Cosmic Serpent

Astrid Gonzalez

Sandra Monterroso

Danielle Tegeder

Carmen Vicente

Instituto de Visión is pleased to present Cosmic Serpent. This exhibition is a calling for justice, equality, care, connection to the land, respect and community—bringing together works by five powerful artists from the Americas who understand that art goes beyond our physical experiences and has agency in the visible and invisible world. Sandra Monterroso, Astrid Gonzalez, Dannielle Tegeder and Carmen Vicente are presenting works that move the invisible strings of the universe, pulling us closer to a world where all traditions, forms of self and beliefs are not only welcomed, but matter.

Using video, painting, textile and sculpture as magical tools, this exhibition opens a portal that brings us together and creates a space for healing and remembering. Through these works and the presence of the viewers in the space we will conjure the matriarchy.

Sandra Monterroso is a contemporary artist of Maya Q’eqchi’ descent. Her artistic practice revolves around reclaiming and restoring her ancestral cultural heritage as a Mayan artist. From a decolonial perspective, her work addresses the cultural, economic, and political issues, as well as the territorial dispossession, experienced by Indigenous peoples.

She works with sculpture, video, performance, and textiles, using natural pigments such as indigo, cochineal, turmeric, fustic, chlorophyll, avocado, and flowers, among others. Her artistic approach incorporates Maya spirituality, textiles, and organic materials to create works that, through their symbols and layers of meaning, invite the healing of colonial wounds and the preservation of Indigenous knowledge.

Medicine Woman of Ecuador, was born in 1956 in Loja, Ecuador. She is the heir to a traditional spiritual lineage. Her life’s work brings together performing arts, ceremonial practices, and the transmission of ancestral knowledge.

She began her journey in theater in the 1970s, participating in festivals throughout the Americas and Europe. She developed artisanal heritage recovery projects with women’s organizations and collaborated with UNICEF and UNESCO on educational programs for Indigenous and rural communities.

She is recognized by Indigenous authorities across North and South America as Chief of the Sun Dance, the Dance of the Spirits, and the Vision Quest. As a bearer of the sacred art of altars, she brings together collectives and individuals to revitalize the memory of ancient cultures of the Earth and renew awareness of the relationship between spirit and life through Art as Origin.

Dannielle Tegeder is a New York-based artist whose practice is grounded on painting but also extends to drawing, wall works, sculpture, installation, animation, music, artist books, conceptual strategies, and writing.

Throughout her career, her work has engaged with the history of modern painting and architecture, drawing from the multi-disciplinary spirit of 20th century art practices while seeking to find new experimental approaches. She has often developed collaborations to create dialogues between abstraction and music.

Her work engages with current debates around abstraction, design, and utopian thinking, often exploring the role that social and urban systems play in shaping contemporary life. More recently, in both individual and collaborative work, her practice has centered on topics around feminism, alternative pedagogies, and the spiritual. In 2020 she co-founded the two-person collective Hilma’s Ghost.

Multidisciplinary artist whose studio practice encompasses video, photography, and sculpture surrounding her efforts to “bolster Black art history in Columbia.” Her work is informed by investigations into perceptions of the body. She explores Maroon peoples, the descendants of Africans in the Americas; and the whitening processes as the paradigm of progress in the Americas as a means of bringing oral traditions to the institution.