Exhibitions
TAHILA MINTZ: DISRUPTED WATER WAYS
Unrequited Leisure / 507 Hagan St. May 5, 2023 - May 31, 2023
Tahila Mintz
Unrequited Leisure is excited to announce our upcoming exhibition, Disrupted Water Ways: a call to action. This solo exhibition features a video installation by Tahila Mintz, a photographer, Medicine Carrier and Founder / Executive Director of OJI:SDA’ Sustainable Indigenous Futures. Mintz works across multiple platforms and organizations to amplify the voices of Indigenous people and the natural world. For this exhibition, a segment of her current film project, Women of the Water, will play on loop within a video installation set up in the gallery, accompanied by photographic images of Indigenous Women taking a stand against Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, and 2-spirit beings. Other objects that comprise the installation include an alter like plinth holding candles, flowers, and vessels of water.
A Special Screening Event will take place May 5, 2023, from 6-7pm in COOP Gallery In observance of National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, we have partnered with COOP Gallery to present the video as a projection followed by an activation of Mintz’s video installation inside of Unrequited Leisure’s gallery space with refreshments to follow. Please join us for this powerful start to the exhibition, as we come together to raise awareness about this important issue and learn about the impacts to women, families, and communities both within Tennessee and across the Americas.
We will host an additional public reception in our gallery space on May 6, 2023, during the First Saturday Wedgewood-Houston Arts Crawl from 5-8pm at the Packing Plant.
ABOUT THE WORK:
Woman of the Water is a feature length film project in process directed and produced by Tahila Mintz. It focuses on the reality of the treatment of the water, women, and of indigenous people, through interviews and site documentation. The film follows community member Logis and her family, Mario Luna- Speaker for one of the tribal communities, Dr. Raquel Padilla Ramos- Historian and honorary community member and her daughter Raquilita Padilla after her mother’s murder.
From the artist:
The Patriarchal system of capitalism IS the dominant global reality, whereby Water, Women and Indigenous People, are to be possessed, controlled or eliminated. Instead of being respected, honored, and revered they were abused, muted, violated, and murdered systematically. The Yaqui’s of the Rio Yaqui have had their river stolen. It has been rerouted by the capitol city of Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico to serve the needs of corporate headquarters for international business which is in the city. WITHOUT WATER, is the focus of this film segment within the series, and asks, what does life look like without water for crops, animal, drinking, washing, medicine cultivation and spiritual and cultural relationship?
About the artist:
Tahila Mintz is a Photographer, Medicine Carrier and Founder / Executive Director of OJI:SDA’ Sustainable Indigenous Futures, an Indigenous women founded and led, non-profit organization that focuses on a vision where Indigenous people are seen, heard, healthy and thriving. Its programs create ancestral knowledge land-based curriculum for youth populations within formal and informal education systems; summer camp experiences for Indigenous Youth; disaster relief and other models of community support. Mintz works across multiple platforms and organizations to amplify the voices of Indigenous people and the natural world. Her work focuses on ancestral matriarchies and gender equilibrium, contemporary Indigenous issues, and recuperating knowledge that has been unraveled by colonialism.
She is a Water Protector and a Land Guardian whose home is in her Yaqui community of Sonora and in upstate, NY, and has been photographing for over 20 years around the world living and working throughout the Americas, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Texas, followed by being a faculty member at Texas State University and Central Texas College. Tahila is also a National Geographic Fellow, and her work has been published in National Geographic Magazine and is held in museum collections.
Image: Tahila Mintz, Video still image from, Women of the Water.
