Defiant Spirits: Fernando Brito's Sinaloa

Defiant Spirits is an exhibition of the Mexican documentary photographer Fernando Brito’s moving images of life in Sinaloa, a province that has been wrecked by the forces of one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world.  The exhibition includes 1-4 photographs from Brito’s award-winning series, Tus Pasos Se Perdieron con el Paisaje/Your Steps Were Lost in the Landscape (begun in 2010), of corpses found dead in the Mexican landscape, most of them victims of the drug wars.  In them, Brito juxtaposes the brutality of the bloodied, lifeless bodies with the impossible beauty of the surrounding landscape, lending these photographs the epic feel of 19th-century paintings of war.  Twenty photographs in the exhibition come from another of Brito’s series, which is less well-known, showing Sinaloans’ resilience in the face of this violence (begun in 2013).  These images show Sinaloans’ religious rites, festivals, and other celebrations of local history, underscoring the centrality of performance in building community.  Defiant Spirits was curated by Didier Aubert, Director of American Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris, and was shown previously at Fordham University and at Yale University in 2019.  Defiant Spirits will be on view at the Carriage House Gallery at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage from February 6 through April 16, 2020.

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 6 at 5:30pm

Panel Discussion, featuring the artist and curator: Monday, April 6 at 5:30pm

Closing Reception: Thursday, April 16 at 5:30pm