If a group of archaeologists stumbled onto your belongings 1,000 years from now, what exactly would they find? What stories would those items tell, and where would you want those objects to end up? Now imagine your most prized possessions sitting behind glass in an art museum.
Those are just a few thoughts evoked by the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art exhibit Future Relics: Artifacts for a New World, a show curated by the Gulch Collective. The exhibit is the collective’s first Las Vegas show since coming together in 2013.
Homero Hidalgo's "That Belongs in a Museum"
“The group was formed back in the day really to have an intersectional collective of artists support different projects,” says Gulch member and artist Justin Favela, host of The Art People Podcast and co-host of the Latinos Who Lunch podcast. “We stayed in touch, but we regrouped and reassembled the Megazord in 2020 and added Quindo Miller and Lance Smith.”
Today, Gulch consists of Las Vegas-based artists Krystal Ramirez, Mikayla Whitmore, Jennifer Kleven, Smith, Miller and Favela. “All of us have longstanding ties and commitments to Las Vegas,” Whitmore tells the Weekly. “A lot of us are born and raised out here … and were just tired of watching our city being taken apart piece by piece.”
“We have so many individual ideas,” Miller adds. “We challenge each other to think in different ways.”
For Future Relics, Favela says, each Gulch member chose an artist, then was given the opportunity to look at the Barrick’s private collection of pre-Columbian artifacts before creating their own work for the show.
“A lot of museums have been reckoning with their collections and how most of their pre-Columbian artifacts or Native American artifacts were mostly stolen, grave-robbed or bought as a collection as tchotchkes,” Favela says. “When I brought it to Gulch, we said, ‘This is the perfect opportunity for us to curate a fun show, but also have it be an institutional critique.’ Yes, [we’re] being critical of the museum collection, but [we’re also] in conversation with the museum.”
“We are trying to share a set of ideas and beliefs with this collective,” Ramirez says, adding that it was important to showcase other peoples’ work, especially burgeoning local artists who have never shown at a museum before.
Cesar Piedra's "Pinche Xoloescuincle"
“When I was going to art school, I never thought I would show at a museum,” says Favela, whose work has been featured in group exhibitions around the world and solo shows across the country. “Once it happened, I realized this is something attainable. I really do hope that some of these artists who have never showed at a museum [before] will be encouraged after having this show under their belt. Sometimes, just being an artist and seeing your work in a space really opens up a whole world.”
Future Relics will continue to evolve when the Gulch Collective invites a second round of artists to respond for “phase two” of the show in January. A third phase will follow in 2021, allowing even more artists to engage in the conversation, not just with the Barrick’s collection but with the other artists themselves.
“Many times, mundane items become deified objects,” Smith says. “What makes an ‘artifact?’ What makes a talisman, and why do they get to be behind glass?”
“A lot of these relics and artifacts that museums collect are really just everyday items … so I think that was part of the prompt,” Ramirez says. “What is a future relic to you? What is special to you that others might not find special?”
“Or what isn’t special to you,” Miller asks, “but other people deem important?”
The evolutionary scope of Relics helps separate it from more traditional exhibits, Whitmore says. Also helping do that: All of these artists created new work during a pandemic. “They’re working with what they have, within their circumstances,” Miller says.
In addition to curating the next phases of Future Relics, Gulch is working on its “first active art project between the six of us,” according to Whitmore, for a December Nevada Humanities show titled New Monuments. In the meantime, the community is invited to engage with the dialogue happening inside the Barrick.
“The museum is making some beautiful strides by saying, ‘We got a whole bunch of stolen sh*t—let’s send it back to the people it belongs to,” Smith says. “That is powerful.”
