Rigo 23: From the Heart of Santa Madera

May 4–August 31, 2014

As part of Fowler at Fifty, Rigo 23, a San Francisco-based artist and activist from Madeira Island, Portugal, has created a special project in the Museum’s Goldenberg Galleria. Drawing from the Fowler’s Native American collections and Rigo’s own long history of collaborating with native and indigenous communities around the world, the artist uses a variety of media to create an exhibition that considers past and contemporary relations with Native American cultures in California, and more broadly, intercultural relations in an age of globalization.

Rigo 23: From the Heart of Santa Madera consists of eight wall-sized canvases that incorporate photography, painting, graphic art, poetry, recorded sound, film clips, and other media, along with objects from the Fowler’s Native American collections. The compositions incorporate subjects as diverse the film The Exiles, Indian Island in Eureka Bay, contemporary Tongva voices, the United Nations General Assembly voting records, Leonard Peltier’s continued imprisonment, and Jean Paul Sartre’s preface to Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. The project addresses the invisibility of Native American cultures by highlighting contemporary struggles and cultural renewal.

Press Release

Two Exhibitions about Native American Arts and Culture

Exhibition Credits

Rigo 23 is organized by Sebastian Clough, Director of Exhibitions, and Wendy Teeter, Curator of Archaeology, of the Fowler Museum.