End Date: Friday, March 14, 2025
Street art in Oaxaca City, Oaxaca featuring prints (left and center) by Colectivo Subterráneos. Photograph by Gustavo García, 2024.
Oaxaca Ingobernable: Aesthetics, Politics, and Art from Below, explores subversive representations of embodied resistance by Indigenous and Black Oaxacan communities in Mexico and the United States through collaborative artmaking practices and largescale relief prints, on view in the Hibben Center and Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico.
On display in the Hibben Center is an array of work by Colectivo Subterráneos, and next door at the Maxwel Museum of Anthropology is a site-specific installation by Colectivo Subterráneos and Pavel Acevedo. These artists critically interrogate historical and contemporary impacts of colonialism and capitalism on marginalized Oaxacan communities. Their striking, often larger than life works depict how these communities—of which they are part—struggle to retain Indigenous knowledges, lands, languages, and collective practices in the face of indigenismo, antiblackness, xenophobia, and dehumanization. Through a shared history of rebellious politics, communal solidarity, and visually bold tactics, these artists embody the spirit of ungovernability, and strive to incite positive social change in Oaxaca and beyond.
Colectivo Subterráneos (Underground Collective) is a multi-generational group of Oaxacan artists, primarily composed of young people, who create relief prints and murals to illuminate social issues. The collective formally started in 2021 with just six members and has since grown to over thirty members. They maintain a multipurpose space in the center of Oaxaca where they make, show, and sell art and run a free arts school called Escuela de Arte para el Pueblo (Art School for the People). Their artistic and political traditions have been shaped by social movements in Oaxaca and beyond. Inspired by internationalist leftist artists, their name purposefully aligns them with working class, exploited, and oppressed communities who occupy spaces below the upper-class and outside of top-down politics and social hierarchies.
The collective's main goal is to create art that is politically representative of and accessible to local communities. By creating unsanctioned public art and activating the streets as their primary canvas, Subterráneos reclaim spaces slowly being seized by external global capital and return these spaces to the community. Through their workshops, they create more spaces for community members where they can learn artistic practices that not only allow them to share their stories but also make a living from producing art.
Artist Pavel Acevedo was born in Oaxaca, Mexico and currently resides in Riverside, California. His experiences in Oaxacan protests, including the 2006 popular uprising in Oaxaca City and movements in California, shape the focus of his creative work. He uses linoleum printing and muralism to engage with the deep and often overwhelming tensions he and countless other Oaxacans experience around migration, borders, and nation states. His practice of collaborative printmaking encourages collective meaning making. Acevedo draws on Zapotec storytelling and contemporary Oaxacan migrant experiences to blend the (super)natural world with rebellious and life-affirming visions of Oaxacan being.
Together, these artists offer visually compelling stories of Indigenous and Black Oaxacan communities and their struggles across time and place to remember tradition, culture, collective practices and resistance to systemic oppression and erasure. Through their work, they continue to enact an ungovernable politic that has been present in Indigenous and Afro-Oaxacan communities for centuries. This exhibit is generously supported by the Department of Chicana/o Studies, El Centro de la Raza, Center for Regional Studies, the Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies, and the Latin American & Iberian Institute.
Relief Printing Workshops: Please join us September 30 to October 5, 2024 for hands-on linoleum printing workshops with Pavel Acevedo. Stay tuned for more information.
Contact: For questions or more information, please contact the Maxwell Museum’s Curator of Public Programs Julián Antonio Carrillo (jac123@unm.edu) and exhibition co--curator Gustavo Garcia (garciagustavo1@unm.edu).
Bilingual (in Spanish and English) Exhibition Press Kit is available here.
End Date: Friday, March 14, 2025
Grabado en la Ciudad de Oaxaca por Colectivo Subterráneos. Fotografía de Gustavo García, 2024.
**Recepción de inauguración: sábado, 7 de septiembre, 2024, de 2-4 pm. Los co-curadores darán una plática seguida por una breve presentación por el Colectivo Subterráneos. Se ofrecerá interpretación de inglés/español; también se ofrecerá bebidas y comida ligera.**
¡Oaxaca Ingobernable!: Estética, política y arte desde abajo, explora representaciones subversivas de poder, movilización y resistencia de comunidades indígenas y afros oaxaqueños en México y Estados Unidos a través de instalaciones de grabados en el Centro Hibben y el Museo Maxwell de Antropología de la Universidad de Nuevo México.
En el Atrio del Centro Hibben, hay una serie de obras del Colectivo Subterráneos y al lado, en el Museo Maxwell, hay una instalación del Colectivo Subterráneos y Pavel Acevedo. Juntos, estos artistas exploran críticamente los impactos históricos y contemporáneos del colonialismo y el capitalismo en las comunidades marginadas de Oaxaca. Sus obras, en su grandez representan la vida real de comunidades indígenas que luchan por conservar sus conocimientos, tierras, idiomas, y prácticas colectivas frente al indigenismo, racismo antinegro, la xenofobia y la deshumanización. A través de una historia compartida de política rebelde, solidaridad comunitaria y tácticas visualmente audaces, estos artistas encarnan el espíritu de ingobernabilidad y se esfuerzan por incitar un cambio social positivo en Oaxaca y más allá.
Colectivo Subterráneos es un grupo multigeneracional de artistas oaxaqueños, compuesto principalmente por jóvenes, que hacen grabados y murales para iluminar temas sociales. El colectivo comenzó formalmente en 2021 con solo seis miembros y desde entonces ha crecido a más de treinta miembros. Mantienen un espacio de usos múltiples en el centro de Oaxaca donde hacen, exhiben y venden arte y dirigen una escuela de arte gratuita llamada Escuela de Arte para el Pueblo. Sus tradiciones artísticas y políticas han sido moldeadas por movimientos sociales en Oaxaca y más allá. Inspirados por artistas de izquierda internacionalistas, su nombre Subterráneos los alinea con comunidades de clase trabajadora, explotadas y oprimidas que ocupan espacios de abajo, fuera de la política de arriba y las jerarquías sociales.
El objetivo principal del colectivo es crear arte que sea políticamente representativo y accesible para las comunidades locales. Al crear arte público que no está autorizado en las calles como su lienzo principal, Subterráneos recupera espacios que lentamente se está apoderando el capital global y se los devuelve a las comunidades de Oaxaca. A través de sus talleres crean más espacios para que miembros de la comunidad aprendan la técnica del grabado y otras prácticas artísticas que les permitan compartir sus historias y también vivir económicamente del arte.
El artista Pavel Acevedo nació en Oaxaca, México y actualmente vive en Riverside, California. Sus experiencias en las protestas oaxaqueñas, incluido el levantamiento popular de 2006 en la ciudad de Oaxaca y los movimientos en California, dan forma al foco de su trabajo creativo. Utiliza la impresión en linóleo y el muralismo para abordar las luchas profundas que él y muchos oaxaqueños enfrentan en torno a la migración, las fronteras y los estados nacionales. Su práctica de grabado colaborativo fomenta la creación de significado colectivo. Acevedo se basa en la narración zapoteca y las experiencias de los inmigrantes oaxaqueños contemporáneos para combinar el mundo natural con visiones rebeldes y afirmativas de la vida del ser oaxaqueño.
Juntos, estos artistas ofrecen representaciones visuales de pueblos indígenas y afro-oaxaqueñas, particularmente las luchas por preservar tradiciones, culturas, prácticas colectivas y resistencias contra la opresión. A través de su trabajo, continúan promulgando una política ingobernable que ha estado presente en las comunidades indígenas y afro-oaxaqueñas durante muchos siglos.
Esta exhibición cuenta con el generoso apoyo del Departamento de Estudios Chicanos y Chicanas, El Centro de la Raza, el Centro de Estudios Regionales y el Centro Alfonso Ortiz de Estudios Interculturales.
Taller de Grabado: Acompáñanos el 30 de septiembre a 5 de octubre para participar en talleres de grabado con Pavel Acevedo. más información de los talleres saldrá muy pronto.
Contacto: Si tienen preguntas o quieren más información, comuníquese con el curador de programas públicos de Maxwell, Julián Antonio Carrillo (jac123@unm.edu) y el co-curador de la exposición Gustavo García (garciagustavo1@unm.edu).
Para descargar el Comunidado de Prensa bilingüe (en español e inglés) haga clic aquí
End Date: Saturday, May 3, 2025
Two sites of former hogans. Fartherest [sic] occupied this year, nearest one occupied this year. Red Lake (Tolani Lakes, Leupp, Arizona), 1935-1936. Milton Snow. Reproduction of gelatin silver print, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Archives, 87.45.116.
**Opening Reception: Saturday, May 4, 2024, from 3-5 pm. Exhibition co-curator Dr. Denetdale will give a brief lecture from 3:30-4 pm, and refreshments will be provided.**
Using the photograph as a site of inquiry, this exhibition examines the impact of U.S. Indian Commissioner John Collier’s brutal Navajo Livestock Reduction Program on Diné communities and homelands.
Imposed upon Navajo people in the 1930s, this federal program proposed to eliminate over half of Diné livestock herds. Against the backdrop of the Dust Bowl and the Hoover Dam, livestock reduction was an extreme response to reports of over-grazing throughout Diné Bikéyah, the Navajo homeland. Collier’s policies were carried out in ignorance of Diné land management practices and community needs. Imprisoned for resisting, Diné people were forced to watch their livelihoods decimated as their sacred animals were taken from them. Livestock reduction resulted in widespread, harmful, and long-term sociocultural, environmental, economic, and political changes throughout Diné Bikéyah.
Diné communities resisted livestock reduction policies. They saw their domestic animals as gifts from the Holy People, who offered them as the foundation for the Diné way of life. As a result of Collier’s tool of colonial control, Navajo people were no longer able to care for their land, their communities, and their herds in the ways they always had. In reflecting on this period, Marilyn Help (Diné) says, “You people...are heartless. You have now killed me. You have cut off my arms. You have cut off my legs. You have taken my head off. There is nothing left for me.”
Hired by the Navajo Service in 1937, non-Native photographer Milton Snow (1905–1986) was instructed to document the the federal government’s supposedly well-intentioned program to address “the Navajo problem.” Over the course of twenty years, Snow produced thousands of images of Diné people, homes, and landscapes, all of which were intended to provide proof that federal technologies were in fact working to “rehabilitate” Navajo lands and lives. Instead, Snow’s photographs show us radically harmed and altered communities, landscapes, and homes. We see the construction of dams, mines, and imposed grazing and agricultural practices; and newly formed political, educational, and socioeconomic organizations, all of which point to the pervasive, oppressive nature of American colonial administration.
By placing Snow’s images in conversation with a selection of archival documents and contemporary photographs, this exhibition foregrounds Diné perspectives on the intersecting and ongoing legacies of both photography and American colonialism.
Exhibition Press Kit is available here.
Exhibition Book List is available here.
End Date: Saturday, December 7, 2024
Administrative tablet in clay envelope with seal impressions. King Shulgi of Ur, 2094-2047 BCE. MMA 67.34.1
In 1967, Museum Director Frank C. Hibben donated a small collection of inscribed clay tablets to the UNM Anthropology Museum (now the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology). These tablets, dating between 4100 and 1600 years ago, come from Mesopotamia in modern Southwest Asia, home to the world’s first cities, states, and writing systems.
Since their decipherment in the 1850s, tablets inscribed in cuneiform (wedge-shaped) script have provided insights into the economic, social, and religious lives of ancient Mesopotamians. They have also circulated around the world—as a result of colonial era archaeological expeditions, looting, and rampant site destruction fueled by terrorism, war, and economic desperation.
This exhibition highlights the eight cuneiform tablets in the Maxwell Museum collections and our attempts to uncover their journey to Albuquerque. It explores what such artifacts, once removed from their archaeological context, can – and cannot – teach us about the Mesopotamian past. It also explores the past and present legacies of the removal and destruction of cultural heritage and current efforts toward the restoration and restitution of archaeological heritage in the Middle East and far beyond.