In the fifth round of commissions for the Tent Series, the Moody continued to engage with Houston-based artists inviting them to respond to the current moment and the campus environment with interventions intended to foster conversation in the academic year ahead. This year, works by Lorena Molina and Sindhu Thirumalaisamy will be featured on the south side of campus, across Loop Road from Herring Hall.  Read on to learn more about each work. 

Lorena Molina
La Tierra Recuerda (The Land Remembers), 2024
Vinyl. Original work, chromogenic print
Commission, Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University
 

At the core of my work is an exploration of spatial inequalities and the challenges that oppressed groups face in constructing place and establishing a sense of belonging. Most of my work stems from a need to find and build community in a way that is tender, accountable, and sometimes challenging through difficult conversations that invite everybody involved to actively question their position and privileges in society. Ultimately, my work is always asking for witnesses. To witness is to acknowledge that these often silenced stories are an essential part of our collective narrative.
— Lorena Molina

A visual artist and educator, Lorena Molina uses photography, video, performance, and installation art to explore questions of identity, intimacy, and pain in the context of war, immigration, exploitation of labor, and social inequities. The artist faced violence and displacement herself when the civil war—fought between the government and leftist guerillas from 1979 to 1992 in El Salvador—forced her family to settle in the United States. La Tierra Recuerda depicts the lava fields in El Playon, a site where the last eruption of the San Salvador volcano happened. That area was used by the paramilitary death squads during the civil war as a place to abandon the bodies of civilians. Molina honors the dead by highlighting their memory and encouraging viewers to reflect on traumatic events of the past and how they continue to affect future generations and the land we inhabit.

About the artist
Lorena Molina (b. 1985, San Salvador, El Salvador) received her MFA from the University of Minnesota (2015) and her BFA from California State University, Fullerton (2012). She was awarded the Diversity of Views and Experiences fellowship, the Christopher Cardozo fellowship, two Truth and Reconciliation grants from ArtsWave, and the Kala Art Institute fellowship. Molina has exhibited and performed both nationally and internationally, notably at the Lawndale Art Center, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; FSU Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee, FL; and the Beijing Film Academy, China. Molina is currently assistant professor of Studio Art Practice at San Francisco State University, after teaching photography and digital media at the University of Houston.

Sindhu Thirumalaisamy
provision, 2024
HD video and vinyl
On view from sunset to sunrise
Commission, Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University

I approach this Provisional Campus Facility (PCF 1), or Grad Bubble, as a site of communal gathering. The word provision comes from the Latin, “providere,” which means to “foresee” or “attend to.” This work frames visionary moments of provisional place-making and community building in and around this tent. Tarps, blankets, leaves and shadows wrap the tent structure. They speak of the power that softness provides in the context of structural rigidity. They conjure a different sense of futurity.
— Sindhu Thirumalaisamy
 

Sindhu Thirumalaisamy is an artist and filmmaker whose work engages with familiar structures and public spaces as sites of social engagement, in terms of both collective resistance and communal care. Through her films and multi-media installations, the artist often explores ecological issues that impact communities and shape socio-political histories. provision is a site-specific work filmed at Rice University that takes the architectural structure of the PCF tent as its starting point. Invoking other liminal spaces such as temporary shelters, provision features both a vinyl outline highlighting the contours of the tent structure and a video projection referencing tarps and other culturally significant materials. Fleeting glimpses of the human body continue Thirumalaisamy’s investigation into implied narrative structures, untold stories, and the passage of time.

The film includes performers Anja Conev, Cal Mascardo, Dan Bustillo, Hotpot, Jorge, Muizz Akhtar and Nida.

About the artist
Sindhu Thirumalaisamy (b. 1990, Coimbatore, India) trained as a filmmaker at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore. She received an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego. She is an alumna of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. Her practice has been supported by the NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Film/Video, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s Core Residency Program, and the MacDowell fellowship. Thirumalaisamy is currently an assistant professor of art at Rice University, where she teaches film, video, sound, and interdisciplinary topics that engage environmental studies and feminist media practices.

The tent installations are organized by Alison Weaver, Suzanne Deal Booth Executive Director, and Frauke V. Josenhans, Curator, and are made possible by the Moody Center for the Arts.