Translating the Untranslatable: Emerging Arts Leader Amelia Ossorio Reflects

Seattle Art Museum on Sep 30 2024

Translating the Untranslatable: Emerging Arts Leader Amelia Ossorio Reflects

National Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated annually between September 15 and October 15 in recognition of the contributions and influence of Hispanic and Latine Americans to the history, culture, and achievements of the United States. In recognition, we’re sharing this essay from a recent Emerging Arts Leader Intern. Learn more about SAM internships.

In memory of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, my UW Middle East Studies classmate who was killed by military on September 6, 2024, while volunteering in the West Bank. May we continue to be inspired by her memory to advocate for justice and a free and interconnected world.

Often, when I share that I am taking advanced Farsi classes or talk about my dedication to Persian-English poetry translation projects, I am met with confused stares. I’m a rising senior at the University of Washington majoring in Middle East Studies, with a concentration in Persian and minoring in Art History. With the mentorship of my professor, Dr. Aria Fani, I am inspired to disprove the myth of “untranslatability”: that art, languages, cultures, and people are irreconcilable and at odds with each other. This was a perspective I wanted to bring to my Emerging Arts Leader Internship in Public Relations and Outreach at the Seattle Art Museum this past spring and summer. Over the course of 20 weeks, I worked closely with Rachel Eggers, SAM’s Associate Director of Public Relations, on efforts to invite local Seattle communities into the museum for the summer exhibition, Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture.

During my time as an EAL intern, I focused on researching and executing an outreach plan with local contacts and partners, and I gathered insight into cultivating community partnerships between the museum and the public. Towards the end of my internship, my focus shifted to synthesizing my data into a report that can support the museum’s future outreach strategies. As a freelance artist with a following of nearly 60,000 on Instagram and more than 10 million views on my original comics, illustrations, and animations, I am keenly aware of the power of social media as a tool for connecting art with the public, and I wanted to bring this knowledge and creativity to support SAM’s outreach efforts.

Much of my internship inspired me to reflect on the intersections of the art museum as an institution and how it connects to our dynamic lives, passions, and experiences. In addition to my educational experiences, I volunteer with Peyvand Non-Profit Organization, which serves youth arts and cultural programming for Seattle’s Iranian and Afghan families. For the past two years, on behalf of Peyvand, I have designed educational posters about the Persian New Year to be displayed in several King County Library System locations. Peyvand director Shahrzad Shams has been a mentor to me as I develop as an artist and advocate, and my work with the organization has contributed to my understanding of partnership work.

SAM invites all EAL interns to create a gallery tour or presentation to share their contributions to the museum with the public. For my gallery tour, I drew inspiration from a personal connection to artwork on view in the museum. I highlighted two contemporary Mexican artists in SAM’s collection, Diego Rivera and Alfredo Arreguín, and presented a gallery tour on the public outreach plan I created inspired by the artists’ works. I was also inspired by my grandfather, Abel García Ossorio, who was the first Mexican American in the US to earn a PhD in clinical psychology after being rejected from colleges for being Hispanic. Using my time at the institution and access to its artworks by Rivera—two of which are on view in American Art: The Stories We Carry—encouraged me to learn more about the Mexican muralist movement and the hectic period following the Mexican Revolution, as I better my understanding of the history and political and social instability that led to members of my family immigrating to the US from northern Mexico in the 1920s. 

As an artist, I often prefer expressing myself and experiences visually through illustrations and comics. So to accompany my reflection, I also completed an illustration inspired by one of the works from my SAM gallery tour, Stalemate (1973) by Alfredo Arreguín (b. Michoacán, Mexico, 1935–2023), a Seattle-based artist who unfortunately passed away last year. The oil painting blends Pacific Northwest flora and fauna with other symbols and familiar images from Arreguín’s upbringing in Michoacán and Mexico City. A new work in SAM’s collection, the painting was on view in Poke in the Eye this summer.

I am drawn to the memory-like, stream-of-consciousness quality to the original painting, and I decided to create my own illustrated interpretation with symbols from my experiences and learnings at SAM this spring and summer. During my SAM internship, I visited Mexico City, which influenced my gallery tour. I represented this with a concha, an iconic Mexican sweet bread pastry; a cafecito; and a book on Frida Kahlo, who had also been a muse for Arreguín throughout his career. My Persian and Iranian studies at the University of Washington also guided me during my internship, and I illustrated a book that my language professor Dr. Fani had lent me for the quarter: Paintings and Designs of Sohrab Sepehri. I paid visual homage to the original painting by incorporating drawings of flowers, fruit, stars, and a mountain, but added my own flair: the flowers in my piece are nasturtiums, my mother’s favorites, and cherries represent the summer fruit of the orchard in my extended family. The mountain, originally a landmark of Mt. Rainier, painted by Arreguín, in my version became inspired by the illustration of a mountain on the cardboard box of Alvand on my tea shelf, named after a mountain range in western Iran, which is also a brand of sugar cubes to mix in hot chai and coffee called qand in Farsi. The cactus entering on the left represents both my heritage connection to Mexico and my online handle (@sensitive.cactus). Instead of flowing branches, I instead wrote in Persian calligraphy two words that are very meaningful to me and frequently appear in poetry: عشق “eshq” (love) and هیچ “heech” (nothing). While the original painting incorporates images of butterflies, which to me represent completion and fulfillment, I opted to draw a caterpillar, representing personal growth and embracing the in-between process.

I would like to thank my friends, family, and SAM staff for their support along the way, which was pivotal to my experience. I am appreciative of SAM staff who made me feel welcomed into the new environment and offered advice and understanding.

– Amelia Ossorio, Emerging Arts Leader Intern in Public Relations and Outreach

Photo: L.Fried. Illustation: Amelia Ossorio.

Artist Fulgencio Lazo’s Tapete Commemorates Migrant Children

Seattle Art Museum on Nov 1 2023

Artist Fulgencio Lazo’s Tapete Commemorates Migrant Children

Every year, artist Fulgencio Lazo designs a tapete for SAM in celebration of El Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead). José Carlos Diaz, SAM Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art, explores the theme of this year’s tapete and finds connections to an artwork on view in American Art: The Stories We Carry. The tapete is on view in SAM’s Brotman Forum, free and open to the public, through Sunday, November 5.

For SAM’s 29th annual celebration of Día de los Muertos, Seattle-based Oaxacan artist Fulgencio Lazo returns to commemorate innocent youth displaced or lost through extreme circumstances and violence. Acclaimed for his works on paper and paintings, here Lazo expands his visual narratives, often representing fact with folklore, through a short-term sculptural installation and a traditional Oaxacan-style tapete, a colorful “rug” made with sand, pigments, and mixed media.

Lazo dedicates this year’s installation to “the growing number of migrant children who have died as they have embarked on dangerous journeys from their homelands.” He adds, “Thousands of young people have increasingly risked their lives fleeing violence, war, climate change, and extreme poverty.”

On the third floor, visitors can view Diego Rivera’s Sleep (1932), which depicts huddled individuals sleeping, their children, also fatigued, collapsed against them. In a collective moment of peaceful repose, they are temporarily free from the difficulties of daily survival for immigrants. Part of the museum’s founding collection, Rivera’s print thematically links across the decades to Lazo’s installation.

While Rivera depicts unharmed Latin American bodies, including children, Lazo conceptualizes their demise. He notes, “We will honor and remember these young lives, cut short in their quests for brighter futures.” The installation’s central sculpture depicts stylized skeletons, representing deceased children and reflecting the increasing global statistics of lives lost. These mourned figures are accompanied by elements traditionally associated with childhood: toys, bicycles, and sweets.

– José Carlos Diaz, SAM Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art

Images: Photo by Chloe Collyer. Sleep, 1932, Diego Rivera, Mexican, 1886-1957, lithograph, matted: 20″ x 24″, Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 44.619. 

Object of the Week: War

Seattle Art Museum on Sep 11 2020

Object of the Week: War

Art has always played a key role in the work of protest and social reform. Artists’ reactions to our current moment, filled with social unrest and calls for social change, echo the works of revolutionary artists working during the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). Amelio Amero, like his contemporaries Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, created murals for the public art projects supported by the Revolutionary government of Mexico.

Rivera’s 1932 lithographic print depicting Emiliano Zapata, the leader of the peasant revolution who became a symbol for agrarian rights, showcases the naturalist style that the Mexican muralists used. These socialist artists were aptly committed to public art and they were committed to creating art that was accessible to the general public. As a member of the Estridentistas artist group, he followed the Italian Futurist groups and believed in non-elitist art. In addition to large public murals, these artists also created prints which could be quickly and cheaply made and disseminated widely. Although highly skilled in the case of Rivera, the lithograph—made using a stone and a crayon—didn’t require the artist to make their image in reverse, nor did it require specialized training. Additionally, the prints could easily be transported and would reach a broader audience.

In War (1944), Amero uses the same lithographic printing technique in an image that combines a critique of violence and militarized conflict with a promise that violence can end through the hands of brave citizens. As the booted, helmeted soldier prepares to thrash a citizen who has been literally brought to her knees, with a hungry child beside her, she raises her face to the sky, closes her eyes, and holds up a strong, oversized hand in an act of faith and protest. The hand reaches out from the shadows to provide hope for those struggling through the unjust times.

Born in Ixtlahuaca, Mexico in 1901, Amero came to the United States in 1925 via Cuba to work in New York, which is where he became interested in Lithography. In 1940 Amero returned to the United States to teach art in Seattle at the University of Washington and the Cornish College of the Arts. During his time teaching in Seattle, Washington, and Norman, Oklahoma, where he taught at the University of Oklahoma from 1946 until the end of his career. Amero continued to create works that depicted Mexico, and worked in the Mexican muralist style, favoring realistic, hyper-cylindrical figures depicted in tempera and lithography, over the abstract and oil paint heavy styles gaining popularity in the mid-century.

As we all confront issues of violence and oppression in our current society, Amero’s work is a reminder for us to support artists calling for change.

– Genevieve Hulley, SAM Curatorial Intern, American Art

Images: War, 1944, Emilio Amero, lithograph, 23 1/8 x 19 3/4 in., Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 44.84 © Estate of Emilio Amero. Zapata, 1932, Diego Rivera, lithograph, 16 1/4 x 13 3/16 in., Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 44.623 © Artist or Artist’s Estate

Object of the Week: Seated Figure with Conch Shell

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Mar 2 2016

Object of the Week: Seated Figure with Conch Shell

Some historic cultures have made learning about them easy for us by producing the things they did. The size and significance of their monuments or the influence of their visual art and literature make sure that these people are known and remembered. Other cultures have left a quieter presence that requires investigating, digging, researching, and lots of thinking about relatively few objects. To me, these cases are all the more amazing because they show us how much we can learn with only a little bit to go on.

SAM’s Seated figure with conch shell (ca. 300 B.C.–A.D. 400) hails from one of these materially quiet cultures: early Colima, in West Mexico. The state of Colima, with its capital city also called Colima, lies straight West of Mexico City, and its landscape is dominated by the Volcán de Colima—or the Volcán de Fuego—one of the most active volcanoes in Central America.

Scholars in Pre-Columbian (before Europeans arrived) Mesoamerica (a region and grouping of indigenous cultures in what is now southern Mexico and northern Central America) have learned much of what they know about cultures in West Mexico from figures like this one. Unlike other regions of Mexico that are visibly marked by Aztec temple complexes and monumental stone sculptures, West Mexico has left today’s art historians much smaller mementos. In Colima, specifically, ceramic figures are the most common form of material culture to survive. A lot of these were found in burial tombs, so they likely had a significant place in the Colima people’s vision of the afterlife.

In SAM’s figure, the forms are essentialized and rounded. The facial features are simple shapes: a long, angular nose; oval, protruding eyes with slits across the middle that look a lot like coffee beans. Triangular ears point outwards from the sides of his head. The circular holes at their centers seem primed for functional use; maybe he once donned a pair of colorful earrings? He has a small mouth with lips turned down slightly, suggesting the seriousness of his role. The figure’s coloring comes from a slip with red pigment applied to the figure by its maker, and the black spots are patina. The all-over smoothness was accomplished by rubbing a stone along the clay surface.

Seated figure with conch shell

The conch shell has special importance to our understanding of this figure and to early Colima, where shell trumpets would sound to mark special ceremonies and community events. The conch also seems to have symbolized wealth and status, and that might have developed from people associating it with these important happenings.

Oh, and that’s a big damn shell! It’s enormous compared to the figure. It matches the length of his torso and has significantly more volume. Why is it so big? Maybe the people in early Colima found really huge conch shells. Maybe the scale is meant to emphasize the importance of the conch shell in the life of the community, with its role extending from important moments in life to the eternity of death. I wonder, too, if the scale suggests something about the size of the figure, meaning that this was a small person—even a child? Personally, I like that reading because it fits with the figure’s relaxed, kind of undignified pose. Imagine he’s just learning to play his shell trumpet, and he’s the figure someone picks to accompany you to the afterlife!

—Jeffrey Carlson, SAM Collections Coordinator

Image: Seated figure with conch shell, ca. 300 B.C.-A.D. 400, Mexican, West Mexico, Colima, ceramic, 14 1/4 x 12 5/16 x 9 5/8 in. Seattle Art Museum, Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 64.103, Photo: Natali Wiseman.

Object of the Week: Mask with ear spools

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke on Nov 13 2015

Object of the Week: Mask with ear spools

Some 1500 years ago in the holy city of Teotihuacan in Mexico —“the place where the gods were created”—this small mask was formed from a mold, enlivened with a strong and spiritual presence that remains in it today. One has to see the piece in person to feel and experience the weight of history that it carries. The natural patina that has changed the color of the ceramic material to a range of earth tones gives the mask an aura of importance. It presented a very different face in its days of use in the Teotihuacan culture.

Picture this same intense figure in bright red and white paint, now part of a larger sculpture group decorated with hatching patterns, discs, mystical eyes, and spirals, with plumes of fragrant smoke rising above him and moving toward you. Masks from Teotihuacan were often decorated with pigments, and small traces of red remain on the hair of SAM’s Mask with ear spools. Experts think it was probably part of a large incensario, or incense-burner. From those early days of the mask’s history, it has entered a new chapter, where it engages visitors to our small but awesome Meso-American gallery, joined by Peruvian ceramics, Aztec stone figures, gold, and jade.

The mask was found near Azcapotzalco, an area in the northwest part of Mexico City. It was purchased in 1949 from Earl Stendahl of Stendahl Art Galleries, an important dealer in Los Angeles first known for bringing Modern art to the West Coast and for representing the California Impressionists. Later, Stendahl turned to Pre-Columbian art, and it was this area that became the gallery’s specialty. The mask entered SAM’s collection in early 1950.

The face in Mask with ear spools is staring us down. He occupies a space between art that creates the illusion of life and art that symbolizes life, using a form of representation based on line and shape. The large ear spools are symmetrical discs with perfectly rounded orbs at their centers. The band of hair has precise, vertical lines all the way across it, like a flexible ruler taped to this man’s forehead. The eyes are rendered as thin almond slivers, whose shape is echoed in the arching lines of the eyelids and brow. A prominent nose, again perfectly symmetrical, with curvy, thickset lips below it, and a strong, angular jaw complete his look.

From the 2nd century B.C.–7th c. A.D. Teotihuacan, his place of origin, was an important Mexican city—at its height, the sixth-largest city in the world, and a political, cultural, and religious center. The drama of the city’s story relates not only to its riches but also its fast decline and almost total disappearance. We’re grateful to have a piece of that fascinating story here at SAM!

—Jeffrey Carlson, SAM Collections Coordinator

IMAGE: Mask with ear spools, Mexican, Teotihuacan, ca. 100-600, 4 7/8 x 7 1/4 x 2 in., Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection, 50.32.
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