The exhibition series BETWEEN WORD AND IMAGE. A Gloria Anzaldúa Thought Gallery took place at the Casa de Cultura U.A.E.M. (March 17-April 16, 2016), the Centro Cultural Border (April 20-May 8, 2016) and Punto Gozadera (October 13- November 30, 2016) in Mexico City; the SALA GRIS, Universidad Miguél Hérnandez de Elche (April 19-June 19, 2018),  and the Women’s Art Library, Special Collections and Archives, Goldsmiths, University of London (September 5-October 17, 2018).

An image is a bridge between evoked emotion and conscious knowledge; words are the cables that hold up the bridge. Images are more direct, more immediate than words, and closer to the unconscious. Picture language precedes thinking in words; the metaphorical mind precedes analytical consciousness.
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands: the new mestiza = La frontera, 1987

When I studied painting and writing, I discovered that I could create concrete universes. Rather, I didn’t create them; I was the conductor for them, the channel.
Gloria Anzaldúa, “Creativity and Switching Modes of Consciousness,” 1986

A self-described “Chicana, tejana, working-class, dyke-feminist poet, writer-theorist,” Gloria Anzaldúa also saw herself as a nepantlera, one who navigates a liminal space between worlds, identities, and ways of knowing. Just as fluid movement between English, Spanish and Nahuatl was central to Anzaldúa’s teaching and writing, so too was the interplay between words and images an essential element of her self-expression. The words and images presented for the first time in Mexico come from transparency drawings, notes, and diagrams that Anzaldúa presented to her audiences at workshops and lecture “gigs” across the United States of America. Some are undated, but many were created during one of the most active periods of her teaching career, in the mid-1990s.

These vivid documents provide an intimate view into Anzaldúa’s creative process and demonstrate the centrality of imagination and visuality to the author’s theories of knowledge and consciousness. Anzaldúa explores borders and builds bridges that allow contact, friction, and mixture with the unexpected, the foreign, the queer, the “other,” which is, in many instances, the reverberation of the self and the collective memory.

For more (visual and textual works by Gloria Anzaldúa, audios, exhibition views at the Casa de Cultura U.A.E.M.) see http://uaemculturatlalpan.com/entrepalabraeimagen.html

SELECTION FROM THE ANZALDÚA PAPERS AT THE BENSON LATIN AMERICAN COLLECTION
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

Curators
Julianne Gilland | BETWEEN WORD AND IMAGE. A Gloria Anzaldúa Thought Gallery

Coco Gutiérrez-Magallanes, Nina Hoechtl, Rían Lozano | ENTRE PALABRA E IMAGEN. Galería de pensamientos de Gloria Anzaldúa

Carmen G. Muriana, Coco Gutiérrez-Magallanes, Nina Hoechtl, Rían Lozano | EL MUNDO ZURDO. Galería de pensamientos de Gloria Anzaldúa

Verena Melgarejo Weinandt | A(r)mando Vo(i)ces at Bücherei Wien (September 30-October 18, 2016) in Vienna

Curatorial Assistance
Alana Varner y Frank Rodríguez (LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections – University of Texas/Austin), MANU(EL)(LA) (Casa de Cultura UAEMéx, Centro Cultural Border), Tepetongo. Balneario Crítico (Centro Cultural Border) und Mirna Roldán (Punto Gozadera).

Translation
Coco Gutiérrez-Magallanes, Nina Hoechtl, Valerie Seibold, Rían Lozano, Mauricio Patrón (Spanisch | Español | Spanish ); Claudia Melgarejo Weinandt (Deutsch | Alemán | German)

Voices
MANU(EL)(LA) (Spanisch | Español |  Spanish), TRENZA (Deutsch | Alemán| German)

Convened by Bücherei Wien, Casa de Cultura de la UAEMéx, Campus Expandido/MUAC, LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, University of Texas/Austin, Punto Gozadera, Tepetongo. Balneario Crítico y Centro Cultural Border, VBKÖ, Verein Grosses Schiff.