Call for Artists: Central & South America
Reflections & Expressions: Communities & Cultures of Central and South America
Down Jersey Folklife Center at WheatonArts is seeking to connect with visual artists, musicians, and dancers whose ethnic and cultural backgrounds are related to the countries located in Central and South America. The artists are invited to participate in a nine-month multi-layered and multi-faceted project, tentatively scheduled to start Spring 2021.
The program will be part of the WheatonArts’ Creative Community Connections initiative, a series inaugurated in 2004 to raise awareness of cultural heritage and to create a welcoming community setting for understanding, appreciating, and sharing the arts and cultures of our region’s extraordinarily diverse population. Highlights of this program include a major exhibition(s), community arts projects, demonstrations, classes, workshops, performances, teacher training activities, at least one festival, artist market, and a conference.
We want to present a variety of artists working in folk and traditional art forms, whose artworks can once again engage our audiences in conversations about cultural heritage and shared humanity. Our focus is on the arts and cultures associated with Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, and Argentina.
Possible art forms to be featured include: Guatemalan weavings, Ecuadorian bamboo carvings, Peruvian retablos (boxed scenes), mates burilados (carved and painted gourds), carpets of flower petals, Panamanian molas (reversed appliquéd fabric), baskets and beadwork, Salvadorian wood paintings and ceramics, Garifuna music and dance from Belize, Colombian tree-bark dolls and cumbia music, Venezuelan wood sculptures, Brazilian capoeira and batalá drumming, Bolivian carved sanots (saints), Argentinean fileteado (traditional painting), as well as leather works, pottery, textiles, woodworks, costume making, masks, folk music, and dance from all the above countries.
If you wish to be included in this project or have questions about it, please contact Dr. Iveta Pirgova, Director of Folklife and Cultural Studies, at ipirgova@wheatonarts.org no later than June 15, 2020.
