Inside a white-walled galley at Colorado Mountain College’s Aspen campus, a group of students, professors and artists is holding onto a large, brown rope.
They’re all untying pieces of twine from it and adding lace and burlap strings back on. The collaborative sculpture represents the practice of casting away one’s burdens and reigniting new hope.
This artwork is a part of an exhibit with Artnauts, a global artist collective, that is showing at Colorado Mountain College until next month.
The group has spent decades using the visual arts to bring awareness to international issues. Artnauts was founded in the 90s at the University of Colorado Boulder by a group of art professors.
Their goal was to raise awareness of world conflicts happening at the time — like the Yugoslav and Congo wars — through textiles, sculptures, paintings and other visual art forms.
Dr. George Rivera was the founding curator and still leads the organization. He said the collective does much more than just artist talks or exhibitions.
“We are all immersed together in a sacred moment right now,” he said at a closing reception for Artnauts’ exhibit at Colorado Mountain College this week. “Because of what we're talking about, and how we care about healing communities around the world, including our own country and our own selves.”
“It’s about being humanly experienced in the world.”
Artnauts typically has exhibits around the world, and making an appearance in the United States is rare. As part of the organization’s 30th anniversary, the group chose to showcase its work at Colorado Mountain College in an homage to its roots at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Today, new additions to the exhibit include works from Israel, Palestine, Russia and Ukraine that focus on social, political and environmental injustices.
One Bosnian art piece showcased a Balkan Snow Vole, an endangered mouse that lives in the snow. The artist wanted to elevate a quiet, vulnerable population in her work.
There are currently 64 Artnauts working actively around the world, but there have been 250 in the last 30 years, and they’ve traveled to 26 countries.
Pamela Beverly-Quigley has been with the collective since it was founded in 1996.
Her artwork primarily focuses on collaborative sculpture-making and is meant to connect people.
“We live in this world in which everything, especially now, feels like everything is trying to separate us,” she said at a reception in Aspen. “This feeling of aloneness or being untethered or not connected is a very real thing in these times.”
Artnauts will host another exhibition at the University of Colorado Boulder this fall.
Their exhibit at Colorado Mountain College’s Aspen campus continues until May 22.
