(Posted on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022)
The Department of Art + Design, with support from The Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts, is pleased to welcome celebrated printmaker Carlos Barberena to kick off the 2022-23 CECA Visiting Artist Speaker Series season.

“This marks the sixth year that I have been at the helm of the Visiting Artist Speaker SeriesCommittee,” said Michael Dickins. “And this year is just as exciting as the others. It is an honor to be able to bring world-class artists to Clarksville on a regular basis. We’re kicking off this season with Carlos Barberena, a contemporary Nicaraguan printmaker known for his relief prints and his use of images from pop culture, as well as from political and cultural tragedies.”

Barberena’s lecture will be at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 18, in Heydel Hall (Room 120 of the Art + Design building). The lecture is free and open to the public.
He’ll also work with Austin Peay students during his visit to create new pieces.
“During Barberena’s visit, he will be working with our printmaking professor, Patrick Vincent, and some of our students to create a new print edition of his work,” Dickins said. “One of the pieces in the edition will be donated to APSU’s Art Collection. This will increase our collection of contemporary prints that we’ve been building over the past few years. Two of the pieces will be donated to CECA to go toward fundraising initiatives, so it’s possible that a community member will not only support CECA and its programming but also own an original work by Carlos Barberena.”

Counteracting silence in the face of repression
Barberena’s work consistently reflects on the cycles of repression and resistance and its relationship to the diaspora in which he has lived, throughout dictatorship, revolution, erasure, renewal, hope and repression. In his prints, he centers such life experiences occurring far beyond his country. At times he evokes them with satirical images, at others, through the mundane, unseen things people carry, such as memories, attachments, relationships and traumas.
He creates to counteract the great silence in the face of repression occurring globally, believing we are all intimately connected to it. He looks to demystify the “foreign” experience, to bridge the distances that life across any border or wall produces, but also, the difference in the content of these experiences. Barberena creates to bring awareness to the interconnectedness among them, focusing on the struggle for social, political, economic and environmental justice.

He has received various awards, most notably The Elizabeth Catlett Memorial Award, 2021 MAPC Juried Exhibition, University of Iowa; DNSPE Purchase Award 2022, Bradbury Art Museum, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, Arkansas; Second Prize, Ninth Annual Art Competition at the Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago; SPARK Grant Award, Chicago Artist Coalition and the Joyce Foundation; Cross Currents: Intercambio Cultural, Chicago-Havana, 2017-2019, MacArthur Foundation International Connections; National Printmaking Award 2012 given by the Nicaraguan Institute of Culture in Managua, Nicaragua; Parchemin d’Honneur, 8 Triennale Mondial de l’Estampe et de la Gravure Originale, AMAC, Chamalieres, Auvergne, France; Revueltas Award for Visual Arts 2019, Pilsen Fest, Chicago; and the award-poster for the Ecology and Human Rights in Banana Plantations in Costa Rica, given by GEBANA in Berlin, Germany.

Barberena, who lives in Chicago, has artwork in many public and private collections. For more on Barberena and his work, visit his website or follow him on Instagram @barberena.
For more on this lecture, contact Dickins at dickinsm@apsu.edu. For future CECA Visiting Artist Speaker Series events, visit www.apsu.edu/art-design/exhibitions-speakers/visiting-artists.
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All events are free and open to the public. All ages are welcome.