In the Curator's Words: World-renowned photographer Graciela Iturbide in focus at MOPA@SDMA
In the Curator's Words is an occasional series that takes a critical look at current exhibitions through the eyes of curators.
It would be impossible to launch into an exploration of modern photography without the inclusion of Graciela Iturbide, who, at 83, is still actively pursuing her passion for photography. One of the world's most renowned photographers, Iturbide is admired not just for her photographs but also for her cultural storytelling skills - an ability to capture, through her lens, the heart and soul of her native Mexico.
In February, The Museum of Photographic Arts at the San Diego Museum of Art opened a visually breathtaking exhibition of the living artist's work. "Graciela Iturbide: Photographs from Colecciones Fundación Mapfre," on view through June 7, features more than 160 photographs by Iturbide, some from the museum's vault but mostly from the collection of the nonprofit organization Mapfre.
Kara Felt, the museum's Lawrence S. Friedman Curator of Photography, took some time recently to talk about the exhibition.
Q: This has been described as a "landmark exhibition," and it truly is. How did this come to be at The Museum of Photographic Arts at the San Diego Museum of Art (MOPA@SDMA)?
A: It's incredibly exciting to be able to present a major retrospective of such a renowned artist during her lifetime. As curators, we receive many proposals from institutions around the world that are hoping to tour their exhibitions to different venues. Fundación Mapfre's proposal for this show was one of the first I came across when I started my role at SDMA two years ago, and I immediately began dreaming of bringing it to San Diego. With the museum's proximity to Mexico and binational identity - as well as its growing holdings in Latin American and especially Mexican photography, including by Iturbide - this seemed like an exhibition that would resonate powerfully with our audiences on multiple levels.
Q: Tell us more about Graciela and her impact on the world of photography.
A: Graciela is not only Latin America's best-known living photographer, she is a trailblazing artist. She has been highly influential in changing approaches to portraiture, especially in her representations of Latin Americans. She has immersed herself in several Indigenous communities, for example with the Seris of the Sonoran Desert, forming deep ties that invited her subjects to collaborate in her process of picturing them. The resulting photographs are nuanced, sensitive and balanced in a way that was rare in the 1970s and 1980s. Iturbide helped advance what she called a “complicit" approach to portraiture that has become more popular in recent photographic practice.
Q: How challenging was it to choose 163 photos from a career that spans more than 50 years?
A: I worked collaboratively with Mapfre's Chief Curator of Photography, Carlos Gollonet, to shape the show for our MOPA@SDMA galleries. I made selections from a checklist of approximately 200 works from Mapfre and 12 works by Iturbide in our museum collection, which together was too many to fit in our galleries. Since this exhibition is exceptional in showing the global reach of Iturbide's vision - including, but also extending beyond, her important work made in Mexico - I wanted to honor that in the presentation on view at MOPA@SDMA. I've arranged modular walls in a way that leads viewers through separate but interconnected bodies of work made around the world.
Q: Her portfolio has many iconic images - is there one that MOPA is grateful to have for this exhibition?
A: This exhibition features some of her best-known pictures, including "Mujer Ángel, Desierto de Sonora" (1979) and "Nuestra Señora de las iguanas, Juchitán, México" (1979), presenting them in the wider contexts of the series for which they were made. A photograph that stood out to me - and that I chose to enlarge as a photo-mural at the exhibition's entrance - is less well known but especially poignant. It is the only photograph in the show made very close to San Diego at the border in Tijuana. Showing a man raising his shirt to reveal a large Virgin of Guadalupe tattoo on his back, this picture expresses so much about Iturbide's abiding interest in the fusion of Catholic and Indigenous iconography in Mexican culture as well as the way that Mexican symbols travel across borders.
Arthur Ollman, MOPA's founding Executive Director, shared with me that Iturbide created this picture for an exhibition organized by MOPA called "Vecinos," which toured throughout Mexico in the early 1990s. Through displaying this photograph at the museum, now MOPA@SDMA, and enlarging it in the atrium, there is this wonderful full circle moment of a picture coming back to a place that helped inspire it, and of Iturbide returning to a museum that has supported her career for decades.
Q: What is the most important takeaway you'd like the viewer to walk away with?
A: I think this exhibition demonstrates that, for Iturbide, using her camera to discover different traditions and ways of being within Mexico and around the world was deeply personal and paralleled a journey of self-discovery. I hope viewers will appreciate Iturbide’s poetic eye - which is often suffused with pain, mortality and dreams - and recognize its coherence and evolution across varied bodies of work.
"Graciela Iturbide: Photographs from Colecciones Fundación Mapfre"
When: Through June 7
Where: Museum of Photographic Arts at the San Diego Museum of Art, 1649 El Prado, San Diego
Admission: MOPA@SDMA only: $10 general admission; $7 for seniors 65 and over; free for youth under 17 and retired and active duty military
Phone: 619-232-7931
Online:sdmart.org/visit-mopa-at-sdma/
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