Lecture | Natural Land Cultural Space: Indigenous Aesthetics and Mapping the Self in Spacetime with Tlisza Jaurique and Marcus Zilliox

Jean Holden Eminent Visiting Artists Workshop Fund

Join artists Tlisza Jaurique and Marcus Zilliox for a lecture on Sunday, June 23, 2-3 p.m.

This lecture will present and define key moments in Indigenous history and Aesthetics that provide a framework for understanding important concepts found within the exhibition The Land Carries Our Ancestors. Many Indigenous artists are inspired by different definitions of "Land" in our art production as well as a reflection of our cultural/historical identity. Particular focus will be paid to mapping out fundamental concepts that help shape our identity such as ancestors, natural landscape, cultural beliefs, practices, and celebrations. The lecture will examine and reflect on these concepts and how they have changed or remain unchanged through time.

Marcus Zilliox was born in 1972 in Phoenix of Native American and Mexican American descent. Grew up Gila River Indian Community, Arizona, and Phoenix, Arizona. Zilliox earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing at Arizona State University in 1996. Zilliox earned a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking at Yale in 2007. He has exhibited his work in the Southwest, California, New England, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. In 2002, he received Community Scholar fellowship at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. Solo exhibitions include Hispanic Research Center at Arizona State University, the David Rockefeller Center for Latino Studies at Harvard, and Museo Chicano in Phoenix. Zilliox exhibited in Another Arizona at the Nelson Fine Arts Museum, Arizona Biennial '01 at Tucson Museum of Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, Art in Odd Places. Currently resides in New England where he lives and works in Connecticut and New York City with wife and fellow artist Tlisza Jaurique.

Tlisza Jaurique is an Indigenous Xicana multidisciplinary artist, scholar, and educator. She uses her Mexica upbringing and aesthetics intertwined with her background in Philosophy as a foundation for her artistic practice. Her work addresses the philosophical concepts of change, language, hermeneutics, power, and decoloniality. She has consulted, exhibited, lectured, and worked with the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian Latino Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (She was the first Mexicana/Xicana to exhibit at the Met), David Rockefeller Center for Latino Studies at Harvard, the Latino Cultural Center at Yale University, Hispanic Research Center at ASU, Notre Dame Center for Latino Studies, Nelson Fine Arts Museum, JP Getty Education Institute, Museo del Barrio, Taller Puertorriqueña, etal. She received the prestigious Community Scholar Award from the Smithsonian Native American Awards Program at the National Museum of Natural History. She was a resident scholar and visiting artist for the Southwest Borderlands Initiative Chicana/o Studies Department at ASU. She received the Artists’ Fellowship Grant. In 2020, she was the recipient of the NDN Collective Artist Grant and the United States Artist Grant. In 2021, she was awarded an Artist Support Grant from NALAC.

Her art work has been included in four volumes of Mexican American Chicana/o Art published by the Bilingual Press, the Aztlan Journal of Chicano Studies UCLA, Taken: Iconography and Intent in Contemporary Latino Art, published by Taller Puertorriqueña and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.