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Colab is pleased to present "Indigenous Technology," an exhibition featuring New York-based artists COCO 144, Shie Moreno, and Christian Mendoza. "Indigenous Technology" celebrates a systematic practice among the artists that is continually evolving in the writing and painting of their name. The evolution of this practice has transformed into "Indigenous Technology" a modern language and system of communication with branches of knowledge dealing with life, the environment, spirituality and the sciences.
The "Indigenous Technology" exhibit presents unique vantage points to examine the relationship these artists have with their communities and ancestral lineages. A shared response to sacred exchanges informs a new movement. As a collective, a ceremony through visual arts is formed,
transcribing cultural traditions and everyday practices are its common motifs.
COCO 144's career spans for over 40 years. His work has transformed from use of block letters to positioning these in ways that form geometric shapes and molecular structures combining into a repetition of fractals with mathematical calculations. Taking a scientific approach, COCO presents
portions of his letters as if zooming in and out through a microscope to demonstrate the details and what he considers the living matter of the name.
Shie Moreno is a living tendril connecting ancient spirituality, the fecund tropics, and contemporary American art. His work is reflective of his Afro-Cuban ethnicity, spiritual roots, and dynamic connections to the contextual. The artist has summoned forces and unleashed them as animating spirits, elementally free and giving freely.
Christian Mendoza is a New York City-based artist from Nicaragua whose work draws from the experiences of his native country and the influences of New York City and Miami. When Mendoza moved to the Bronx in the 1980's, he
began to develop a style combining architectural draftsmanship with the inspirations of letters, faces, and forms that then covered the subways of New York City. At a young age, the artist learned drafting and about architecture from his father. This influence brought Mendoza to study both ancient and modern Mayan, Central and Native American cultures and their hieroglyphs, petroglyphs, calligraphies, and alphabets which also inform his work. Mendoza has developed a unique personal language rich with highly detailed intricate, angular symbols that draw strongly from the nature and folklore of his homeland, while interpreting the density and chaos of daily urban life.