April 30, 2025
Core Program critic-in-residence Max Tolleson hosts “The Middle of Somewhere,” a film series curated to accompany his 2025 Core Exhibition yearbook essay, “Marfa Myths.” The series is thematically arranged around the subject of Marfa, Texas, and the greater West Texas region, with each film addressing aspects of locational identity.

The Teachings of the Hands
(Directed by Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas, 47 minutes, 2020)
► A Q&A with David de Rozas follows the screening.

Narrated by Juan Mancias, chairman of the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe of Texas, this film is set in three West Texas locations: the Permian Basin oil fields, the Amistad Dam on the Rio Grande/Río Bravo, and the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis. The Teachings of the Hands weaves together archival footage, historical reenactment, and archaeological artifacts to confront the history of settler colonialism and tell the story of the land from Mancias’s Indigenous perspective. The film offers an alternative way of knowing West Texas that is grounded in a different set of social practices and relations to the land.

Plan Your Visit

• Admission is free.
• This screening takes place in Favrot Auditorium on the street level of the Glassell School of Art.
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