AT THE ALLEN / FALL 2023 / 13 ON VIEW / RIPIN GALLERY / AUG 19–DEC 12 WHAT’S IN A SPELL? LOVE MAGIC, HEALING, AND PUNISHMENT IN THE EARLY MODERN HISPANIC WORLD Between 1470 and 1800 in Europe and the Americas, spells were a resource for those in despair. Spellcasting was a practice that was often part magia amorosa (love magic) and brujería (witchcraft). It offered solutions to spiritual, economic, and physical hardships. But spells also allowed people to deceive and transform others, disrupting the imposed order to achieve one’s desired goals. In response, the Spanish Inquisition (1478–1834) used surveillance and punishingmechanisms to maintain and restore the spiritual and political health of the empire. Collaboratively curated by 33 students studying witchcraft in Spain and colonial Latin America, What’s in a Spell? visually explores the subversive opportunities spells offered and the oppressive tactics used to suppress them. In the colonial context, spells drew on local and foreign knowledge about botany and the human body, reason and emotions to challenge the hierarchies imposed by European colonizers. In this exhibition, we read European prints against the grain to understand the cultural anxieties about deception and transformation that were part of early modern European consciousness and further amplified in the hybrid cultures of its colonies. The works of contemporary artists remind us that the power of spellcasting persists today. Organized by Ana María Díaz Burgos, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies; HannahWirta Kinney, Curator of Academic Programs; and students in Saints, Sinners and Other CursedWomen (HISP 417) and Inquisitorial Practices: Heretics, Torture, and Fear (HISP 341). Opposite: Maekawa Senpan 前川千帆 (Japanese, 1888–1960), Factory Streets at Honjo, from the series Scenes of Last Tokyo, 1946. Color woodblock print. Oberlin Friends of Art Fund, 1999.27. Above: Romare Bearden (American, 1911–1988), Conjur Woman, 1975. Collage with spray paint on paper. R. T. Miller Jr. Fund, 2001.3. Below: Utagawa Hiroshige I 初代目歌川広重 (Japanese, 1797–1858), The Rokugo Ferry at Kawasaki, no. 3 from the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (details from two prints), ca. 1833. Color woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper. Mary A. Ainsworth Bequest, 1950.791, 1950.792.
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