Nierika: Santuario Somático, 2020
Drawing on the artist’s indigenous, queer, pagan, witchy, mutagenic, and chimerica identities this installation at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center in Portland, Oregon, features new and existing work including digital prints, custom-designed ready-made objects in the form of shower curtains and pillows, video projection and screen-based video.
As part of the opening ceremonies, Frías hosted Etheric Bodies Ceremony (photos below) where they invited visitors to participate in a visionary journey, facilitated in collaboration with the plant spirits found in the Nierika Energy Body Mist Frías created for the event. This mist is based in mountain spring water and infused with a blend of flower essences and essential oils. Those who participated in the ceremony were able to imbue their intentions into the mist and Frías finished the ceremony by placing the imbued mist back in the main exhibition space. Visitors to the exhibition are encouraged to spray themselves with the mist as a part of their viewing experience of the exhibition.
The title of the exhibition is based around the concept of The Nierika, a sacred woven portal also known as "Ojo de Dios" in Spanish or Eye of God in English. This sacred object has been used by the Wixarika people as an amulet, talisman and tool for accessing spiritual magic. The Nierika expresses the idea of integration and a “binding together”. For the artist it represents not only how we are linked to a larger world through ecology, community, and spirituality but also how diverse hybridities are bound within the self. The Nierika therefore is not only a portal, an offering and a place of respite, but also a totem for a hybridized spirituality fusing self-fashioned identities in visual art, self- care and consciousness evolution. It is the core of the journey and the icon of self-discovery.
This exhibition is a part of Disjecta’s Season 9 for their Curator in Residence program, featuring Justin Charles Hoover.
Documentation by Mario Gallucci & Disjecta.
Documentation of the Etheric Bodies Ceremony by Nanda D’Agostino and Disjecta.
Subsequent Iterations
A version of this project was included in the group exhibition AND WE WILL SING IN THE TALL GRASS AGAIN: postcolonial futurities at the end of gender’, at The FRONT Arte Cultura in San Ysidro, CA and curated by Alan Luna Torres & Julie Choo. Exhibited from July 1 - September 1, 2021.
Please click here to read coverage of this exhibition on KPBS.
Documentation by Andrew Utt, The FRONT, and Alan Luna Torres.
Ojo de Brujx was included in the exhibition ¡Viva La Comunidad! at the M. Rosetta Hunter Art Gallery. Curated by Meghan Elizabeth Trainor.
Please click here to read an article about the exhibition in The Seattle Collegian by Sophia Bruscato.