Exhibit Tour: Magos de la Tierra
ADMISSION: Free
LOCATION:
In person at BMAC (10 Vernon Street, Brattleboro VT 05301)ACCESSIBILITY QUESTIONS?
Email office@brattleboromuseum.org or call 802-257-0124 x101Photos and videos may be taken during this event for use in BMAC promotional materials.
David Rios Ferreira, curator of Magos de la Tierra (Magicians of the Land), and artists Orlando Estrada and Jacoub Reyes offer a walking tour of the exhibition.
Estrada and Reyes give form to the ongoing legacy of colonialism. The title of their debut exhibition references Magiciens de la Terre, a 1989 exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which featured equal numbers of “Western” and “Non-Western” artists, challenging art-world hierarchies of the time. Estrada and Reyes’s translation of the title from French to Spanish signals a metaphorical reclamation: By highlighting a Spanish-speaking territory—in this case, Puerto Rico, a former Spanish colony—the artists emphasize their own cultural and lived experiences. Their collaboration mirrors the sentiment of the 1989 exhibition while shifting the post-colonial conversation toward a broader humanistic approach.
Estrada and Reyes both examine diasporic consciousness and the internal experience of otherness. Their perspective is informed by Puerto Rico’s ongoing status as an unincorporated United States territory, which fosters a sense of geographic and psychological liminality. This in-between state influences how place, power, and displacement imprint themselves on one’s psyche and inform identity. It is an influential part of the Puerto Rican experience, and it resonates across many colonial and formerly colonized contexts.
Generous support for Magos de la Tierra and related events
is provided by The Onda Foundation
