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Effective January 1: Masks are Optional in VisArts’ Classrooms and Studios
By Mark Jenkins
THE INTRODUCTORY TEXT FOR TLALOC’S VisArts exhibition is in two languages, English and an imaginary one constructed of runes and glyphs. But the show’s title, “Los Extranjeros,” is in Spanish, which is telling. This elaborate installation doesn’t directly address the issues faced by migrants from Latin America, but their sense of alienation does seem to inform the Mexico-born artist’s dystopian tableaux.
In the darkened expanses of VisArts’s largest gallery, TLaloC (aka Eduardo Corral) has constructed multiple 3D vignettes that suggest an abandoned, formerly industrial landscape. Several patches of scruffy earth fail to nourish dead trees and plants. An old radiator, part of a ventilation duct, and other obsolete metal mechanisms are scattered through the space. Four figures — two female, two male — wearing stretchy gray unitards stand at attention in separate zones, each enclosed by a chain-link fence. The effect, according to the gallery’s statement, “mirrors the experience of being a foreigner in a new space.”
The artist, who teaches at Baltimore’s Maryland Institute College of Art, intensifies the mood by wafting smells (including gunpowder and burnt sugar) and a soundtrack (by Miguel Soto) through the space. The installation was initially swathed in fog, but the smoke machine was turned off at the behest of the local fire department.
The gloom is punctuated by glowing glyphs, projected or backlighted, whose meaning is cryptic but clearly significant. Their importance is underscored by the fact that each figure has a glyph-like 3D form over its head. The way the humanoids’s features are concealed suggests that their identities are alien — or, it might be said, illegible.
The show, which was overseen by VisArts 2024 Mentoring Curator Mehveş Lelic, is intentionally ominous. But the illuminated glyphs aren’t the only bright touch. Colorful flowers bloom at the feet of each of the strangers, as if germinated by their presence. They offer, if only tentatively, a promise of rebirth.
TLaloC: Los Extranjeros Through Oct. 13 at Kaplan Gallery, VisArts, 155 Gibbs St., Rockville. www.visartscenter.org. 301-315-8200.
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