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Walters Art Museum: Decolonizing the Constellations
April 22, 2021 @ 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
This program will stream on the Walters’ Facebook page and YouTube channel. Click the links below to RSVP to the program beforehand and to access the livestream at the time of the event.
People in cultures throughout history have gazed up at the night sky and seen their own imagined, culturally specific images in the glowing points of stars. Baltimore artist René Treviño explores how many features of our culture, even supposed natural phenomena, are framed in terms of European ideas and concepts. In a recent series of paintings, one of which is included in the Walters exhibition Translations and Transitions / Traducciones y Transiciones, Treviño challenges this Eurocentric view with a creative reimagining of the constellations, pointing out how the web of stars can be configured and reconfigured—as can our cultural canon. Treviño talks with Ellen Hoobler, William B. Ziff, Jr. Associate Curator of the Art of the Americas, about his work and recovering Indigenous traditions.
About the Artist
René Treviño was born in Kingsville, Texas. He received his BFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 2003 and his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2005. He has shown at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, CT; the Baltimore Museum of Art, Goliath Visual Space in Brooklyn, NY; White Box in New York; the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art; the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA; the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture in Baltimore, MD; and Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia, PA. He was also included in the 2007 WPA/Corcoran OPTIONS Biennial in Washington DC and was awarded a 2009 Baltimore Creative Fund Individual Artist Grant and won the 2009 Trawick Prize. His work has been featured in Art Papers, New American Painters, Baltimore Sun, Baltimore City Paper, Philadelphia Enquirer, Washington Blade, Washington Post as well as several online publications. Treviño currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.
René Treviño was born in Kingsville, Texas. He received his BFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 2003 and his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2005. He has shown at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, CT; the Baltimore Museum of Art, Goliath Visual Space in Brooklyn, NY; White Box in New York; the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art; the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, VA; the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture in Baltimore, MD; and Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia, PA. He was also included in the 2007 WPA/Corcoran OPTIONS Biennial in Washington DC and was awarded a 2009 Baltimore Creative Fund Individual Artist Grant and won the 2009 Trawick Prize. His work has been featured in Art Papers, New American Painters, Baltimore Sun, Baltimore City Paper, Philadelphia Enquirer, Washington Blade, Washington Post as well as several online publications. Treviño currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.
Image Credit: René Treviño, Reclaiming the Constellations (Jaguar), 2019, acrylic and rhinestones on wood panel. © 2020, René Treviño
