Ilopango, the Volcano that Left
What does it mean to recognize that sculptures, like continents and mountains, are on the move? Beatriz Cortez’s sculpture Ilopango, the Volcano that Left departs Storm King Art Center, the site of its current exhibition, to embark on a three-day performative journey along the Hudson River to EMPAC–Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center. Aboard the John J. Harvey fireboat, the steel volcano travels north up the tidal estuary via Kingston to Troy to be installed in a concert hall for its second site of exhibition, leaving behind a sculptural footprint in its wake: an absence amidst other artworks on Museum Hill.
The volcano can be witnessed as it sails upriver from various viewing points on both shores and online through a livestream. The public is also invited to visit when it docks for the night at the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston and to gather in welcoming the volcano when it passes through the Federal Lock and Dam near The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy. A month prior to the journey, for the Parsons Fine Art Visiting Artists Lecture co-organized by the Vera List Center at the New School, Cortez will chart the conceptual content borne by notions of movement and impermanence.
In making this passage from a sculpture park to a performing arts center, Ilopango, the Volcano that Left proposes a line of questioning: What does it mean to consider sculpture as time-based? And can it become a performance? In (re)enacting a refusal to remain an object transfixed in a landscape, it exposes the fact that sculptures always already carry time, and are the ultimate records of their own making. When we encounter a sculpture as an artwork in an exhibition space, how might we apprehend the histories, geographies, and processes that are latent within it?
With Ilopango, the Volcano that Left, Cortez attends to a popular account of the Terra Blanca Joven super eruption that took place in the mid-first millennium CE in what is now known as El Salvador. Imperceptible subterranean frequencies sounded before magma and rock were blasted thousands of miles into the stratosphere, reflecting light coming from the sun away from the earth to produce a yearlong winter that affected the ancient Maya civilization and regions beyond. Both geological feature and Indigenous deity, the volcano was dislocated from its site which was transformed into a large depression or caldera that is now the Ilopango Lake. As the volcano exploded into particles that dispersed in all directions, its ash was carried by the atmosphere to fall across the globe, and as far as Antarctica, where it can still be found embedded deep in the ice, a trace in the present or the continuing reverberation of a bygone weather event.
Centuries later, Cortez’s speculative sculpture performs both a reversal and an extension of this movement. Steel is a symbol of permanence but it is extracted from the earth. In building the volcano, the artist and her collaborators hand-beat out its industrialization, preparing the material for its return to its once organic state. Welded on the hill of Atelier Calder in Saché, France, the sculpture traversed the Atlantic Ocean to the artist’s studio in Los Angeles to be completed before making its way to the Hudson Valley, from where it will journey upriver to Troy and beyond. Cortez describes “the volcano that left” as an act of migration and considers its movements across land and water as a metaphor for the imperceivable yet continuous transformation of the landscape over time.
Its journey to EMPAC will be broadcast live by the presenting partners October 27 & 29. Filmmaker Guillermo Escalón and composer Igor de Gandarias will join the sculpture on its journey, recording the volcano’s passage for a forthcoming film (2024).
*Locations without parking information have free parking.
- FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27
- BEST LOCATIONS TO VIEW / ITINERARY
- COLD SPRING, NY
- 1:10PM / Cold Spring Pier
- PARKING: Metered municipal parking lot on Fair Street next to the Riverview Restaurant. Village street parking is also free, but some spots have a time limit depending on the location.
- CORNWALL-ON_HUDSON, NY
- 1:30PM / Donahue Memorial Park
- PARKING: Permit required from the Village of Cornwall to park.
- NEWBURGH, NY
- 2PM / Unico Park
- PARKING: Metered parking on Front Street from 11AM–11PM
- MILTON, NY
- 3PM / Milton Landing Park
- POUGHKEEPSIE / HIGHLAND, NY
- 3:15PM / Walkway Over the Hudson
- PARKING: Entrance is at 61 Parker Avenue, Poughkeepsie NY 12601 and is operated by NYS Parks. The fee is $5 for 4 hours.
- HIGHLAND, NY
- 3:20PM Highland Landing Park
- FRIDAY RECEPTION + DOCKING POINT
- KINGSTON, NY
- 5PM / Hudson River Maritime Museum
- PARKING: Free parking is available in the municipal parking lot across the street or you may use the metered street parking in front of the museum.
- SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28
- KINGSTON, NY
- ALL DAY / Hudson River Maritime Museum
- The John J. Harvey fireboat will be docked all day. Visit the museum to board and view the sculpture from 11AM–5PM.
- PARKING: Free parking is available in the municipal parking lot across the street or you may use the metered street parking in front of the museum.
- SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29
- BEST LOCATIONS TO VIEW / ITINERARY
- KINGSTON, NY
- 10:40AM / Kingston Point Rail Trail
- PARKING: E. Chester St. and Jansen Ave.; Delaware Ave. and Livingston St.; Murray St. and Hasbrouck Ave.
- SAUGERTIES, NY
- 11:05AM / Ulster Landing County Park
- MALDEN, NY
- 11:30AM / George J. Terpening Sr. Memorial Park
- CATSKILL, NY
- 12:10PM / Dutchman’s Landing Park
- COXSACKIE, NY
- 1PM / Coxsackie Riverside Park
- NEW BALTIMORE, NY
- 1:35PM / New Baltimore Cornell Park
- ALBANY, NY
- 2:45PM / Albany Corning Preserve
- PARKING: Several garages nearby.
- WATERVLIET, NY
- 3:20PM / Mohawk-Hudson Bike Trail
- TROY, NY
- 3:35PM / Riverfront Park
- PARKING: Municipal parking lot immediately north of the Green Island Bridge, at 401 River Street. Other paid parking at the State Street Parking Garage, and street parking.
- TROY, NY
- 3:45PM / Federal Lock 1, Erie Canal Lock 1
- PARKING: Metered street parking for $1/hour.
- SUNDAY RECEPTION
- Troy, NY
- 3PM / The Sanctuary for Independent Media
- SUNDAY DOCKING POINT
- WATERFORD, NY
- 4:45PM / Waterford Riverfront Park
Main Image: Beatriz Cortez, Study for Ilopango, the Volcano that Left, 2023. Composite Image with Hudson River by Michael Valiquette / EMPAC. Photo by Phillip Byrne, courtesy the artist and Commonwealth and Council.
EMPAC Fall 2023
Season
The volcano’s journey is presented in partnership with Storm King Art Center and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, and will feature a weekend of collaborative programming along the Hudson River.
Ilopango, the Volcano that Left by Beatriz Cortez is co-commissioned by EMPAC–Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Storm King Art Center, and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School. The sculpture was created in part while Cortez was in residence at Atelier Calder, Saché, France.
The sculpture’s journey along the Hudson River and its documentation for the forthcoming film by Guillermo Escalón are made possible with major support from Teiger Foundation, and with project support from the Simons Foundation. Additional program support is provided through the artist's Borderlands Fellowship at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
