1i11iana – SAIC Graduate Exhibition 2024

SAIC SHOWS 2024 GRADUATE EXHIBITIONS

Graduates

SAIC SHOWS 2024 GRADUATE EXHIBITIONS

1i11iana

Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Printmedia

Graduate Exhibition One

Lilliana Reinoso works within printmaking and sculpture to analyze the relationship between colonialism, fascism, and their legacies in contemporary institutions and culture.

As a student panelist at the Mid America Print Council’s 2022 conference, she introduced her practice as an investigation of the shortcomings of the current restitution debate and advocated for restitution that abandoned the state-centric model currently at the center of discussions of cultural patrimony. She was awarded Best in Show at London’s Gallery NAT exhibition Spiel Allein for her performance [Unfired] Melting Pot. In June 2023, she was Artist in Residence at Galleria No Lugar in Quito, Ecuador where she completed and exhibited Jaja son huaqueria, the culmination of research into the state’s approach to acquisition and preservation of cultural patrimony.

She currently explores the life of ‘artifacts’ and other aspects of cultural patrimony within and beyond the museum in her final year as a MFA candidate at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

1i11iana - Loot, Loot, and More Loot (on a loop)

Loot, Loot, and More Loot (on a loop), 2022. Screen-print, cyanotype, laser etching, linoleum block, MDF block, heat foil, and emboss. 4.5 x 1080 in. fully extended, installation variable.

There are few works that have had such wealth of ink poured over them as have the Benin Bronzes. Within the current debate surrounding restitution and repatriation, this now scattered collection of work has become an exemplary case study of the colonial violence with which many western museums filled their galleries. The now-famous photographs from Capt. Herbert Walker’s diary labels the piles of cast metal works as “Loot”, “Loot”, and “More Loot”. The institutions of colonial powers have since rebranded under the sharing of “world culture”, but this world culture is ultimately on view for a western audience, seeing at the expense of many members of descendant communities who are disenfranchised by money and distance from prominent material heritage.

1i11iana - How do they stand? /Why are Harihara(s) Hand-Less?

How do they stand? /Why are Harihara(s) Hand-Less?, 2023, Resin and sand casts of artist’s hands and feet, Installation and dimensions variable.

When in museum galleries we pass many statues lacking hands, feet, and sometimes even heads, without a second thought. The lack of appendages is usually attributed to age, but in reality, many statues have been cut apart to ship only the parts that will fetch the highest price in the antiquities black-market or even legitimate auction houses. The feet of the Duryodhana (Khmer statue) prominently featured on Sotheby’s 2011 auction catalog were still attached to the stone in Prasat Chen at Koh Ker, Cambodia from where it was stolen. The Harihara statues in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Kimbell Art Museum are both missing their hands and were given by notorious arts-trafficker Douglas Latchford. The parts “missing” from the British Museum’s* Parthenon statues sit in Greece’s Acropolis Museum. Many of these statues are shown to be in motion, and in some cases even dancing, how can they move now?

1i11iana - Votive Extraction

Votive Extraction, 2023, Plaster casts, 3D printed model, latex mold, 6 x 5.5 x 6 in. each (variable)

This piece investigates how the catalog-preservationist agenda of western museums abstracts and reduces the objects (and non-objects) to datapoints or aesthetics. Casting the negative of ‘votive figure’ (museum No.118564) leaves the impression of all its curves and contours in the plaster, but this simultaneously points to its absence.

1i11iana - Parthenon Plastered

Parthenon Plastered, 2023, Plaster casts, 3D printed model, clay mold. 8 x 14 x 8 in.(variable)

This piece explores the shortcomings of “digital repatriation”, a buzzword that a few prominent state museums have employed in their vocabulary as a compromise, or decent halfway measure to restitution. While this premise is flawed on its face, it further assumes a degree of accuracy in museum-3d scans that does not exist at this time. The British Museum has published a large collection of 3d scanned objects online, but many of the scans are incomplete and inaccurate. The Apotheosis of Homer is made of solid marble, but the 3d model makes the object appear as if it was made of paper and the sandstone statute of Mictlantecuhtli has no bottom appearing hollow. Thinking about the history of plaster as a replicating material, errors in the 3d models, and the subsequent “fictive back” that one would have to generate to make these objects printable, I made varied iterations of plaster-casts from a 3d print of the Parthenon Frieze. Fidelity varies. Photos by: Mikey Mosher

1i11iana - Jaja son huaqueria

Jaja son huaqueria, 2023, Nylon, cotton, linoleum relief print, plastic beads, found fabric, drypoint prints

This installation is the culmination of a month’s long investigation into the conservation, acquisition, and display practices of ‘pre-Colombian’ artifacts within Ecuador’s cultural institutions. When inquiring about provenance I was told that it was practically non-existent, as much of the artifacts were expected to be illegally excavated, and conservationists were often tasked with archiving forgeries, so they did not enter the black market. The title is a quote from a cultural worker’s response. It translates as: Haha! They [the artifacts] were looted.

Unfired [Melting Pot]
2019, Unfired clay, performance, collected audio , trailer: 5: 38 min. , full performance: 2:08:39 min.

Unfired [Melting Pot] is a performance exploring how immigrants and their children differently perceive
America. I begin with a single clay coil and build the mythological “melting pot” that characterizes the United States. Meanwhile, Latin-American immigrants tell their stories through audio recordings. As their children speak of this country in a disenchanted fashion, the coil-[melting]-pot breaks down. The “melting pot” of this country was impossible. In 2022 this work was awarded Grand Prize at Gallery NAT’s Spiel Allein exhibition.

My work addresses the interconnectedness of colonialism and fascism through their legacies within museums and wider contemporary culture. The self-perpetuation of these institutions and the objects within them inspires me to work in multiples.

I work toward an in-depth examination of institutional acquisitions, display, and responses to calls for restitution.I recontextualize items held in museum collections to point out the false imposition of neutrality upon artifacts of cultural patrimony. In response to those that have disingenuously touted “replica-repatriation” as a compromise, I emphasize the degradation that occurs throughout a variety of print and casting processes by creating ‘editions’ of increasingly deviant simulacra.

My work encourages interaction, sometimes asking the audience to take part of the piece with them, making the viewer both its preservationist and destroyer. My hope is for the audience to experience the work personally so we may abandon the vault-like gallery holding fetishized art[ifacts].