to resist extractive colonial epistemologies. Can you share why this shift towards adopting a new politics of difference is so important to resisting colonialist ties and preserving the ancestral lineage of artists? 

Erika Hirugami:  

I think that colonialism and capitalism, right? A subset of the same are very invested in assimilating us all into one cohesive narrative which is not that dissimilar than what the current administration said they’re going to do in museology at large, at the Smithsonian this week, and I think there is a push from now the government to solidify this ideal of American exceptionalism. But I think a project like this one, and most of the projects that I do, to be honest with you, talk about a reality beyond exceptionalism, because all humans are created equal, and all humans matter the same. Through art, you can start acknowledging the messiness and the murkiness of the history of our communities. You also have a community of individuals coming together from around the globe to say, Hey, this is what unites us as a community, like we don’t want to look at our differences, we don’t want to whitewash our realities, we don’t want to like continue to live in epistemologies that are erasing everything that we come from. We also want to unite to create, you know, a communal front where we can learn from each other’s ancient knowledge, and we can continue to do that in spite of all these governments, in spite of all this erasure, in spite of all this demand for assimilation, in spite of us not aligning one to one with everything that’s in our intersectionality, we’re still allowed to unite. 

Ella Powell:  

What will the opening event for the exhibit offer to the public, and what other events do you have planned for the duration of the exhibit through October 10? 

Erika Hirugami:  

There will be a beautiful opening in a couple of days, but the closing events will include a symposium where a lot of these artists and scholars will be joined at UVA. It will have workshops where you can create art with these artists. There will be a series of conversations about migration, about colonialism, about, you know, extractive epistemologies, about indigenous realities today, about community involvement. There will be food. There will be a DJ that we’re flying in from New York. Having an exhibition closing event means that people get to spend time with the art, digest it, think about it, challenge themselves through it, have questions. And then at the end, with all of us coming together, then you get to have an informed conversation. Like, hey, I came and I saw this piece, and this is what I thought, like, am I completely wrong? Or I came and I saw this, and I’m thinking of this like, did you think of this when you made it these questions aren’t something that you can ask at the opening, because you see the artwork for 20 minutes and people are on site. The opposite generates better conversations. In my mind, one of the things that I think about often is intergenerational knowledge creation. These people are brilliant, and they teach me things that books could never. The idea is to create knowledge together. And how are we going to create knowledge together if we’re not communicating with one another? It’s spectacular, but it’s also like this great project. I’m beyond excited to come out in the next couple of weeks and you know, just join in celebration with all these people. 

Ella Powell:

On August 29^th, the Global Spanish Art Exhibition, Fuego Eterno, co-curated by Erika Hirugami and Federico Cuatlacuatl, will be open for public viewing until October 10^th. Ruffin Gallery is located on the third floor of Ruffin Hall at 179 Culbreth Road. You can find more information on the exhibit at CuratorLove.com and the UVA Global Spanish website under the event tab.  

Arts This Week is supported by UVA Arts Council and Piedmont Virginia Community College. PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance, music, theater, and visual arts programming. Learn more at pvcc.edu.