Many Cities, One Providence— From New Castile to New England: Fly on the Wall by Miguel Guzmán Pastor

About the Exhibition

Many Cities, One Providence is an exhibition series offering Providence audiences idiosyncratic glimpses of innovative contemporary artists working in cities around the world. The series stems from Providence College Galleries’ and the Providence College Art & Art History Department’s interest in cultivating relationships with artists, scholars and arts communities from around the world in order to draw connections between the city of Providence and other international urban contexts. In keeping with the exhibition series and commissioned in conjunction with Providence College’s Centennial programming, From New Castile to New England: Fly on the Wall uses contemporary art as a lens through which to have a look at this multi-faceted region in Spain, once a hub-site for St. Dominic’s early ministry and exposure to the arts.

In the summer and fall of 2016, artist Miguel Guzmán Pastor traveled throughout the southern region of Castile. In contrast to the Don Quijote-esque spectacular approaches to experiencing this historical area, Guzmán Pastor gathered a collection of moments from everyday life. Combining a multitude of atmospheres, people, objects, rituals and sounds into a video and score, the artist presents a renewed reality in PCG’s Hunt-Cavanagh Gallery, an original rhythm extracted from one cultural context (urban, historic, Dominican Catholic and more) and inserted into another in Providence. Like a fly on the wall, the artist lands on the liminal spaces between documentation and creation/reality and fiction, building the film and score into an overall installation also featuring small sculptures and multi-component drawings, photographs and other wall works to author a poetic symmetry between here and there.