The New Gods, 2015
Two-person exhibition featuring Alejandro Garcia Contreras (Chiapas) and Josée Pedneault (Montreal) curated by Shani K Parsons and presented at TYPOLOGY Projects, Toronto
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The New Gods (exhibition view), 2015
The New Gods examines fantastical rites of spring that have emerged spontaneously within Carrillo Puerto, an isolated village in the mountains of Chiapas in southern Mexico. Through a multidisciplinary artistic partnership, Montreal-based artist Josée Pedneault and Mexico-based artist Alejandro Garcia Contreras have made a series of large-scale photographs accompanied by select groupings of smaller sculptures and paintings as an extension of the photographic subject matter into other media.
Each spring for the past several years, Carrillo Puerto has undertaken a most unusual interpretation of the Via Crucis (Stations of the Cross), the religious tradition of reenacting the events leading up to Christ’s death on Good Friday. Elsewhere in Mexico, it is a day of organized procession, penitence, and mourning, but in this small village it has evolved into an irreverent, chaotic, and carnivalesque celebration of the absurd.
Drawing on an unholy mix of religious beliefs, local and popular culture, pagan traditions, and personal mythologies, participants don homemade costumes that are highly theatrical and transformative, often verging on pure abstraction. Through the adoption of new voices, gaits, and gestures as well, the chimerical personalities they assume become an alternate pantheon of strange deities and demons, existing in opposition to the highly codified characters and narratives of the traditional Passion play.
The New Gods exhibition catalogue (cover shown) and limited edition archival digital print, both produced at a size of 6 x 9 inches.
Catalogue and print are available for purchase at shop.criticaldistance.ca. To view/read the catalogue online, click here.