ILLUMINE Arthaus66 Contemporary Gallery Albuquerque, April 3-29, 2009 arthaus66.com
With recycled, organic or otherwise alternative materials I have created contemporary huipils that illuminate the lives and stories of women of courage who have been negated by history, women whose mundane or heroic actions changed our world. The series also includes feminine energies of the earth, lands which are being threatened, and female deities and legends which have served to guide and nurture. Each huipil represents a woman’s body, and in that, also symbolizes both cover up and uncovering. Through the materials I shine a light on women such as las vendadoras, the women who sell their wares in the mercados, and las frijoleras, women whose labor in the fields puts food on the tables of the world.
Individual women like Minerva Mirabal, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Nadia Anjuman, or Comandante Ramona, recall not only their personal stories, but the epoch and society in which they lived. Anna Mae Aquash, an activist and leader in the AIM movement, is represented by a war shirt made of paper, on which the only image is a pair of red hands. “Las Mariposas”, the Mirabal sisters whose murders brought down the Trujillo regime, are honored with a huipil of oilcloth and market bags on which the butterfly pattern is repeated three times. “Tibet, the Motherland” is a simply stitched quilt made of old prayer flags, which very loosely attached so that they can flutter in a breeze. Sor Juana’s huipil takes the quilt design as well, with her image on 200 peso bills in play money, sandwiched and stitched between two pieces of transparent plastic.
Their stories, their huipils, are hung on a clothesline, like the laundry that historically is women’s work. All the huipils are the same size and shape, and suspended at eye-level, so that walking beween the rows, we become ‘everywomen’ or ‘everyman.’ None is bigger, thinner, less or more perfect than the one before it or beside it. Behind the clothesline lies “Ni Una Mas” crumpled and forgotten on the floor, surrounded by sand and tumbleweeds, recalling the young women of Juarez who are raped, tortured and murdered, then left in the desert. In remembrance of them, I have placed candles around it, and installed 3 pink crosses, the manner in which the murders are commemorated there.
Three of the huipils are made in the form of bookarts; one recalls the Afghanistan poet Nadia Anjuman murdered by her husband, and another, Guatemalan writer Alaide Foppa, disappeared by her own government, and both silenced because of their voices.
On the side wall, the 4x8’ “Matrix Grid” holds 122 small paper huipils, some of which explain the larger ones, and others which are left blank, to be written on by viewers in honor of women in their lives. When the grid is filled, it becomes a quilt, also symbolic of “women’s work,” uniting all who participate by adding their voices to it, in the same way my mother and her quilting group became one as they told stories while working together. My belief is that when we all realize our similarities are greater than our differences, our world will become a more harmonious place in which each of us can fully live our dreams.
For more photos of indiividual huipils, click here
MATRIX WALL, 4x8'
"NI UNA MAS" SHRINE INSTALLATION
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. I have humbly borrowed 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 I revision 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 my personal 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, perhaps even her lovers. 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 have
imagined 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.
Image:
THIS SERIES OF PHOTO TRANSFER MONOTYPES IS NOW AVAILABLE AT GALERIA6, ON THE PLAZA PRINCIPAL IN MINERAL DE POZOS.
