The Consul General of Ecuador, Lenin Housse Dávalos, will open an exhibition of eleven Ecuadorian artists in a show entitled UYATA SHUYCHIK visualizing the sonorous. These artists in their paintings use symbols and images to carry on the stories and oral wisdom embedded in their native tongues. The physicality of the paintings convey the power and sense of identity inherent in this oral tradition, a linguistic form threatened to disappear. For this reason, the artists have created works signifying the importance of their native tongues and recalling the United Nations declaration of 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

This Ecuadoran exhibition will continue through June 28 and is part of the Chicago Inty Raymi festivities.  Inty Raymi, the Festival of the Sun, is the most important celebration of Andean people. Our evening at the Foundation will include indigenous music and dance.

The Foundation’s two exhibitions, Anita Kontrec’s Script and Architecture and the Ecuadorian artists’ UYATA SHUYCHIK, shown back to back in the International Currents Gallery, both deal with ancient languages and their traditions -- the “glagoljica” from Croatia and the Kichwa tongues of Ecuador.

Image: Favio Caraguay