Art in Motion: Guayasamín’s Ecuador Unframed on Display at Southwestern Oklahoma State University
Oswaldo Guayasamín, the acclaimed Ecuadoran artist, may be gone but his art lives on. A travelling interactive exhibit featuring the artist's work is on display at the Southwestern Oklahoma State University, starting Nov. 11, continuing through Dec. 21.
Fundacion Guayasamin, Kellogg Institute for International Studies at University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame Center for Arts and Culture, Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts-Henkels Lecture Fund and a number of others collaborated to make the exhibition at Southwestern Oklahoma State University and other locations possible.
Located on the main floor of the Al Harris Library on the Weatherford campus, the exhibit can be accessed by the public for free. Originally designed for the University of Notre Dame and Latino communities, the travelling installation was recently put on display on the SWOSU campus, due to the efforts of a faculty group headed by Dr. Tugba Sevin, the SWOSU Libraries, SWOSU College of Arts & Sciences and Weatherford Arts Council.
According to a statement made by Sevin, the art incites conversations about the connection between technology and art, and it sparks exploration of politics, identity and culture. The art manages to link media visualization, mathematic analysis and computer programming.
The exhibit showcases a quality archival reproduction of the mural "Ecuador," a work completed by the Ecuadorian master painter and prominent twentieth artist Guayasamín in 1952. The real mural is framed and located in La Capilla del Hombre, Quito, Ecuador. Composed of five interchangeable and movable panels, the mural has been immobile until recently. The digital interface shown alongside the reproduction allows viewers to witness the 30,720 potential arrangements of the piece, and they're effectively able to assemble their own murals.
The five-panel mural was created by Guayasamín as part of Huacayñán / El camino del llanto / The Way of Tears, a collection of more than 100 paintings that captured the initial phase of his artistic production. The artist of Mestiza and Quechua descent used his art to explore ideas of movement, identity, pain and progress.
The international art exhibit, "Art in Motion: Guayasamin's Ecuador Unframed," took up residence at the University of Notre Dame just weeks prior to its arrival at SWOSU. The exhibit is only scheduled to appear at Vanderbilt University, Notre Dame, the Ecuadorian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and SWOSU.