2023 North Carolina Heritage Award Honoree Cornelio Campos скачать в хорошем качестве

2023 North Carolina Heritage Award Honoree Cornelio Campos

Durham | Painting and Muralism Growing up in Cherán, Michoacán, in the highlands of west-central Mexico, Cornelio Campos was surrounded by the traditions of his Purépecha heritage. Cherán is one of eleven municipalities of the Purépecha people, whose pre-Columbian empire remained independent from Aztec conquest until Spanish colonization. As a young man, Cornelio often resisted the cultural traditions and festivals of his home, where the Purépecha language was banned from schools in an attempt to “deindigenize” the youth. Cornelio’s path to embracing his cultural identity began, unknowingly, at the age of eight when he began to take drawing classes from a local art teacher named Pánfilo Rosas, who often depicted Purépecha material culture in his work. When Cornelio came of age, he discovered that his family could not afford to support his education. Although Cherán has since overthrown its government administration and established indigenous self-rule, the town was plagued by violence and corruption at the time and work was scarce. Cornelio decided to do what many people from Cherán, including his own great-grandfather, had done before him. He crossed the border to join other family members in the United States. After Cornelio spent a few years painting mostly decorative commissions and portraits in Los Angeles, his cousin invited him to come and work in the tobacco fields of North Carolina. He made his home in Durham and eventually trained as an electrician, but for ten years he made no art. Finally, he says, he felt it was a “necessity” to paint again. This time, he wanted to communicate the reality of migration, the difficulty of manual labor, and the challenge of finding a home in a new culture. Cornelio began to paint in the tradition of Latin American political muralism, which has had a strong influence on the United States, as well. “La Realidad Norteña,” one of Cornelio’s seminal works, set him on a path to become one of North Carolina’s most recognized narrators of the immigration experience. Drawing on personal experience, Mexican folklore, Purépecha culture, and U.S. iconography, Cornelio paints both canvases and public murals. Collaborative muralism was a natural extension of the Purépecha culture that he is still reclaiming. “My wiring somehow is in me, is in my heritage: the way my people work is all through community work ,” he says. Cornelio teaches young people in schools and universities across the state and is active in cultural events with North Carolina’s Cherán community. As he watches the ongoing story of immigration across all cultures, Cornelio plans for his art to evolve in turn, always reflecting the people back to themselves.