UIC Gallery 400 40th anniversary

The Last Judgment/El Jucio Final was an immersive installation and pyrotechnic performance that used large-scale sculptures and sound to narrate the struggles and resistance of the Mexican community of La Villita, in Chicago. The script revolves around issues of gentrification, environmental justice, and deportation, and was developed through conversations, meetings, and art workshops with community members (activists, teachers, students, community organizers, and local artists). The Last Judgment took its name from the first Western play performed in present-day México. A 16th-century Franciscan priest wrote The Last Judgment in Náhuatl as a religious tool of conquest. This new Last Judgment evokes the spectacular character of that theater but contests its colonizing and moralizing spirit, transforming punishment and subjugation into protest and criticality through processes of collective building, reenactment, and destruction. The Last Judgment/El Jucio Final was commmissioned and presented by UIC Gallery 400 in 2018. The accompanying 500+ page catalogue will be released in early 2024.

Adela Goldbard is an interdisciplinary artist-scholar from Mexico. With her research/practice, she investigates how radical community performances can subvert dominant narratives, while also exploring the transformative potential of violence and destruction as aesthetic tools in the resistance against power. Goldbard's focus lies in collective processes of creation, staging, and destruction, all of which she believes can ignite critical thinking and social change.