San Juan Bautista

Inscriptions

Inscribed, upper right, in black marker: San Juan / Bautista

Label

In his Retablos series, Ruben Olguin borrows from the Spanish colonial tradition of retablo painting, popularized through the spread of Catholicism in what is currently known as Mexico. Whereas traditional retablos are devotional paintings commonly depicting Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a holy saint, Olguin complicates these forms by instead mapping Indigenous territories and waterways onto the surface.

In these retablos, Olguin maps the site of three Spanish missions in the regions now called California and Mexico, questioning the legitimacy of national and state borders established through colonialism and foregrounding those whose homelands were drastically altered by non-Indigenous settlement.

From the 2021 exhibition Form & Relation: Contemporary Native Ceramics, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art and Morgan E. Freeman, DAMLI Native American Art Fellow

Using locally sourced clay and hand-harvested dyes, artist Ruben Olguin reappropriates the Spanish colonial tradition of retablo paintings, which traditionally depict devotional images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. Rather than creating devotional images, Olguin maps the establishment of Spanish mission churches atop Indigenous territories and waterways. The practice of renaming Indigenous towns after Catholic saints underscores this Indigenous dispossession. Olguin’s Retablos reveal the entanglements of the Catholic church in what is now the southwestern United States while also presenting a restorative mapping practice.

From the 2024 exhibition [Un]Mapping: Decolonial Cartographies of Place, curated by Beatriz Yanes Martinez, Hood Museum Board of Advisors Mutual Learning Fellow, Curatorial and Exhibitions

Course History

ANTH 11/NAS 11, Ancient Native Americans, Madeleine McLeester, Fall 2020

PORT 8, Brazilian Portraits, Carlos Cortez Minchillo, Winter 2021

LACS 22.11, Latinx Intergenerational Literature, Marcela di Blasi, Spring 2021

ANTH 18, Research Methods in Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2021

ANTH 55, Anthropology of Global Health, Anne Sosin, Spring 2021

ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Sienna Craig, Winter 2022

Anthropology 73.01, Main Currents in Anthropology, Sienna Craig, Spring 2024

Exhibition History

[Un]Mapping: Decolonial Cartographies of Place, Harteveldt Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 8 -November 3, 2024.

Form & Relation: Contemporary Native Ceramics, Citrin Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 6, 2021–July 23, 2022.

Provenance

The artist, Ruben Olguin, Albuquerque, New Mexico; sold to present collection, 2020.

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