Photo by Jenny Yu ‘24
By Lucy Oster ’23
Staff Writer
Mount Holyoke Studio Capstone Exhibitions started on April 11. One exhibition on display is “PACHACUTI: making/unmaking” by So Quimbita ’22, also known as So Hess. The art in the show is largely focused on themes of climate change and colonialism, and its intention is to cause the viewer to think about these subjects in new ways. “PACHACUTI” will be hosted in the Blanchard Gallery until April 20, and features pieces that So has been working on for the past few years.
So had their opening reception for “PACHACUTI” on Friday, April 15. According to So, the show’s title refers to a “Quechua word that is similar to the word apocalypse.” They explained that “pacha” means “world” and “cuti” means “to turn upside down.”
“It literally means ‘world-turner’ or ‘world upside down,’” they said.
Much of So’s art is about climate change and its unavoidable connections to settler-colonialism. So is a studio art and environmental studies double major, and they shared that they don’t believe their majors are that different from one another.
“I think when I’m in my art classes I’m always making art that is rooted in the land and natural forms … and when I’m in my environmental studies classes, I’m always trying to not write an essay and asking them if I can do something art-based instead,” they said.
The art featured in the show is made up of various mediums. There are collage-covered blobs — So referred to them as “my blobs” and sees them “like a little squad, [a] little team” — as well as weavings, a mountainscape made of moving boxes, drawings and printed wall collages.
One of the smaller weavings depicts the mountain Cotopaxi, which is a recurring theme in the show. The mountain holds personal significance to So. “It’s a volcano in Ecuador, near Acapulca, where my family is from,” they explained.
Also present in “PACHACUTI” is the collaged end product of “Woven Futures: Radical Imagination in the Climate Crisis,” the BOOM! Conference workshop that So led on March 29. The collage is made of woven paper, and includes the names of all of the people present at the event.
“Thirty people were a part of this, which was kind of crazy,” So said. “I had some rules, I was trying to control the aesthetic a little bit.”
So works at the Miller Worley Center for the Environment as a community sustainability coordinator, and mentioned that they wanted an in-person workshop instead of a virtual one. When So’s colleagues at the Center explained that they would have to then be the person to run that event, So responded, “Okay, well I have ideas. I have many things I could talk about.” At the event, So shared the meaning of the word “pachacuti” and they “talk[ed] about shifting our perspective from this very doom scroll spiral” that is associated with the typical Western approach to climate change dread.
So made a zine for the “Woven Futures” BOOM! Conference event that they gave out at the workshop, and more copies of it were present at the exhibition. The zine included recommendations for changing one’s perspective, such as books like “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer and art-based Indigenous-run Instagram accounts.
Ireland Young ’25, who was present at “Woven Futures,” shared that he was glad to have attended “Woven Futures.” Young has also been to So’s exhibition space a few times since “PACHACUTI” opened. “It’s actually inspired me to start drawing again because of the uses of colors and just the sheer beauty of it all,” he said.
Young said that he “particularly like[d] the 3D pieces” present in “PACHACUTI.” One of them, titled “Skoo,” which hangs suspended in the air, represents a night sky.
According to So, “[‘Skoo’ is] about … the feeling you get when you look at NASA photos, the universe, like there’s so many stars you absolutely cannot comprehend it.”
The floating blob also has a subtle drawing of a jaguar’s face on it. The jaguar is meant to represent the chuqui chinchay, which So described as “a deity in Incan cosmology.” “It actually looks over and protects the Quariwarmi, which are the nonbinary people that existed in the Incan’s cosmo vision,” they said. “I, as a nonbinary person, and of Andean descent, really felt recognized when I heard about that part of cosmology.”