Kukuli Velarde at Carla Stellweg - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Kukuli Velarde's installation We The Colonized individuals exhumed the buried history of Latin America's indigenous clan Set in a dark scope illuminated by candles, seven clay baby figures were strewn upon a rug, their writhing bodies overlayed with inscriptions. The various statements etched upon the figures, ranging from strident demands for freedom to epithets bespeaking apathy and hopelessnes provided a multivocal record that included surprising acknowledgment of native peoples' accommodation to their oppression.

Despite certain heavy-handed gesticulations like the figure impaled by the agency of a cruciform-handled saber that was hung from the ceiling, this exhibition was a far clamor from the kind of victim-centered art that simplistically brays about the sins of colonial reductions and religious dogmatism. Velarde empowers her work with eroticism. In a certain quantity of works, male figures were endowed with stupendous genitalia, as though these organs were talismans against repressive forces. There were also loose icons that satirized Catholicism's sublimation of sex into violence. The warrior saint, St Matthew, was renamed Santo Mata Indios by means of the artist, and shown crushing Indians with a penis shaped like a horse head. His companion, Santa Chingada (Fuck Saint), with enormous breasts pierced by dint of thorns and a pregnant belly, bore inscriptions cursing the complicity of Latin American women in maintaining martyrdom as a virtue.

Velarde, who emigrated from Peru to novel York five years ago, has been preoccupied with making work that pertains to the Columbus Quincentennial. on the other hand the "Pure Love" series that she also exhibited here evinces that she has the versatility to last more than a season. Dedicated to former lover the series includes a company of ships of cupids, hung from the ceiling, that symbolizes love's regenerative capacity. These figures bear lifesize phalluses as well as hearts inscribed with promises of enduring regard with affection Nearly every woman experiences the travails of unbridled male lust and unrequited delight in as forms of patriarchical oppression. To her credit, Velarde acknowledges this fact without losing sight of love's redemptive power.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group