First, a confession: As a Canadian Jew of Eastern European ancestry, I have rarely felt the urge to look at, never mind write about, Christian imagery of any sort. I don’t even really like to enter churches. The appeal of “Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium,” an exhibition displayed jointly at Gallery 400 and the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, both on the UIC campus, thus comes — for me, at least — as a complete surprise.
Most Catholics will have some familiarity with ex-votos, but I had to read all the wall texts, the exhibition catalogue and some additional research to better understand the form. Essentially, ex-votos are devotional objects connected to a vow. I ask a saint to help me recover from dysentery or to help my son survive a jail term, and when we do, in thanks I commission an artist to paint a small picture representing the narrative, which is then publicly displayed in church alongside other ex-votos. Private suffering, and its concomitant resilience, thereby become communal. The tradition boomed in Mexico after independence, having been first brought to the country by Spanish colonists, but it is thought to have originated in Italy and ultimately thought to date back to the votive rituals of ancient pagan societies.
At Hull-House, dozens of historical examples line the walls of an upstairs room. Selected by curator Emmanuel Ortega, they belong to the collection of the New Mexico State University Art Museum, where the show debuted, and which houses the largest collection of Mexican retablos in the United States. Ex-votos are a type of retablo, or altar painting, and these are classic examples of the genre as it was practiced during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Small and painted on tin, a cheap and readily available material, each image contains three elements: commemorative script, the divine interlocutor, and the Earthly realm in which tragedy has been resolved. The combinations glow with a fusion of magic and reality, and fans of Surrealism will not be surprised to learn that André Breton owned ex-votos and that Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera collected some 400 of them.
Though inspired by a historical format, “Contemporary Ex-Votos” is primarily an exhibit of recent artwork, and those are on view at Gallery 400. Eighteen emerging and mid-career Latinx artists contribute animated videos, large-scale sculptures, embroidered textiles, photographic collages and more, demonstrating approaches to the retablo that range from enthusiastic updates to scathing appropriations.
The most traditional examples are those made by Alfredo and Daniel Vilchis, father and son of a Mexico City family famed for its production of ex-votos. On display are eight of their paintings, commissioned for the exhibition based on stories submitted by students at NMSU and UIC. Each man has his own distinctly colorful and approachable style, and their accounts are invariably moving, recounting the survival of multiple children after medically complicated births, the adoption of abandoned puppies and gratitude for the sun. Also on show are marvelous wall works by Guadalupe Maravilla, featuring ex-votos by Daniel extravagantly encased in spikey, swooping frames made of plant fiber and glue. Each tells of an event from Maravilla’s life, commemorating performances he choreographed in Times Square as well as his journey to the U.S. as an undocumented, unaccompanied 8-year-old.
Novel in material and decidedly light of touch, sculptures by Dan45 and Alberto Aguilar nevertheless keep to the established program. Dan45 repurposes a half-dozen vintage lunch boxes, packing each one with objects, drawings and a text recounting dramatic episodes from his childhood, as charming as they are alarming. In “It’s a miracle we survived as kids, No. 1 ‘Sk8 or Die,’” the artist barely manages to pull himself and a buddy out of a waist-deep mud pit. Aguilar presents three metal signposts to document the moment when he took it upon himself to create the portents that were not otherwise forthcoming on a visit with his daughter to the college of her dreams. Aguilar did what he often does, rearranging found items in their environment — in this case, a garden hose into a large spiral and a stack of folding chairs into a kind of conga line, on the college grounds — and 18 days later, an acceptance letter with full scholarship was received.
Other artists have appropriated the ex-voto form in order to criticize the traditions from which it derives. Targets, ranging from capitalism to aesthetics to homophobia, are not lacking, and the best of these is a video triptych by John Jota Leaños. Each screen in his “Prayers and Testimony” is filled with the image of a retablo, its scene animated to reveal the brutality of the Catholic church in the Americas, in particular the residential schools which indigenous youth were forced to attend. A nun cuts off the long braids of a child, hacking over and over again, as the heart on her frock drips blood. A priest stands watch over a pair of terrified children huddling in institutional beds, then bursts into flames. A nun moves past a wall hung with crosses, rosaries and objects with which she might beat the girl who is hiding in a wardrobe, its door swinging open and shut.
The exhibition concept stretches to accommodate artists more concerned with the spaces of devotion than its objects. Justin Favela crafts towering cardboard versions of signage he grew up seeing in Las Vegas, from the “Aleluya” and “Amén” neons of an Evangelical church to a pagoda-themed pylon sign, bearing the traces of a building’s transformation from Chinese to Mexican restaurant to Evangelical church. But churches aren’t the only places where devotion is due. The domestic refuge of Daisy Quezada Ureña’s elegant “Cleotilde,” named for her maternal grandmother, features a broad awning of strong clay and fragile porcelain tiles protecting a pale turquoise wall and a pair of icons: a historical Madonna and Child, and a fragment of the matriarch’s favorite sweater. Krystal Ramirez builds a minimalist personal sanctuary out of handmade brise soleil blocks awash in the radiance of green neon, a tribute to her father’s history in the Vegas construction industry. Her lights spell out a Spanish phrase that translates as “What have I done to deserve this?”
“This” could be any number of things, but given the context, Ramirez might be posing the meta-question of the entire exhibition, which ultimately takes the gallery as sanctuary, a new form of church, dedicated to art.
“Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium” runs through March 16 at Gallery 400, 400 S. Peoria St., 312-996-6114 and gallery400.uic.edu; and at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, 800 S. Halsted St., 312-413-5353 and www.hullhousemuseum.org
Lori Waxman is a freelance critic.
