North Carolina: Local Histories II

María DeGuzmán invites you to see her works at the group exhibition Local Histories II in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, U.S.A. area and join her at the opening reception on June 24.

Local Histories II June 3 – July 6, 2011
Curated by Elin o’Hara slavick
Orange County Historical Museum 201 N. Churton Street Hillsborough, NC 27278

Tuesday-Saturday, 11am – 4pm + Sunday, 1 – 4pm
Opening/Closing Reception: Last Fridays Art Walk, June 24, 6-9 pm

Constructed by the WPA (Works Progress Administration) in 1934 as a public library, the Museum is also a Confederate Memorial building. Local Histories II follows Local Histories: The Ground We Walk On, an exhibition at 523 East Franklin Street in Chapel Hill.

Local Histories II includes work by NC artists or by artists with strong ties to NC. From the original 56 artists, 24 are included in Local Histories II. All of the artists explore the idea of “local histories” and Alfredo Jaar’s concept that “place cannot be global.” Local Histories II explores the global and the local, the similarities with which localities are experienced even when separated by vast geographic distances, as well as specific differences. Several interconnected themes run throughout the show: time, history and memory; the ways locales frame identity and experience; the organic trace of the human on objects; and the cultivating of communities. In exploring these themes the artists engage questions such as: How do places manifest histories? Whose stories are told? What stories are lost, and can they be recovered? What truths and fictions do places offer up for our consideration? These investigations of place show us that the many grounds on which we walk are not so different. At the same time, these artists prove that every local history is specific can be uniquely interpreted and significantly represented.

About María DeGúzman
María DeGuzmán, conceptual photographer and associate professor of English & Comparative Literature, Director of Latina/o Studies at University of North Carolina, USA, was working with Jill Casid as SPIR, a queer feminist partnership from 1990-2003. They produced various kinds of photo-text works, photo-essays, postcards, manipulated polariods etc. Since 2003 Maria has been working on her Camera Query project, photo-text work that poses questions about reality, identity, identification, subjectivity, and agency in time and space. It approaches photography as conceptual performance (visual practice as applied theory) and views the play between visual and verbal signs as media for philosophical and political exploration and production.