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SILENCIO Y OTROS SUEñOS
SILENCE AND OTHER DREAMS
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On International Women’s Day, March 8, 2008, an art installation opened
at El Museo de la Ciudad in Queretaro, featuring a garment in honor of
the first woman to argue for women’s rights on this continent.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the 17th century poet nun, is honored in
this two-part exhibition. The origin of Women’s Day was a march
for women’s rights on March 8, 1857, the first in the U.S., and was led
by women working in the garment industry in New York. Fifty-one
years later, a new generation in the industry marched again, demanding
better working conditions. That was in 1908, exactly one hundred
years ago.
Bartula, an expatriate artist from the U.S. borrows the shape of a
huipil, the traditional Mexican blouse, to represent women whose
stories have been covered up, women who have been silenced, maligned or
suppressed. A garment that ‘covers up’ important parts of a woman’s
body, the huipil as Bartula revisions it aims to expose, rather than
conceal, important parts of a woman’s story.
Known as Mexico’s Tenth Muse, and the Phoenix of Mexico, Juana was a
nun, poet, philosopher, playwright, mathematician, musician, scientist,
feminist, in fact, the first feminist in the New World. Silenced
by the Church in the 17th century, during the Spanish Inquisition,
Juana and her story were largely forgotten until the early 20th
century, and thus have been added to Bartula’s pantheon of denied
women. (Las Negadas)
“SILENCE,” the first part of this exhibition, is an installation
intended to restore Juana to our consciousness, through the legacy of
her misfortune: her cell as it might have been after her
renunciation. Absent are her abundance of books and maps, her
scientific and musical instruments, her conch shell and mirror, opulent
gifts of art, jewels and furnishings, stacks of manuscripts awaiting
publication. These luxuries at one time surrounded Juana, later were
confiscate, sold or given away; in their place, there is simply an
abundance of solitude and austerity.
The centerpiece of “SILENCIO” is a suspended huipil, created from a
book of her love poems to ‘Lysis’ and ‘Laura,’ monikers for her
intimate women friends. With pages stitched together like a
quilt, it recalls a diversity of talents and passions, the secular kind
that so antagonized the church hierarchy. Inspired by the
renunciation scene in Maria Luisa Bemburg’s film, "Yo, la Peor de
Todas," I added a reflection of the huipil below, composed of rose
petals. Mimicking the color of the blood with which Juana
signed her renunciation, the petals prostrate themselves, asking
forgiveness and begging for mercy. On the wall behind, another
huipil is created by the illumination of her words, a disembodied Juana
becomes her own shadow.
The second half of the exhibition, “OTHER DREAMS,” makes a clear
reference to Juana’s best known work, "First Dream," in which the soul
journeys in search of divine revelation and finds none. I ihave
magined alternative dreams for Juana, neither lofty nor cosmic, simply
mundane visions Juana might have in the eras since her life
ended. After altering the famous posthumous portrait by Miguel
Cabrera in my computer, I created photo transfers and monoprints.
In one, titled "Corazon a Corazon", Frida Kahlo and Juana have formed a
friendship, or maybe more, borrowing from Kahlo’s dual
self-portrait. Perhaps Converse would be her shoe of
choice, streetsmart, comfortable and a little funky. At the end
of a hard day, Juana is ready for martini night, with a short black
dress and stiletto pumps, returning us to the theme of garments and
cover-ups, of uncovering and unsilencing.
Juana’s dreams in this exhibition are the dreams of everywoman –
to be heard, to be visible, to live in a world that is open to them,
and in this way, OTHER DREAMS is ultimately about unsilencing.
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