URI’s Main Gallery is pleased to present Passage: Images of a Pilgrimage. An Artist Crosses the Border with the “Desert People.” This exhibition features the work of URI alum and artist Maeve Hickey, and is on view in Green Hall.
Maeve Hickey accompanied about a hundred Native Americans (Tohono O’odham) on their annual pilgrimage across the US/Mexico border to the shrine of San Francisco Xavier, walking with them through the searing heat of the day, sleeping alongside them under the stars through the cold nights. The work in this exhibit is her response: photographs that capture the humanity and texture of the journey in images of the pilgrims and their ephemeral shrines as well as in the often strange and surprising sights encountered along the way. Her pieces constitute her exploration of and reflection on the cross-border desert pilgrimage as an aesthetic as well as religious undertaking. If the artist is here a pilgrim, then the pilgrim is also an artist, and the interplay of image and object—found, captured, and made—is at the heart of the experience for both.
Exhibition opens Tuesday, October 18th
Opening reception: Tuesday, October 18th, 4:30–6pm, Green Hall
Artist talk: Wednesday, October 19th, 5pm, Chafee 275