This installation is curated through the collaborative efforts of Las Pistoleras Instituto Cultural de Arte (Las Pistoleras) and Colorado College Mobile Arts (CC Mobile Arts). Using a sense of place framework, this installation activates the Chican@ political historical memories of northern New Mexico. Ultimately, our goal is to activate our ancestral terrestrial experience through the amplification of memories of place. We plan to explore our contemporary human-to-human relationships that ultimately affect nature and our environments within ourselves, our community and our globe.

The installation builds on the community work of Las Pistoleras Instituto Cultural de Arte and partnerships within the field of digital humanities. It focuses on organizing and making the archives of Enriqueta Vasquez and Father Jaramillo, two Chican@ community activists of the Civil Rights Era, publicly accessible. This installation will explore the mobilization of archive to achieve terrestrial connection. These archives will be amplified through the senses. Participants will be able to engage with curated selections from the archives. Curated selections will emphasize the region’s history of activism to protect community and nature, selected because of their potential to make an impact based on sight, sound, touch, smell and taste.

This working and final collaborative curation will be formalized by professors and students from Colorado College and artists, activists, community experts and community collaborators who are active partners at Las Pistoleras Instituto Cultural de Arte.

About the Artists:

Las Pistoleras Instituto Cultural de Arte Bio

Las Pistoleras Instituto Cultural de Arte is a local communal space located in El Prado, N.M. At the community gathering place, cultura, activism and the arts are at the forefront of community identity. It is a place that fosters and promotes organic intellectualism, formal education, community activism and all aspects of the arts. We encourage the practice of community rituals and traditions that enlighten and create healthy, educated, strategic environments that, in turn, create positive communities that have proven to thrive and continue despite educational, political and pandemic uncertainty.

Colorado College Mobile Arts Bio

CC Mobile Arts creates art experiences throughout Colorado Springs, CO and surrounding areas. Inspired by the words of Black feminist author Audre Lorde, “The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.” CC Mobile Arts launched in 2021 to curate spaces for folks to come together in a socio-political moment of heightened ideological polarization and isolation. The program aims to amplify the diversity and expansiveness of experiences present in our local and regional communities through partnerships with artists and organizations committed to social justice and arts accessibility and foster community through the experience of joy. This program provides diverse multi-disciplinary arts experiences at no cost to the public from a 16 ft. box truck, refurbished with stage, sound, and visual arts equipment.