Adela Goldbard will deliver a talk about her 2025 Triennial exhibition at Boston City Hall Plaza and subsequent solo exhibition, in the University Gallery at 51ÊÓƵ; both titled “Invadieron por mar, respondemos con fuego. Un presagio. Translation: They invaded by sea, we respond with fire. An omen.
For Goldbard’s triennial project, she built a quarter-scale ship, based on Colonial era ships, show-casing building techniques from across the Americas that feature master artisans from Tultapec and Peruvian shipbuilding techniques from Lake Titicaca. A primary building material is phragmites, invasive reeds common to New England.
The boat will be burned on Friday September 12th at City Hall. From the Triennial website: “This fiery spectacle will engage local Native-American musicians and Mexican pyrotechnic traditions to transform invasive materials and symbols into a cathartic communal performance. Goldbard brings together knowledge and traditions from across the continent, highlighting the potential for healing and regeneration amidst legacies of environmental degradation and colonization. Adela Goldbard works within communities to reframe traumatic stories in public spaces. She employs the spectacle and fire of pyrotechnics to help acknowledge and cleanse painful events.”
This ritual cleansing will be videotaped and projected in a three channel installation with sound with a maquette of the boat made by the same artisans and other detritus and materials from the event at City Hall plaza.
BioSketch:
Adela Goldbard is an interdisciplinary artist-scholar and educator from Mexico. Member of the National System of Artistic Creators of Mexico (SNCA), she holds an MFA as a Full Merit Fellow in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and a bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Language and Literature from the National University of Mexico (UNAM). Goldbard investigates how radical community performances can subvert the imposition of hegemonic narratives, and how performances of violence and destruction can become aesthetic tools of resistance against power. She is especially interested in how collectively building, staging, and destroying has the potential to generate critical thinking and social transformation. Goldbard’s investigation focuses on developing a poetics of violence and a decolonial methodology for participant artistic practice. Recent commissioned projects include a pyrotechnic play with/for the Mexican community of La Villita, Chicago (Gallery 400, University of Illinois, 2019-20), and a socially engaged art project with/for the P’urhépecha community of Arantepacua (FEMSA Biennial, 2020-21). She is currently working on a long-term participant project in the Peruvian Andes.