Join us for the third chapter of our series of presentations and discussions Documents of Displacement, during which we will screen Victor Arroyo’s film Cherán, and which will be followed by a discussion with the artist.

Cherán documents the 2011 uprising of the P’urhépecha in Mexico and their struggle against illegal logging in the Cherán forest, drug traffickers, and various forms of extraction. Borrowing from the tradition of cinéma-vérité, the film follows the daily life of indigenous activists in Cherán while highlighting the various ways that the forest which they are fighting to preserve embodies the complex relationships between local cultural practices, the extractive economy, and the legacy of colonialism.

Documents of Displacement proposes to explore the notion of displacement and its diverse meanings and effects in photographic and video works of artists through the subjects documented or through their methodologies and processes. The artists invited for this series all live in North America, but develop work from a sense of displacement, whether by their cultural or geographic origin. These presentations and discussions are part of a series of events accompanying the exhibition The Lives of Documents—Photography as Project, which looks at the processes and methodologies of artists and photographers in constructing visual arguments, critiques, research, and observations on our built environment.

Victor Arroyo is a video artist working with documentary, installation, and video art. His ethnographic work results from long-term investigations and interventions on landscape and the social relations and tensions unfolding on site. His work intersects community-based research with site-specific practices, exploring the possibilities laying dormant between ethnographic research, academic writing and artistic practice. His work has been most recently exhibited at Kasseler Dokfest, Sheffield Doc/Fest, RIDM, CCA, Cinémathèque Québécoise, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Cinemateca do Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, and Santa Fe International New Media Festival, among others.