Arts This Week: Last Chance to See “Fuego Eterno: Soberanías Visuales”
By Ben Larsen
Coco Ahn:
At UVA’s Ruffin Gallery, the exhibition Fuego Eterno: Soberanías Visuales is entering its final week. Co-curated by Erika Hirugami, the show brings together indigenous artists and scholars from across the global Spanish speaking world, challenging colonial borders and celebrating ancestral sovereignty. This week, it wraps up with special events: a symposium on Thursday, October 9 and a closing party on Friday, October 10. For Arts. This week, we spoke with Professor Federico Cuatlacuatl.
Federico Cuatlacuatl:
Yeah, my name is Federico Cuatlacuatl. I am an associate professor here in the department of arts, teaching digital arts. My role has been leading this project, both in terms of the exhibition, but also the symposium and the programming that comes around that along with my collaborator, Erika Hirugami, and of course, all the staff, including Elena, who’ve been super supportive. Yeah, Fuego Eterno is a project out of the global Spanish initiative that UVA, the Arts and Sciences College, has launched this year. And along with this initiative, art becomes highlighted as a central point to be able to expand on topics of Spanish. In this case, this exhibition and all the programming around it is talking about Spanish more as a set of histories, narratives, and political histories that that are still in place. I think in this case, we’re talking about the resilience and this creative spirit that has lasted more than 500 years of colonial invasion. We’re really highlighting and amplifying those real, lived experiences, not only from the artists, but from their communities and their diasporas. And here we’re really celebrating the visual and aesthetic culture that has survived. I got to chat with a couple faculty who have brought classes and incorporated the exhibition as part of their curriculum to really push and expand on these conversations, on immigration, on the politics of borders, on the politics of indigeneity beyond those borders. And so it’s been really fruitful to hear people’s feedback, but also to see people engage with this exhibition as it may relate to our current times. This closing event really takes the form of celebrating and embracing the work that these artists have done, and inviting the community to be a part of that. And we need that right now too, right, as much as we need to talk about these difficult topics, we also need to be enacting joy within the communities. We would like this to be an ongoing effort within UVA, but also beyond, with partners, with collaborators. We have an exhibition plan for January 2027, at the Institute Cervantes in New York, that will carry on similar thematics and similar intentionalities as this exhibition. So we’re excited to continue to plan ahead and to be thinking about partnerships also beyond this country, Mexico, Spain and Latin America. We do have a symposium on Thursday of next week, and that’ll be here at UVA, and that will be with guest artists and scholars. And then Friday, we have a workshop with Ben Luca, a guest artist in the exhibition, and that workshop will be at Visible Records, along with a screening as part of that workshop, a film screening, and then the closing party will be that same night, Friday, at Ruffin Hall Gallery in the Department of Art at UVA. There’s going to be an incredible cumbia DJ From New York, who is from my home state, from Puebla. So he goes by the name Hijo de PueblaYork, or “Son of Puebla York,” because there’s a big Puebla diaspora there. So we’ll have that as a big part of the event, so that everyone can enjoy some good cumbia throughout the night. We will have several artists also here, artists and scholars, as part of that closing event, and then we will have a performance by Marilyn Boror Bor, who is an artist from Guatemala, who’s been doing incredible work globally. So yeah, so we’re super lucky that to have all of these different parts as part of the closing event. We’re inviting artists that come from backgrounds that Spanish is not even their first language, which to me, is really beautiful and magical, and that opens up this welcoming for diasporas and communities in Charlottesville and Virginia that may identify with those similar backgrounds. So everyone is welcome, absolutely.
Coco Ahn:
The Ruffin Gallery will host a symposium for panel discussions on Thursday, October 9, and on Friday, there will be a workshop, as well as a closing party with food and live DJing by El Hijo de Puebla York to commemorate the end of the Fuego Eterno exhibition. Learn more online at art.as.virginia.edu. Arts This Week is supported by the 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. For Arts This Week, this is Coco Ahn. You’re listening to WTJU.
