Roberto Tejada
Roberto Tejada, Why the assembly disbanded, 2020. Limited-edition artist's book composed of four separate but interconnected works housed in a fitted encasing. The design imagination is by Periferia (Cristina Paoli). Photography courtesy of the Hirsch Library, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Roberto Tejada
Roberto Tejada is an award-winning poet, author of art histories, and literary translator. His innovative writings address the political imagination and impurity of time in shared image environments; configurations of art, life, and language inclined to the future. He is the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of English and Art History at the The University of Houston.
Why the assembly disbanded
Tejada’s artist book Why the assembly disbanded operates much like an exhibition by presenting poetry alongside three works of photography including a photo essay by himself, Edge of Twilight by Connie Samaras, and The Past Is Not What It Used to Be by Rubén Ortiz Torres. While in conversation, the works are distinct leaving the viewer to choose how to navigate and experience the works side-by-side.
“These poems rise up from the underground and into surreal dreamscapes of the uncanny solitude present in history. They take on forms of an ethereal “middle landscape not of this earth” and make new horizons beyond the dystopic sightlines allowed to us. The music in these poems marshals the intractable excess of sensuality and reciprocal care with the works of artists and writers such as Betye Saar, Rubén Ortiz-Torres, Connie Samaras, and Amiri Baraka in communal observation of the antagonisms we face. This is an offering that looks back to celebrate the survivals, while simultaneously igniting a common assemblage for embrace in the future.”
On view at The Printing Museum through June 17, 2023. Also available to view at the Hirsch Library at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and at the University of Houston Libraries (Special Collections).
The regular edition (2022) is available to purchase.