Picturing Paradise/Destellos del Paraíso

MAZZUCHELLI EXPERIENCE

with Rebecca Berru-Davis, PhD

Picturing Paradise is an exhibition that features embroidered and appliquéd fabric pictures called cuadros, created by the women of Compacto Humano and Manos Ancashinas, two art cooperatives located in Pamplona Alta, a shantytown situated on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. The exhibition places emphasis on the women as artists and the way their art reflects creativity, resilience, and hope.

This event is generously co-sponsored by Con/Vida and the proceeds of any pieces sold during the exhibition directly benefit the women artists of Pamplona Alta.

Dr. Rebecca Berru Davis is an Assistant Professor in Theology at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, MN. She was previously the Hispanic Outreach Coordinator at Montana State University Billings, held a two-year Louisville Institute Post-Doctoral Fellowship at St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN, and was a Hispanic Theological Initiative Fellow. She earned her degree in the area of Art and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA and is interested in the intersection of art, faith, and justice as a way to understand the spiritual and religious expressions of those located on the margins of society. Her ethnographic research is focused on Latin American and U.S. Latina women’s creative activity in the home and socially-engaged artistic work in the community. Current projects take her to women’s art collectives located in the shantytowns outside of Lima, Peru and to communities along the U.S. Mexico Border. Her writing has been included in the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latino/a Theologies and in US Catholic Historian.