On Friday, October 27, 2023, Graduate student Marisol Villela Balderrama will present at the 58th Annual UCLA Art History Graduate Symposium, In/On/Across Bodies of Water to be held at the Hammer Museum. Drawing from part of her current dissertation project on Chilean artist José Venturelli (1924-1988), Villela Balderrama's paper “Oceans on the Walls: José Venturelli's Transpacific Mural Practice in Chile, Cuba, and China, 1960-1972” explores how the artist depicted the Pacific Ocean and other bodies of water in his murals as central components of a nation's territory and as a gateway to the world. It also examines Venturelli's incorporation of artistic practices he learned while living in China, including format and depictions of different temporalities, and considers these artworks as a tangible result of transpacific encounters in the postwar period. In the context of the Cuban Revolution, and later during the socialist-elected government of President Salvador Allende in Chile, these works also show an early ecological concern by portraying water pollution as one of the consequences of the capitalist system.
Read more and register to attend the event on the symposium website.