ARTISTS
Adela Goldbard: The Last Judgment
Centered on the community interests of residents in Chicago鈥檚 Little Village neighborhood, Adela Goldbard鈥檚 The Last Judgment features large-scale sculptures built as pyrotechnic scenography for a public pyrotechnic event to be presented in Little Village on October 12, 2019. As a multi-part project, The Last Judgment creatively draws on Mexican traditions and artistry to spectacularly address and ritually purge the challenges facing Chicago鈥檚 Little Village.
The sculptures鈥攂uilt by master artisans of Artsumex collective in Tultepec (Mexico鈥檚 pyrotechnic capital)鈥� derive from the struggles, life experiences, and resilience of Little Village residents, as well as concerns about environmental justice and gentrification. The sites, sets, and stories were collaboratively determined in a series of summer 2019 workshops that Goldbard and collaborating teaching artists held with multigenerational Little Village residents in schools, community centers, and other neighborhood locations. The Last Judgment is a bridge between organization, artists, artisans, activists, Mexican and Mexican-American communities across Chicago neighborhoods and across the border.
With a multilingual narrative (Spanish, English, and N谩huatl), The Last Judgment鈥檚 takes its name from the first Western play performed in present-day Mexico. In the XVI century, Franciscan priest Andr茅s de Olmos wrote The Last Judgment in N谩huatl as a religious tool of conquest. Goldbard鈥檚 Last Judgment evokes the spectacular character of that theater of evangelization but contests its colonizing and moralizing spirit, transforming punishment and subjugation into protest and criticality through processes of collective building, reenactment, and destruction.
Centered on the community interests of residents in Chicago鈥檚 Little Village neighborhood, Adela Goldbard鈥檚 The Last Judgment features large-scale sculptures built as pyrotechnic scenography for a public pyrotechnic event to be presented in Little Village on October 12, 2019. As a multi-part project, The Last Judgment creatively draws on Mexican traditions and artistry to spectacularly address and ritually purge the challenges facing Chicago鈥檚 Little Village.
The sculptures鈥攂uilt by master artisans of Artsumex collective in Tultepec (Mexico鈥檚 pyrotechnic capital)鈥� derive from the struggles, life experiences, and resilience of Little Village residents, as well as concerns about environmental justice and gentrification. The sites, sets, and stories were collaboratively determined in a series of summer 2019 workshops that Goldbard and collaborating teaching artists held with multigenerational Little Village residents in schools, community centers, and other neighborhood locations. The Last Judgment is a bridge between organization, artists, artisans, activists, Mexican and Mexican-American communities across Chicago neighborhoods and across the border.
With a multilingual narrative (Spanish, English, and N谩huatl), The Last Judgment鈥檚 takes its name from the first Western play performed in present-day Mexico. In the XVI century, Franciscan priest Andr茅s de Olmos wrote The Last Judgment in N谩huatl as a religious tool of conquest. Goldbard鈥檚 Last Judgment evokes the spectacular character of that theater of evangelization but contests its colonizing and moralizing spirit, transforming punishment and subjugation into protest and criticality through processes of collective building, reenactment, and destruction.
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