Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium

Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium, is the first exhibition to pair 19th–20th century retablos from the NMSU Permanent Art Collection with new works by contemporary Latinx artists. Guest curated by Dr. Emmanuel Ortega, Marilynn Thoma Scholar and Assistant Professor in Art of the Spanish Americas at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), this exhibition sheds light on the understudied iconographic and ideological aspects of ex-votos, a type of retablo (small devotional painting) depicting miracles painted on tin and found materials.

The NMSU Art Museum houses the largest collection of Mexican retablos in the U.S. This exhibition demonstrates the important place retablos hold in the history of the Americas; it recontextualizes studies of contemporary devotion in Latin America and the U.S. by commissioning artists to research the retablo collection. This show results in site-specific works that consider how retablos are more than by-products of colonialism, illuminating current socio-political issues of class, race, and gender through artistic methodologies of resistance.