PILAR ACEVEDO - Pilar Acevedo Blog

Video: The Multimedia Works of Contemporary Spanish American Women Artists and Writers

9/23/2018

I am very grateful and honored to have been invited by Dr. Jane Lavery and Dr. Sarah Bowskill to participate in their research project. I apologize for taking so long to post these videos—nevertheless, here are English and Spanish versions explaining their project. They were created for Dr. Jane Lavery of Southampton University, Southampton, England and Dr. Sarah Bowskill of Queens University, Belfast, Ireland for their research project on the Multimedia Works of Contemporary Spanish American Women Artists and Writers.

Dia de Muertos: A Spiritual Legacy

9/1/2018

What would you take with you when you die?

8/25/2018

I have had the pleasure of participating in the National Museum of Mexican Art's Day of the Dead exhibits on 3 previous occasions. The past exhibits in which I was involved were very "traditional" in content displaying a large variety of altars (ofrendas), as well as paintings, and sculptures, honoring the memory of the deceased.

Día de Muertos: A Spiritual Legacy is just as traditional, yet inspired by the Mesoamerican shaft tombs in which individuals were buried with objects and gear for the next life. While the exhibit has ofrendas, and other works of art typically displayed in Day of the Dead exhibits, it also includes work with a slight variation. In my opinion, this work approaches the subject matter from the viewpoint of the departed by specifically exploring the question, "What would you take with you when you die?" Thirty artists were invited to participate—we were all given a “veliz”, a suitcase, to use in any way we desired in response to the question posed.

The exhibit opened Friday, September 21, and will continue through December 9, 2018. Hope you can see the exhibit and support the National Museum of Mexican Art.

Untitled, 15.75" x 9.5" x 4.75", Mixed Media, August 2018, Top exterior of veliz created for the National Museum of Mexican Art's "Dia de Los Muertos: A Spiritual Legacy".

About the Piece

Personally, I do not believe that when I die, I will simply cease to exist and although this belief is viewed as naïve by many, I have faith that when I take my last breath, my spirit will leave my body and instantly be in heaven with my memory intact—memories of my life and of those I have loved. Therefore, in response to the question: “What would you take with you when you die?”, I would take 3 intangibles: faith in my God’s promise of eternal life, memories of events and experiences of my life here on earth, and finally, love for family and friends.

P.S. Special thanks to my brother Javier Acevedo, for helping me with power tool “challenges”, or my ineptitude.

A Little About My Work

7/15/2018

Although I was invited to participate, I could not; therefore, I asked Jesse Arseneau to create this video for the Society for Latin American Studies Annual Conference held at the University of Southampton's Winchester in March of this year.

What would I take with me when I die?

7/1/2018

I was invited to participate in the National Museum of Mexican Art's Day of the Dead exhibit titled Veliz, which will open in September of this year. The Veliz concept answers the question, "What would you take with you when you die?" I have begun to prepare a small suitcase, which will answer this question . . .

Poetry+

6/25/2018

I just completed another website exclusively for my poetry and vignettes. To see it, please go to:
https://pilar-acevedo-poetry.weebly.com

Ana María Matute: La niña de los cabellos blancos

4/26/2018

The Month of April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month

4/14/2018

Sleep, 9 x 12 inches, Oil on Canvas, October 1993

Sexual abuse can happen across all ages, but molestation is strictly limited to younger children. Because a child’s penis or vagina is too small for physical penetration, molestation occurs when the child is "forced to perform oral sex, touched in an inappropriate manner, and/or made to watch the adult masturbate. Sexual abuse happens over a longer period of time and involves actual physical penetration, in addition to everything that is included in molestation.

The above quote is from: http://www.kidslivesafe.com/child-safety/sexual-molestation-vs-sexual-abuse

A few years ago, I came across a video on the internet about a Peruvian girl by the name of Lina Medina who gave birth at the age of 5 years, 7 months, and 21 days. The focus of that particular documentary was about the pregnancy, her age and the medical condition called "precocious puberty", which enabled the pregnancy at such a young age.

So, this was a case of sexual abuse and yet, there was absolutely NO discussion about the abuse or the man who abused Lina and finally impregnated her. She was a child of 4 years of age, still playing with dolls, and had no idea what was being done to her. How can a 4 year old even begin to wrap her mind around such a thing? Why, as a society, were we more consumed by the oddity of the age of the pregnancy rather than being outraged and disgusted by the action of the male who perpetrated such a violation on a child?

This was in 1939 and yet, this abuse continues; children are still being neglected and sexually abused and molested.

A picture is worth a thousand words. This is a picture of Lina Medina and her son, Gerardo.

Here's the harsh reality and hopefully, food for thought and ultimately, a call to action:

1 in 10 children will be sexually abused before age 18.
Of the children who are sexually abused, 20% are abused before the age of 8.
1 in 7 incidents of child sexual abuse perpetrated by juveniles occurs on school days.
Only 4-8% of child sexual abuse reports are fabricated.

For a very informative PDF, Child Sexual Abuse Statistics, go to Darkness to Light at:
https://www.d2l.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/all_statistics_20150619.pdf

Lollipop, 7 x 10 inches, Sketch Conte Crayon & Charcoal on Paper, November 2010

Dr. Sarah Bowskill's Article Published!

4/13/2018

Abstract:
This is the first academic study of the artist Pilar Acevedo (born in Mexico and raised in Chicago), and more specifically of her Fragmentos exhibition at the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago (2013–2014). It proposes that Acevedo’s art tackles the challenge of bearing witness to the physical and psychological effects of child abuse in ways that help us to move beyond existing concerns within trauma theory and examines why art which uses shocking images is not effective either as art or as a call to action. This article identifies the strategies Acevedo employs to encourage the viewer to participate actively in the construction of meaning whilst avoiding turning trauma into a spectacle that makes us turn away or feeds our voyeuristic fascination with pain. The techniques foregrounded include: firstly, the use of fragmented dolls as signifiers that draw on, but also depart from, the work of Hans Bellmer and Cindy Sherman and the traditions of surrealism and abject art; secondly, a multimedia and intermedia approach that opens up new ways of seeing and experiencing art whereby the viewer is invited to piece together the fragmented narratives in a way that reflects the disruption of memory by trauma, and the work of psychoanalysis.

The above abstract was written by Dr. Bowskill and obtained from the below link.

I am elated that the article, Bearing Witness to Child Abuse and Trauma in Pilar Acevedo's Multimedia Fragmentos Exhibition, is now available online with the Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies.
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24741604.2018.1453017

Coming Soon: An Article by Dr. Sarah Bowskill About My Solo Exhibit, 'Fragmentos'

3/11/2018

The following is from Dr. Sarah Bowskill's webiste: https://sarahbowskill.net/multimedia-women

Multimedia Women and Digital Cultural Studies

Working with Dr Jane Lavery (University of Southampton) I have been studying the growing number of Spanish American women writers and artists who are working across different media and who are embracing the opportunities as well as the challenges of digital culture.

Our understanding of ‘multimedia’, which incorporates both intermedia and transmedia practices, is alert to the political significance of such strategies and so, for us and, it seems to us, for our Spanish American authors and artists, multimedia is a political choice.
The first output from this project was an article on the multimedia work of Guatemalan performance artist Regina Jose Galindo published in Bulletin of Latin American Research (2012). Our most recent work examines the work of Chilean Eli Neira.

I have a (forthcoming) article on the work of Pilar Acevedo entitled ‘Bearing Witness to Child Abuse and Trauma in Pilar Acevedo’s Multimedia ‘Fragmentos’ Exhibition’.

We are now working with a group of other academics to try to map the extent and significance of this trend for Spanish American women writers and artists to work across different media.