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A UFO-like building is sited on the Amazon River, a man on trial for sorcery over an amulet, and a neurophysiologist disappears without a trace.  

This Saturday, February 24 at 2:00pm, the Fleming Museum of Art presents a screening of video art from the traveling exhibition Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections. The three videos offer an immersive experience, as they invite the viewer into the sounds, languages, environments, and lives depicted—both real and reimagined.  

Curated by David Ayala-Alfonso and produced by Independent Curators International (ICI), Never Spoken Again features seventeen contemporary artists whose works open up critique of material culture, iconography, and political ecologies. The use of fiction and rewriting or reimagining history is a thematic thread that runs throughout the exhibition and one in which museum visitors are encouraged to investigate throughout the galleries. 

PROGRAM DETAILS 

Saturday, February 24, 2024 
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Fleming Museum Auditorium - Lower Level, Room 101

All videos will be presented with English subtitles. Content Warning: Video artworks in this program include depictions of self-harm, blood, and death.  

Laura Huertas Millán, Aequador, 2012  19 min.  

In Laura Huertas Millán’s Aequador, virtual relics and ruins of an ideal 3-D architecture are embedded somewhere in the middle of the Amazonas and the everyday life of people inhabiting that area. “Ruins are very present in my work,” Huertas Millán told Hyperallergic, “…they were the testament of past colonial ‘civilizational’ projects: botanic gardens, greenhouses, mega-projects in the forest… [and ruins articulate] America’s colonization and its subsequent transformation/destruction of nature.” 

Carlos Motta, Corpo Fechado–The Devil’s Work , 2018  24:47 min.  

Corpo Fechado–The Devil’s Work  retells the true story of José Francisco Pereira, an eighteenth-century West African man, who after being kidnapped and enslaved was later tried by the Lisbon Inquisition for sorcery. Along with others in enslaved communities, Pereira combined spiritual practices that mixed African and Christian traditions in the form of bolsas de mandinga, or amulets to protect fellow enslaved persons from injury. This video imagines Pereira as the agent of his own narrative, reclaiming the terms of representation from the account of his own destruction. 

François Bucher, The Man Who Disappeared, 2011  26:46 min.  

Examining the mysterious 1994 disappearance of Mexican neurophysiologist Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum, The Man Who Disappeared  combines archival footage, interviews, and voice-over narration to express multiple histories, traditional Indigenous knowledge, and scientific scholarship. It also grapples with Grinberg-Zylberbaum’s own holistic theory of consciousness that questioned traditional Western ideas regarding space, time, and science. 

Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections is a traveling exhibition curated by David Ayala-Alfonso and produced by Independent Curators International (ICI). It is the result of a new series of programs, pioneered with the support of the Hartfield Foundation, aimed at providing opportunities to alumni of ICI’s Curatorial Intensive as they move through the stages of their career, and reflecting ICI’s commitment to fostering and championing new curatorial voices who will shape the future of the field. Never Spoken Again is made possible with the generous support of ICI’s Board of Trustees and International Forum. Additional support for Erkan Öznur’s participation is provided by SAHA. The presentation at the Fleming Museum of Art has been organized in collaboration with Kristan M. Hanson, the Fleming’s curator of collections and exhibitions. Crozier Fine Arts is the Preferred Art Logistics Partner. 

Artists: Morehshin Allahyari, Maria Thereza Alves, François Bucher, Giuseppe Campuzano, Alia Farid, Sofia de Grenade, Laura Huertas Millán, Ulrik López, Carlos Motta, Erkan Öznur, David Peña Lopera, Claudia Peña Salinas, Michael Rakowitz, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Reyes Santiago Rojas, Daniel R. Small, and Felipe Steinberg.