Click here to find the To Order the Days supplement.
As the 2022-2023 Georgette and Richard Koopman Distinguished Chair in the Visual Arts at the Hartford Art School, Genevieve De Leon produced artwork that took as its center the knowledge she received from her studies with Gina Kanbalam Miranda, a Maya daykeeper.
Miranda is working to recover a set of Maya constellations that align with a cycle entitled the Tzolk’in, a 260-day calendar used throughout ancient Mesoamerica and contemporary Maya communities. Inspired by this work, De Leon’s Star Series paintings represent star maps of constellations that form portions of Miranda’s zodiac.
She also offered her unfolding knowledge of Maya cosmology as a starting point for collaborations with several groups: Hartford Art School ceramics and drawing students; Native Youth Arts Collective members based out of Little Earth (Minneapolis, Minnesota); and members of Dr. Cara Battersby’s Milky Way Laboratory at the University of Connecticut. The resulting work was on view in the Donald and Linda Silpe Gallery from February through March of 2023.
The exhibition, entitled To Order the Days / Para Ordenar Los Dìas, intertwined science and art and Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge to embody the concept of “Two-Eyed Seeing,” a phrase coined by Mi'kmaw elder Albert Marshall. According to Education Director Darlene Kascak of the Institute for American Indian Studies, this concept refers to "learning how to see from one eye the strengths of Indigenous knowledge, and from the other eye the strengths of Western knowledge." The exhibition aimed to be part of a growing movement to uplift Indigenous knowledge systems, allowing Indigenous communities to lay claim to the history of science and its ongoing development.
