Muriel Hasbun

🤩 Beautiful catalog for Traces of Existence/Huellas de existencia and that took place at the in 2024, curated by Crista Dix .w.dix Available on the photo museum’s website, along with more publications of their powerful exhibition program. It’s so important to have documentation! Thank you, Crista and team for this,💐and for the honor of one of my photographs to grace the cover. 👀🫶🏼
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“We often measure our existence by the objects we hold, our memories, and the stories told through generations. Traces of Existence unites these three artists, each speaking to ideas of migration, history, reminiscence, family, and existence through their constructed imagery, such as collage, visual juxtapositions, and physical manipulations.
Using photographs, video and installation, these visual narratives reflect the artists’ exploration of identity, their relationship with their homeland, and the socio-political issues of Latin America and the United States. The highly charged political language used to identify immigrants as others exacerbates the complexity of the already cultural, emotional and physical barriers we establish, both real and arbitrary lines of existence. The artists of Traces work to connect the physical landscape with the memory of what is left behind.” Crista Dix
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Repost from Rofa projects: With great pleasure and immense pride, we are thrilled to share that Muriel Hasbun's work is now part of the extraordinary collection of the National Gallery of Art.
Muriel Hasbun's photographic and sound
installation Protegida | Watched Over (1996-2003) - a major work in the artist's experimental exploration of memory, loss, and family history — was partially inspired by a 15th-century altarpiece in the National Gallery's own collection.
The three triptychs that were part of the Venice Biennale are now included in the museum's collection.
“Protegida | Watched Over — Hasbun has collected the memories of wartime France preserved by her great-aunt and mother and connected them with her own memories of growing up in El Salvador. [...] In the
installations Hélène and Ave Maria, photographs of the artist's great-aunt and a small chapel in the Auvergne are combined with excerpts from postcards written by her grandfather to her grandmother during the war. [...] Presented as altar-like triptychs, the photographs ground us in the here and now, but also require us — intellectually and emotionally — to be in two places at once.”
(...from the Venice Biennale essay by Andy Grundberg)

A heartfelt thank you to the wonderful team at the National Gallery of Art, and especially to Andrea Nelson and E. Carmen Ramos!

Have been meaning to post about this video in about my artwork X post facto (6.7) in the collection of the 🤩 (and !). Deepest gratitude to curator and Steven Zucker for the wonderful feature! 🤎 (Link in bio shortly and in Smarthistory’s website.)
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