Exhibition Blurb | REVOLT 1680/2180: Runners + Gliders

In Revolt 1680/2180: Runners + Gliders, Virgil Ortiz continues telling his stunning, multi-year futurist narrative that builds on Native American history, time travel, and the power of resilience.

Not many students learn about the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in their grade school classes but in Ortiz’s words, it’s the first American Revolution. The Spanish began to colonize Mexico in the 1500s and steadily made their way up to present-day Southwest America. In 1680, led by powerful leaders like Po’Pay and the cord runners, who carried knotted cords to each city to indicate the date of revolt, Puebloans across the region united to throw off their oppressors and won. For twelve years they kept the Spanish at bay and off of their lands, until they returned with greater force to subjugate them once more in 1692.

REVOLT 1680/2180: Runners + Gliders Wall Panel. Photo by Ashley E Mingus.

Ortiz’s ongoing narrative imagines a set of warriors who are fighting their Castilian enemies in the year 2180, and who utilize portals to time travel between their present and 1680 to give their ancestors vital knowledge so that they may keep fighting and defeat their oppressors for good. Photography, costume, music, and media all combine to tell this story, but at the heart of it all is clay. Clay is a sacred material, the spirit of the earth, the material that mankind was born of. The clay is both storyteller and soul, linking its people through time and space so that their stories are never forgotten.

On view at The History Colorado Center, Denver | May 13, 2023 - July 14, 2024