Join us for a dance performance by María Verónica San Martín in collaboration with Director Christopher Ham and students at the Owen Arts Center, “Moving Memorials / Dignidad / The Javeline Project” from 4pm–4:50pm followed by a reception and lecture at Bridwell Library beginning at 6pm.
Dance Performance at the Gene and Jerry Jones Grand Atrium, Owen Arts Center 4pm–4:50pm
A trilogy of performances by Chilean New York-based artist María Verónica San Martín with mobile artist books, kinetic steel sculptures and handcrafted javelins about memory, human rights violations and resistance in contemporary Chile and Latin America. The artworks are simultaneously activated by the artist and 20 freshmen dancers transforming the intimate act of reading and elements into a choreography that positions reading as an act of protest and remembrance.
Reception and Lecture in the Blue Room at Bridwell Library 6pm–7:30pm
A talk by Chilean artist María Verónica San Martín on her Moving Memorials series of artist books (2012—ongoing) that engages with the complicated political history of Chile and that mutates from installations and performance to artist books. This series of artist books has a civic, historic and political responsibility to reconstruct the stories of the past in order to create social change and acknowledge the form of the book as a repository of both memory and knowledge.
About the Artist
María Verónica San Martín (b.1981) is a Chilean New York-based multidisciplinary artist and educator who explores the impacts of history, memory, and trauma through archives, artist books, installation, sculpture and performance. San Martín was a fellow at the Whitney Museum’s ISP, a scholar at the NY Center for Book Arts and holds an MA from The Corcoran School of Art and Design, George Washington University, Washington DC (BecasChile). Her work is part of more than 60 collections highlighting the Pompidou (FR), the MET (NYC), The Museum of Memory and Human Rights (SCL) and the Walker Art Center (MN). She has exhibited nationally and internationally with recent shows at The Print Center, Philadelphia and The Widener Gallery, Hartford, CT, and at Lincoln Center, Rockefeller Center plaza, the New York Immigrant Artist Biennial, the Chilean National Archive, the Museum Meermanno, Netherlands, BRIC, Artists Space and the Queens Museum, New York, in the past. San Martin has been awarded two New York Foundation for the Arts grants, the Sustainable Arts grant, and three National Chilean grants (FONDART) while being an artist-in-residency at Art OMI (NY), ACE (Buenos Aires) and Interlude (NY).
San Martín has been performing and lecturing her projects “Moving Memorials”, “Dignidad and “The Javelin Project” in museums, public spaces, and cultural centers since 2016. She teaches book arts and printmaking at The Center for Book Arts (NY) ; Penland School of Craft, (NC); Miami University (OH), and at Mixteca (Brooklyn, NY) with Booklyn Art where she also serves as a board member.
This year marks the commemoration of the 50 years of the coup in Chile and San Martin work will be exhibited in two solo shows in New York and Canada and in several other group international shows. She is currently working on a commission for the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C.
