Emilio Rojas: tracing a wound through my body

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Usdan Gallery is open to the public Tuesday-Saturday, 1:00-5:00 pm.

Recognizing the act of tracing dualistically, the exhibition both reexamines the artist’s corpus and reckons with the legacies of colonial and border traumas. For Rojas, such reckoning renders palpable visible and invisible wounds through the radically political instrumentalization of his body.

Included works relate to Rojas’s migratory experience and his rigorous research-based practice. Drawing upon queer and decolonized methodologies, his performative works interrogate extant structures of colonialism and border politics. The exhibition takes place in a moment in which nativist rhetoric and xenophobic immigration legislation in the United States and beyond deepens wounds already open. Rojas’s works not only confront the historical precedents for such trauma, but also speculate upon Chicana cultural theorist Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s proposition of the wound transforming into a pathway for healing.

tracing a wound through my body is curated by Laurel V. McLaughlin and organized by Lafayette College Art Galleries, Easton, PA, with travel administered by Artspace New Haven. This iteration of the exhibition is hosted by Anne Thompson, director and curator of Usdan Gallery, in collaboration with the Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA).