Rosemary Meza-DesPlas, also a spoken word performer, will present her piece titled Intervals of Anger at the opening reception on February 1st. She will perform a poem every fifteen minutes in conjunction with an artwork in the exhibition.
Category: Contemporary Poetry
The Evolution of the Burden Hat
The “Burden Hat” made its debute at my exhibition “nevertheless: She Persisted” @ the Durango Arts Center. My exhibition focused on the theme of gender-based burdens. It spoke about burdens which disproportionately impact women such as poverty, domestic violence, body image and political inequality. In my artworks, some of the women carry organic forms on their heads. The organic forms are inspired by the rock formations at the Bisti Badlands south of Farmington, NM. Those same rock formations later served as inspiration for the “burden hat”. If one could give visual form to their psychological burdens, what would they look like in the abstract? This is how the “burden hat” evolved. I used it as part of my costume for my spoken word performance at the Durango Arts Center in March 2, 2018.
Heaviness, Hardship, Heft @ ARC Gallery An Exhibition of Artworks by Rosemary Meza-DesPlas
ARC Gallery
2156 N. Damen Ave., Chicago, IL 60647
773-252-2232, www.arcgallery.org
info@arcgallery.org
Rosemary Meza-DesPlas * Heaviness, Hardship, Heft
Opening: Friday, September 1, 6:00-9:00pm
Spoken Word Performance: 7:15pm
Exhibition Dates: Wednesday, August 30 – September 23, 2017
Gallery Hours: Thursday – Saturday: 12 – 6 pm; Sunday: 12 – 4 pm
ARC Gallery presents Heaviness, Hardship, Heft, an exhibition of works by Rosemary Meza-DesPlas.
Rosemary Meza-DesPlas presents a series of artworks reflecting gender-based burdens. Weight hauled by women can have a palpable physical existence or take on a psychological shape of enormous proportions. Fluctuating states of poverty, violence and politics encumber women on a daily basis. Feminine onus is heightened by entrenched patriarchal institutions and reaches a crest during political unrest and instability.
Rosemary Meza-DesPlas is a Latina visual artist, writer and spoken word performer. She has exhibited at the Koehnline Museum of Art, Art Museum of Southwest Texas and the New Mexico Museum of Art. Ms. Meza-DesPlas has exhibited internationally at Hoxton Arches Gallery in London, Yorck Studios in Berlin and LuXun Academy of Fine Art Gallery in Shenyang, China. In 2017, she presented spoken word performances at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, NM and at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, Canada. She is a featured artist in Of Note Magazine (where art meets activism), The Gun Issue, Summer 2017. In October 2017, Ms. Meza-DesPlas will be presenting an academic paper titled Heaviness, Hardship, Heft: Gender-based Burdens in Images at the Eighth International Conference on the Image, Venice International University, Venice, Italy.
ARC Gallery and Educational Foundation is a not-for-profit gallery and foundation whose mission is to bring innovative, experimental visual art to a wide range of viewers and to provide an atmosphere for the continued development of artistic potential, experimentation and dialogue. ARC serves to educate the public on various community-based issues by presenting exhibits, workshops, discussion groups, and programs for, and by, underserved populations.
ARC Gallery and Educational Foundation is sponsored in part by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, City Arts, the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Chicago Community Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the Ravenswood Bank, the Wicker Park Bucktown Chamber of Commerce, our members and ARC angels.
ARC Gallery is an internationally recognized exhibition space that has been an integral part of the Chicago art scene since its inception in 1973. Founded during the women’s movement as an alternative to the mainstream gallery system, ARC is one of the oldest co-ops of its kind in the country. As a non-profit, woman artist-run cooperative, ARC continues its feminist tradition by providing exhibition opportunities for professional and emerging artists working in all media based on excellence of artwork, without discrimination toward gender, race, age, class, physical/mental ability, sexual, spiritual or political orientation.
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Poem: Woman Interrupted
I wrote this poem after January 21, 2017. I performed it at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, May 6th, 2017.
Woman Interrupted
A thousand men in cheap toupees
wave blue dresses
rippling and undulating like patriotism
stained and soiled with falsehoods
lock her up, lock her up, lock her up
they chant boisterously
One blonde woman in sensible shoes
stands at a podium
lips twitching from strain
shoulders slumped, knees buckling
under red, white and blue weight
senator, secretary, sweaty salvation
birthing encumbrances
she carries the burden of every woman
Five hundred thousand women in white pant suits
swallow up concrete space
labia-pink knitted hats nod and wink
clever slogans bob up and down like bouys
marching clits, screaming vulvas and singing snatches
snake fluidly through city streets
A thousand brown women in mini skirts
look to the ceiling
scramble up the blond hair rungs
of a deteriorating D.C. ladder
heaving cleavages squashed against glass
red-tape lipstick smeared across transparency
One middle-aged woman in a black pant suit
flashes dejected pearly whites
five hundred thousand deferred dreams
tumble from her shoulders
into putrid puddles of complacency
suicidal bravado slices
into dead air silently
woman rupture, woman interrupted
Rosemary Meza-DesPlas
This is the post excerpt.
My official website is https://www.rosemarymeza.com/ – I started this blog when my current website was under construction. This blog served as a temporary archive of exhibitions, artworks, poetry and spoken word performances. 
Rosemary Meza-DesPlas 