The Institute for Contemporary Art presents Where I Learned To Look: Art from the Yard
By Pamela J. Forsythe for Broad Street Review
October 22, 2024
Whether it’s a set of front steps or a spacious lawn, what you do with the space beyond your walls says something about you. In Where I Learned to Look: Art from the Yard at the Institute for Contemporary Art, guest curator Josh T. Franco considers what artists express in work made for the outdoors.
Rasquachismo and La Virgen
Franco’s Preparing La Virgen (2023) leads off the exhibitiion, which includes 30 self-taught and formally trained creators. Combining film with installation, Franco depicts members of the Sanchez family decorating a shrine dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe in the location where she is believed to have appeared years ago, an area that’s now a neighborhood of tract houses and trailers.
A statue of the virgin stands in a repurposed bathtub, upended, painted celestial blue, and framed in river rocks. A crucifix stands to her right. As the frames click by, multiple Sanchez generations tuck silk roses between the stones and wind colored lights around a star frame. The virgin’s December 12 feast is approaching, and they want to identify this as the site of a miracle.