Graduate students are employing the right hemispheres of their brains to explore the Western Hemisphere of the world.
“Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas,” an annual publication from the Department of Art and Art History, is a compilation of graduate student essays. The publication holds a symposium Friday to preview content in the upcoming edition.
Johanna Wild, a grad student and editor-in-chief of the publcation, said the topics are nationalism, transnationalism and postnationalism. Writers are selected from a global pool of applicants and are chosen based on how well they represent the publication’s theme.
Paul Kuenker, a speaker from Arizona State University, said he will discuss the importance of studying border lands and how borders construct our relationship to other countries.
Although his discussion focuses primarily on the U.S.-Canadian border, he said the topic is still applicable to people in the New Mexico and Arizona region because studying one border fosters an understanding of all borders.
“I think, especially with the states we are in, the Mexican border is so apparent,” he said. “The kinds of issues we see in our relationship with that neighbor has brought this to the forefront.”
The symposium’s keynote speaker, Gustavo Larach, the curator and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art and Art History, specializes in the modern and contemporary art of Central America.
His topic, the Third Honduran Biennial of Visual Art, is a compilation of his current research, which focuses on the work of contemporary Honduran artists, he said.
Larach said that 65 percent of Hondurans live with incomes below the poverty line, so Honduran artists frequently create art that gives a voice to underprivileged groups.
“Artists are developing works that point to the awful conditions in which most people have to subsist in Honduras,” he said.
Larach said he hopes listeners will leave the symposium with a new consciousness of the harsh environments in which people around the world live.
“In terms of contemporary Honduran art, I would hope that the American public will be more aware of how things are there in terms of human rights abuses,” he said. “That’s not covered in the media, so artists are trying to bring attention to it.”
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Hemisphere Symposium
Friday
2-5:30 p.m.
SUB Acoma A
