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'Appearances Deceive' at MoIFA a retrospective of Nuevomexicano artist Policarpio Valencia
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The Museum of International Folk Art is tying together family history and art with “Appearances Deceive: Embroideries by Policarpio Valencia.”
The exhibit is dedicated to Valencia, a Nuevomexicano artist whose family contributed stories to the exhibit.
“I love being able to connect descendants with artwork that their ancestors made,” Carrie Hertz, exhibit curator, said. “It’s such a wonderful experience.”
The exhibit originated because a descendent of Valencia reached out, requesting to view artwork that the museum had in storage. Hertz pulled out the six pieces they had and laid them out for the family.
“When we saw them all out together, it was just spectacular,” Hertz said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, no, that’s an exhibit.’”
The pieces are embroidery textiles that Hertz said are made from recycled items, including old clothes, quilt patches and woven blankets.
Hertz said that the words written across the pieces were some of the most wonderful aspects, and noted that the text strikes a balance between philosophical and humorous.
“They’re in New Mexican dialect Spanish, which is now considered endangered,” Hertz said. “So it captures the way he spoke and wrote in the 1920s, so it’s a great capsule of the language of that time period from his community.”
The exhibit includes narration from the family reading the texts aloud in English and Spanish. The narration is part of a touch table the museum created for the exhibit, which allows visitors to view high-resolution images of the embroidery from front to back.
The text is also translated and transcribed in a gallery guide.
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As Hertz dived deeper into Valencia’s history and family stories, it went from being a “quick put together exhibition” to something more.
“I realized that it needed to be something a little deeper and richer,” Hertz said.
“The great thing is that that family history is so tied in with New Mexican history (and) cultural history.”
Valencia was alive from 1853 to 1931, during which New Mexico was transitioning from a territory to a state.
“There’s so much you can see through his artwork about what was going on during that time period,” Hertz said.
The exhibit features all 10 known pieces of Valencia’s artwork.
Hertz said her favorite part of the exhibit was being able to talk with the family and learn from them.
“Some of the family members, especially like the elders, they had memories. They had some stories that were shared, some family lore,” Hertz said. “But a lot of the younger ones had never heard of this ancestor before (and) got very excited about it.”
“Many of them said, ‘You know, we don’t feel like we have artists in the family,” Hertz said. “And this changed that. They loved that he was being celebrated as an artist.’”
