Dermis León

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Dermis, querida, our friendship goes back to 2001 when you were curating Peppermint at Smack Mellon in New York. I was one of the artists in this exhibition, and I believe it was Elia Alba who introduced us. Since then, you have traveled and done so many interesting things. Would you like to talk about Spain, Berlin, Chile, China, Egypt, Mexico, and more?

Dermis León:  Dear Nicolás, thank you so much for this opportunity to engage with The Interior Beauty Salon and be part of this loving space that you have created. It is an honor to be invited here. I always remember our friendship fondly—it has flourished for over 20 years—along with the deep affection and admiration I hold for both you and Elia Alba, whom I first met during her residency at Studio Museum in Harlem.

Our reunions and encounters have undoubtedly taken place in very diverse contexts, from New York to Berlin, Poland, or sharing spiritual or healing practices through cyberspace. Even when I doubted whether pursuing a doctorate after turning fifty years old, your opinion on the matter gave me the courage to embark on this five-year project.

Regarding Peppermint, indeed, it was an exhibition that I remember organizing around the time I graduated with a master's degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. Its staging took place after the 9/11 incident, during a highly complex context in New York City. It was a commitment I had made with Smack Mellon and with the international artists with whom I had been working for over six months. It was an exhibition that could not be canceled, nor could its focus be changed. Peppermint was situated at the threshold of desire, sexuality, the tactile, the relationship of the body with objects of desire. Very strange in that post-9/11 context.

In a city like New York, working across different backgrounds, origins, and experiences with artists is essential—especially considering that I, too, was an immigrant. This has been a defining characteristic of my curatorial practice from the very beginning, even before arriving in New York.

All those countries you mention have been part of my life’s journey, and are deeply connected to my work. I have had the extraordinary opportunity to engage with artists over time, collaborating in ways that have fostered friendships alongside shared experiences and processes in the creation of curatorial projects. My practice and curiosity have led me to explore the art produced in different locations, where highly specific themes continue to emerge, such those dealing with displacement, nomadism, fragility, migration, the violence of political processes, and artistic practices without distinction of medium. I always see connections in the ways artistic practice is developed and produced, despite the diversity of origins, cultural references, religious backgrounds, and political systems. For example, I have observed similarities in countries like Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, China, Chile—where I have a deep connection—and, more recently, with nations like Mexico.

It is not about an attraction to the exotic but rather a deep curiosity to understand the diverse expressions and ways in which artists create and live in different regions of this increasingly compressed yet simultaneously tensioned global world.

If you think about it, I myself am perceived as an exotic figure in these contexts. After all, I am a Cuban immigrant specializing in international contemporary art who has lived in seven countries. I have always been deeply respectful and strive to understand and honor the dynamics in which artistic production takes shape and is promoted, alongside the institutions and art circuits in each country where I have had the privilege to collaborate and work. This holds true despite the vast cultural, linguistic, emotional, and even philosophical and spiritual distances in those different contexts.

NDEREOM: This conversation is so key to me at this moment and I thank you. I was exotic once, and I refer to the arts. I am no longer perceived as such since I have lived in the USA most of my life and I call the South Bronx home. I was just speaking with a colleague about how, generally speaking, Cuban artists have fascinated the world, in part because of the great work that has been produced there and abroad, as well as the exoticism that the island elicits for many in the “first world.” Puerto Ricans/Nuyoricans have had the support of the incredible institutions that they have forged here in New York City, and which have gone above and beyond to support me and other Dominicans. Dominicans, and that is my opinion, are culturally orphans, at least in the diaspora. We are neither a communist country nor a colony of the US. We are kind of a “democratic” unofficial colony of the US. I see you and your work circumventing that exoticism, and remaining vigilant of it.

Now, your role as a curator is such a distinctive one, at least for me. I see you going beyond hierarchies and preconceptions in this field to deal with creatives in a holistic way. You see the person as a whole, and not only what that person generates for the art machinery–what I call the Art Industry. This is an apparatus that needs a constant roster of “new” shiny items and emerging artists to keep itself well oiled and going. The quality time that you dedicate to those you seek to work with is admirable.

DL:  The way I understand curatorial practice today has developed over time alongside my own life experiences. Initially, I approached it as a strictly professional and ethical practice, without affiliations of friendship—starting with research, studio visits, and attempts to establish communication with the artist.

Over time, I realized that the best way to truly engage with an artist’s creative process is to move beyond that “professional framework” restricted to studio visits and academic readings. While I still believe that studio visits are essential—I find it difficult to work with artists I don’t know personally and with whom my only interaction is through social media or electronic communication, although I have done so on occasion—I find that direct communication is necessary. I need to feel a sense of fluidity and understanding of their work processes, extending to their emotions about life, spirituality, and what they truly identify with as an artist.

I use the term artist not just to refer to "he," "she," or "they," but rather to a person, like myself, with whom I can communicate and build connections beyond a mere studio visit. Even when an artist has left this physical plane, if I was fortunate enough to know them beforehand, I can still work with their legacy.

I am thinking now of recently deceased Chilean artists like Juan Castillo or the nearly forgotten Pancha Núñez, an extraordinary sculptor-painter who passed away alone. I had the privilege of knowing her, sharing a friendship, and admiring her courage.

On the other hand, I also do not believe in the art world’s obsession with the new, youngest or cutting-edge—all that is related to what I call ephebomania. There is a gap in the art world that I find deeply problematic: on one side, there is great support for very young artists, which I think is excellent—up to a point—when it lacks real criteria or research into the depth of their proposals. On the other side, there is a push to recover artists over 65 or even 80.

In between, however, are those artists who have been working consistently for over two decades, who have developed a mature and solid body of work but were not fortunate enough to enter the art-world jet set. These artists, despite their sustained practice, are largely excluded from the art market. And by art market, I also mean the broader system of grants, residencies, and exhibitions.

I am interested in working with artists who have demonstrated long-term dedication to their practice—not those who rise with a handful of “brilliant ideas” in their early careers, only to struggle to sustain them beyond five or six years. I seek out artists who continue working despite exclusion, who create not because they have an exhibition or a project, but out of necessity, out of desire—almost as acts of defiance and disobedience.

To borrow from Didi-Huberman, I would call it the deep desire to wrest from memory those piercing images which, if left unexpressed, would turn into pain, into melancholy.

NDEREOM: This conversation is bringing me close to tears. I am one of those artists who the system has actively tried to erase (but I am a fucking tough cookie–more like what in the Dominican Republic is called a donkey choker, an ahoga burro…which is a very coarse type of cake that you must eat carefully while drinking some water to get it down your throat). I am also in my late 50s and I continue to be involved creatively because to me this is an act of self-transformation and resistance to conformism. As you can already see this is more of a conversation than a Q&A, because I very much enjoy being in dialogue with you. How would you say your travels might inform your curatorial praxis? What have you been learning from creatives?

DL: I have learned more from artists than from institutions. I have gained more insight through conversations, studio visits, and sustained dialogue over time than by chasing after novelty or striving to be a “brilliant” curator. For me, my work is also a form of self-discovery.

Sometimes, I choose certain themes to explore them in-depth, using research as a way to understand them more profoundly. Meeting you, for example, in Berlin, and visiting together a cemetery in Szczecin, Poland, to explore the history of a city is something I will never forget. With you, I have learned ways to construct a performance, a way of being—rooted in the very act of living daily life.

Being an independent curator for more than ten years led me to unexpected journeys and countries I never imagined visiting. This experience granted me a wealth of knowledge through observing places, ways of life, and the relationships between artists and art institutions—insights that extended beyond conventional settings through informal conversations.

I have learned immensely, especially by building relationships with artists and engaging with practices rooted in different contexts. Although the Western world—and, consequently, what is considered the mainstream—continues to shape global artistic trends, I dare say there is an intangible knowledge that transcends these visible structures. If we are not attentive, we risk losing its richness, as it belongs to practices whose origins we may not fully understand.

Fortunately, not everything is defined in the West, and I believe there are countless forms and expressions in culture— including popular and traditional culture—that we should consider as part of contemporary art. The most recent Venice Biennale, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, is a great example of what I am talking about. Before we, as curators, begin to devise or assert hegemonic lines of knowledge about what contemporary art should be, I believe the most important step is to engage with those forms and images produced by our artists and to co-create knowledge with them that is expansive.

NDEREOM: This is all making me think about the “folkloric” elements in my work, which I do not approach at all as as kitsch, but as a genuine form of creativity. BTW, taking about popular culture, this for the second time that I am questioned in the arts about the sincerity of my practice. In my opinion, again, this is because I do not seek to distill popular cultural manifestations and to bring them to the mostly white art audiences that visit museums. I seek to inhabit these popular currents–as in Dominican culture– that are so dear to me, and to honor those who have mentored me in then.

I have said before that I adamantly refuse to do homework for curators or institutions, or to join the array of experiences and objects in the arts that have been already masticated/digested/validated. I understand that creatives have full freedom to do work that is completely out of any preestablished categories. But clearly, it is easier to succeed in the art business when one engages in what I call scaffolding; adding a bit here and a bit there to what has been already done/approved and appraised. How do you deal with work/practices that are totally out there in terms of subject and medium?

DL: As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a famous curator, despite having graduated from an elitist college where almost the majority of its alumni are now in leading positions at museums and international institutions. I refuse to work with what art institutions understand as the trendy movements in the art market. If there’s something I truly despise, it’s what is called "political correctness," especially in institutions that should be leading and being proactive, diligent, and bold in showcasing diverse sentiments, visuals, and practices.

On many occasions, I’ve promoted artists who weren’t trends at the time but ended up becoming so. More and more, I am drawn to work with productions that can inspire me to create themes, concerns, questions, or motivations. Starting with a trendy idea and then searching for artists who fit it is something I find difficult to do.

For example, in 2016, I began a series of explorations with international female artists through a series of exhibitions called Trouble Diaries. While post-feminism was starting to become fashionable again, in a more complex form, it was a different approach—more political or ideological—that interested institutions, specifically those directly referring to LGBTQ+ communities.  So, Trouble Diaries allowed me to explore discourses and practices in various contexts. Its second version took place in Wuhan, China, at a time when the city was barely known—until the pandemic, when it occupied the front pages of the world’s most widely circulated newspapers. In that edition, co-curated with Chinese artist and academic Fang Liu, I proposed the inclusion of unknown artists in a geography that was unexplored for me, under the subtitle: A Political Statement. I was interested in juxtaposing Western artists with those living and working in China based on their political stance. It was a deeply striking experience, balancing the kindness and warm reception I encountered with the resistance to using the word “political.” In the end, the word was removed from the title.

For its third version at the Museum of Modern Art in Cuenca, Ecuador, the group of women was quite international. The subtitle was: Failure is the Mother of Success. The same resilience and search for a place in this difficult art world were repeated—both in my experience as a professional immigrant woman and in the struggles of women artists tackling truly challenging issues, particularly from the perspective of the body’s territoriality.

I still believe there are themes and areas that need to be explored further, with which I continue to identify, such as the feminine, the connection to the earth, alternative forms of creativity, and the roots that bind us as human beings. This may be considered conservative in this context or perhaps narrow-minded, but I feel it is still necessary.

I deeply empathize with LGBTQ+ communities, but it is not a subject I am deeply familiar with, and I believe it is being tremendously manipulated.

NDEREOM: There is a great deal of hypocrisy and cooptation and I understand that art institutions need to $urvive and are dependent on funder$. I believe change is urgently needed now, today, and some of what I see feels contrived. So much art now is pure decoration and ornamentation, swirls and glitter applied to a canvas, or ferns drooping over a piece of furniture. I miss the raw radicalness of Bell Hooks, Malcom X, James Baldwin, Pedro Pietri, Alanna Lockward, Martha Wilson, Las Yeguas del Apolcalipsis,… Even political issues in the arts today can be turned into ornamental objects. I just finished reading Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, written in the 1970s and I am like Oh My Word!. So much of what I see now feels like fluff. I crave true radicalness.

I entered the arts through spirituality and religion. In my opinion, all art had initially a spiritual purpose. I don’t see people drawing in caves way, way back with the sole intention of having a purely aesthetic/intellectual experience. The same applies to movement/dance, which I would think had a link to ritual and healing. There is nowadays an art commercial trend, but also a genuine intention to overcome this chasm between art and spirituality. What are your thoughts?

DL: I don’t believe there is art without a trace of spirituality behind it. It may begin as a motivation, an intellectual question, or a reasoning or inquiry about what art is. But I would turn the question back to you: what could be the motivation behind a visual, sound, or movement construction if not to provoke a shift in our psyche, to spark a reaction or reflection? Isn’t all of this, in essence, connected to the spirit? Everything else obeys rational constructions tied to understanding.

For a long time, the word spiritual was avoided in art theory, unless it referred to tribal art or art inspired by tribal influences or works from countries still connected to temporalities and synchronicities tied to pre-capitalist social structures—such as in the famous exhibition Magicians de la Terre that became a paradigm. In any case, I am not interested in art that has not emerged from a deep need or desire to make visible or to activate a profound and embodied knowledge.

There is a construction in art history that needs to be debunked, because not all Western countries experienced Minimalist Art, nor have they tried to make it seem that the new post-conceptualism from South America follows that same path. In other words, in South America, we went from being folkloric to being conceptual, even creating conceptualism parallel to the scenes in the United States and Europe. Now, abstract art is also reduced to just geometric forms.

But returning to the issue of spirituality, what truly interests me about a structure called art is that it is not bound by the archive, philosophy, or a social and political need. In other words, art does not have a political-social redemption function, nor does it specifically serve an educational purpose, as some theorists insist on using it for. I share Juliane Rebentisch’s perspective on this.

For me, art can be a tool for knowledge, as well as for healing or spiritual connection, but within a very specific structure that responds to a knowledge connected to something deeper within the human being. It is not philosophy, it is not politics, it is not economics, and it is not history either. But let us not forget that these divisions in knowledge are something that emerged later in human history.

NDEREOM: My understanding is that most politics is about religion and that religion, as Marcela Althaus-Reid would say, is a sexual project. I cannot therefore extrapolate religion from the arts and with it comes politics and sexuality. And these are the most fun topics to discuss around a dinner table. I am so much enjoying this conversation.

You have spent a considerable amount of time (life) in Chile. What draws you there?

DL: My connection with Chile is tied to my feelings towards Latin America. Since I left my country, Cuba, and became stateless, I have always returned to South America as a way to reconnect with my Latin roots. Unfortunately, I can't go back to that island in the Caribbean to do so, because despite being born there and having studied at the University of Havana, even with the right to belong, the political system in place cannot recognize us as part of that identity—it simply does not accept us. Therefore, Chile has become my country of adoption. I arrived here for family reasons and established a professional connection. Now, I am pursuing a doctorate and I am also researching the Chilean scene of the 1980s during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship

NDEREOM: Latin America and the Caribbean are in my heart. The cultures there are just beyond. The Dominican Republic is, for example, the site of the first university in the entire American continent (UASD), which by the way includes the Unites States (“America”); and what to say about poetry in Chile.

What have you had to learn as a Cuban in exile while living in Chile? I am asking maybe because the first time I visited South America, it felt so far away from this side of the planet; meaning the East Coast and the Caribbean, where we are both from.

DL: Let’s say my arrival in Chile happened after living in four previous countries: Costa Rica, Spain, the United States, and Germany. Latin America is very diverse, and the only shared history is the conquest by the Spanish and Portuguese, as well as a history of extractivism from post-capitalism and neoliberal politics. The Caribbean is different from Central America, and likewise, South America and the Southern Cone are distinct. Costa Rica, the country I arrived at after leaving Cuba, was where I had my first cultural shock. There, I learned that just because a coast is washed by the Caribbean, it doesn’t necessarily make us similar. Caribbean people are direct and even confrontational; Costa Ricans, as well as Chileans, don’t directly say what they think. That subtlety makes us different.

Imagine what it’s like for a Caribbean person in Chile. The same strangeness that must have struck the Haitians who arrived in the southernmost part of Chile, just as it caused shock to the Chileans with the Haitian migration. I’ve had to learn to say things differently. Just like in the United States, where I had to learn different ways of behaving, or in Germany where I had to learn how to greet people; you don’t give a kiss on the cheek, to a Chinese person, nor do you touch them when you’re first introduced. These observations have given me flexibility in my behavior and ways of conducting myself in different contexts in a measured way, which helps a lot in most of the countries I’ve lived in or visited for work. As the saying goes: 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do.' However, deeply, I retain this Caribbean essence for those who truly want to get to know me

NDEREOM: I have heard of Dominicans in New York seen as assertive, and embrace that assertiveness after over 500 years of freaking European colonization and US American empire. Call me assertive please!

You are completing your doctoral degree in Chile. Can you discuss the subject of your dissertation and how do you see yourself moving this into the wider world?

DL: One of the motivations that led me to the research I’m currently conducting is the invitation to hold an exhibition with part of the generation from the 1980s in Santiago, Chile. The Lost Domains, the title of the exhibition, was based on a poem by the Chilean poet Jorge Teillier, and it spoke as to how certain visualities were overlooked and seen as almost commercial for not being overtly political in the context of a dictatorship. This experience is a good example of how an initial research project for an exhibition evolved into a broader and more ambitious project, eventually leading to a doctoral thesis. In other words, curatorial practice is a form of research through images and cultural productions; they are part of the historical narrative from the perspective of public history, for instance.

I lived through the 1980s in Cuba, experiencing what was practically a revival of an extraordinary richness, complexity, and cultural explosion. What caught my attention in Chile during the ‘80s, despite the dramatic and complex reality of the dictatorship, was that even though these conditions, a countercultural and alternative movement emerged, where all its participants had the audacity and courage to create a deeply renewing movement of the collective psyche, which was both daunting and transformative of the reality they lived in. I believe that, in some way, and regardless of the distances and historical situations and motivations, both in Santiago de Chile and in Havana, there was a shared energy and concern about how to visualize complex, difficult, and painful issues.

These processes of change, of transition, are worth investigating in order to understand how adverse situations produce a movement in the psyche that leads to acts of defiance and disobedience, which Didi-Huberman called acts of uprising. I am deeply interested in that attitude in which artists can bring into motion, with generosity, courage, and provocation, forms, visuals, humor, and sonorities under quite adverse conditions. This study could help me and others understand how we can survive these circumstances, changes, and transitions by setting our psyche in motion through the production of images, movements, forms, and constructions that, in some way, help alleviate our spirit and our being as humans. There is a profound need for constant revolt, which is cyclical, and has been identified in the history of art with movements and aesthetic changes. How could we see these gestures of uprising and revolt in art today? Given that there are many forms of defiance that are not necessarily as obvious as taking to the streets, how could we approach this differently through research to make more inclusive and open proposals for embracing what defiance, revolt, and gestures of uprising are? I think I would like to resume my curatorial practice from a more investigative perspective with proposals that can be provocative from these viewpoints.

NDEREOM: Is there anything that you would like to add? Anything… I have enjoyed this so much.

DL:  Perhaps, I would like to add that my perspective on curatorial work or the art that interests me is not exclusive of all the other existing practices. Also, I feel very fortunate to be where I am, with all the experiences lived, in addition to having the opportunity to continue learning through the doctorate that I hope to finish in 2025. From my generation of colleagues graduated from the University of Havana, almost 35, I think we are only two from this group who continue to carry out these practices in relation to contemporary art.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all those who have generously helped me by sharing their knowledge and friendship. I am in considerable debt to artists whom I would have liked to help give the place they deserve and to carry out projects with the dignified conditions required for their works and productions, without the meanness of budgets or the lack of dialogue with institutions. It is the only reason why one would need to empower oneself and take a more belligerent and competitive stance, which is truly exhausting.

NDEREOM: Thank you so much for what you do. It is a gift to have you as a friend.

DL: I would like to deeply thank you for this opportunity and dialogue, where through your thoughtful questions I seek to answer with honesty. I hope these spaces continue to exist and can be maintained.

NDEREOM: Gracias a ti, querida Dermís. I keep inviting other creatives to envision their own spaces and not to wait for institutions to prove them for them. I am inspired by you.

All images courtesy of Dermis León / For specific credits hover over the image.

Dermís León’s links: Website / Instagram

Dermis León received an MA in Curatorial Studies from Bard College, New York; and a Master in Art History from the University of Havana. She received a BA in Latin American Art from the University of Costa Rica. Dermis León has been a Correspondent for ArtNexus magazine since 1995, as wells as for other international art publications. Her essays have been included in major anthologies such as Utopias, edited by Richard Noble and Whitechapel Gallery.  Since 1991 she has curated exhibitions in Latin America (Havana, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Santiago de Chile), Europe (Berlin, Milan, Madrid, Torino, Stockholm, Pesaro, and Gdansk), China (Wuhan) and USA (New York, Los Angeles, and Miami). Dermis has participated as a jury member in several art festivals (VideoAkt, Barcelona-2011 & FotoEspaña, Madrid -2010) (Sharjah Biennale, 2012) and has been invited present at several seminars and conferences in Denmark, Qatar, Germany, Spain, Cuba, Argentina and Chile.  Dermis León has done administrative work as well as consultancy with several major art museums around the world including Reina Sofia (MNCARS-Madrid), MADC (San José, Costa Rica). She has published extensively on Latin American and contemporary international art including a bilingual (Eng/Sp) book-length study of a Cuban artist: Carlos Boix: Boix Boxing Boixismo, 2015; and Chilean artist: Ciro Beltrán A Biography, (2008). More recently, she has created a concept for the 1980s generation in Chile–the movement of Vital Revolt–for her major curatorial work for the exhibition The Lost Domains (MAVI); a travelling exhibition (2020-2021). She has also received several prestigious grants and fellowships such as the first selection of curatorial project from the Chilean Ministry of Culture (2015). Dermis León was guest professor at the Hubei Institute of Art in Wuhan, China (2017-2019). She is the founder of Curatorial Bureau and a member of the IKT (International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art). She has been awarded a scholarship for her PhD in Arts at the Catholic University in Santiago of Chile. She lives in between Berlin-Santiago of Chile and works independently as a curator and writer.

Lauz Bechelli

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Lauz, I am glad that we had the opportunity to coincide in Austin, Texas. When we met you were directing the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas. What brought you from California to the Lone Star State and what are some of the adjustments that this relocation entailed for you personally and creatively?

Lauz Bechelli: Thank you so much for the invitation to dialogue, Nicolás. I hope that this conversation can meander similarly to our in-person ones in Austin. You have always had a way of finding the intersection of our interests and an eye for authenticity.

Austin is pretty close in spirit to where I am from originally, especially compared to the rest of Texas, so the move wasn’t too shocking from that point of view. It wasn’t a straight line from California to Austin, though. After graduating from UC Davis in 2010, I traveled and worked as an illustrator across Europe, Central America, and the UK for seven years, bouncing around in Istanbul, Milan, Granada, Nicaragua, and Aberdeen. I eventually missed a stable community and so spent a very grey fall/winter/spring in Ballater, Scotland working on graduate applications and was luckily accepted to UT Austin. That time travelling was very important to me both personally and as an artist. I think I continue to chase the unpredictability and instability of that period, but I try to confine it to my art practice these days... mostly.

Looking at your question from that context, as the Texas move being a return to the US, that was a bit of a shock. My first grocery trip was startling simply because of the grandness of the space and the glut of food options. It was strange to feel askew in such a common place. I hadn’t realized that my mental construct of onions had been slowly shrinking, but it had.

This same relativity had happened creatively – my sense of normal, and of good, had shifted. It was freeing when I realized this, but it took me years to see it. As an educator, I push students to travel because I don’t think there is a substitute for the transformations it can cause. The more I traveled the less I had a sense of what was right, and that made my life better.

You can become a bit of an alien though, it’s a great way to disintegrate yourself. No one knows you, so no one knows how you used to be. You can just reinvent yourself over and over and that is a unique sort of escapism.

NDEREOM: I see that you worked as an Interim Director at Women & Their Work, a place whose legacy I greatly admire. Who were some of the creatives that you came in contact with while at this space, and why do you think that organizations like this might still have a relevant role to play in the years to come?

 LB: That experience at Women & Their Work (WATW) was a formative one for me. I was lucky to land at a place with such a record of long-sighted curation right after graduate school. Working with Executive Director Chris Cowden and Program Director Diane Sikes, and curators like Annette Carlozzi, and Vicki Meek, taught me what it looks like to really support artists. That has been incredibly important in understanding my own rights and in arguing for others as an art administrator. WATW supports their artists monetarily, offers curatorial support, installation support, and guidance/feedback at all stages of the process. They go to great lengths to understand and realize their artists’ visions. That support is important, especially for emerging female and non-binary artists. Having a group of people believe in your ability to be decisive and visionary can be emotionally groundbreaking. Being surrounded by powerful women can also be emotionally groundbreaking.

I learned so much being there about the importance of professionalism as an artist too. Artists can be persnickety, and have the right to be, but being organized, on time (ish), and a decent communicator goes a long way to easing the workload, and stress load, for everyone. Working with Jade Walker, and Rehab El Sadek, both phenomenal people and successful creatives, showed me the power of kindness and collaboration in that setting. I think women have had to undergo several evolutions in the workplace to advance themselves, including mimicking men’s behavior. I hope that gentleness can find its way back. Or rather, maybe that gentleness can find its way into the workplace for the first time. That is the type of progress I am interested in and working with those women has given me a model for that.

It is not a good political moment for progressives (yesterday reproductiverights.gov went dark, women are being refused basic medical care (click here), transgender rights are being erased from the conversation (click here), Alaska is being lustfully undressed (click here), but places like WATW hold memory. Their archives, spanning 42 years, were recently acquired by the Smithsonian. Preserving the history of progress is so important as we watch radical changes reshape our country.

Justin Gregg coined the term ‘prognostic myopia’ to describe human’s inability to make beneficial long-term decisions, and I fear convenience and immediacy are causes of many of our worst. Making art isn’t convenient or quick or efficient. Women & Their Work, and places like it, are not convenient. These activities and places expand our communities and minds; they fill our time and offer opportunities to think more, to work (the good kind) more. Women & Their Work holds a sacred intellectual and creative space for women and for the non-binary. It is a safe, physical space to meet in person, a space that, at its healthiest, encourages disagreements and engagement. An organization run by a small team can develop creatively and autonomously in a way that larger, entrenched ones, can’t.

They are, of course, not immune to what happens in homogenous communities, but their goal is to recognize and address disparities in diversity. If we realize the importance of heterogeneity in the health of a system, then we can see how important safeguarding that pursuit is.

So, for those reasons, and more, I think this organization remains incredibly relevant today. I wish it was less relevant!

NDEREOM: Women have been central to so much of who I am and what I do. Women have been the mentors that men have not been for me and I hear you clearly. This is one of the reasons why My heart goes to supporting BIG time the work that women identified people are doing. No offense men, and women have been here for me when I most needed support of all kind.

You are making me nostalgic about my time in Texas and how I lived just a few blocks from Women & their Work, and I could stop by this place any time that I was walking around East Austin. Moving to your own work, you deploy found objects in your creative practice. Can you talk about where this impetus comes from, and how this might speak to or go beyond the assemblage?

LB: I, like you, have a dedicated walking practice. To quote Rebecca Solnit, “I like walking because it is slow…’. I am suspicious of speed, especially in decision making. As I get older, I want to luxuriate in things more, I don’t want to go for a quick walk, I don’t want to take a quick shower, I don’t want to run to the grocery store. Some things refuse to be fast: reading, listening to music, cooking. They are small refusals but their quality changes if you speed them up. In the lunchroom last year, Nicole Smythe-Johnson, then a curator and PhD candidate at UT Austin, said offhandedly, “Rest is resistance” and I have never been able to forget it. * see The Nap Ministry.

These slow walks are where I find most of my objects. I find benches, frames, paint, all sorts of clothes, etc. I like to think of it as an opportunity to encounter fate and an exercise in gratitude. They are little gifts that open new avenues.

I also ‘find’ objects by thinking about excess. I gather a lot of packing materials. Recently, I’ve been working with Soup Peddler to use their leftover bones from bone broth and gathering burnt wood from the fires in Bastrop. Paint has historically been tied to available natural resources, Lapis Lazuli from Afghanistan, raw Sienna from Italy, cochineal from South America, burnt bones from everywhere. There was value and meaning in these actual materials, and with how hard they were to come by, but now the surface has become the essential force. The color of something is more important than what it is or where it is from. Artists are starting from what they want rather than what they have. It is like letting your leftovers rot in the fridge while you go out to eat. I think it is worthwhile to revisit the old way of working.

The ‘assemblage’ of my work is mostly hidden. Placing objects underneath creates complicated surfaces to play painting games on. Most of the games I want to play are available with things I find, colors I find, surfaces I find. I just have to be flexible in my thinking and let go of being particularly willful. Sometimes, I do just make a painting without worrying about all this.

NDEREOM: How do you deal energetically with the objects that you interact with within your creative practice and which eventually make it into your paintings? Are there any spiritual traditions/rituals/practices that may help you mediate with these previously owned items and what they might be permeated with?

LB: I wonder about an object’s ability to be permeated with something. I would rather frame complicated objects as ones who need a new chance to be useful, even (or maybe especially) those things that are tainted or condemned. I approach objects with a very open heart and open senses and my relationship with each one is quite personal.

I would like to answer around the rest of the question. The work of many of spiritual people, or energetic people, happens in solitude. You develop that sense internally, usually in a remote place, with no record of any of it. I have always enjoyed readings that engage with objects obliquely and with superstition. Juana does this in Steinbeck’s The Pearl, the Buendía family struggles with it in Cien años de Soledad.

In graduate school, I really opened my process to someone in a studio visit. Thankfully, he was a friend and a discrete person and suggested it might save me some hassle if I were more guarded. This was great advice, and I am grateful to have developed a sense of secrecy within myself. A lot of energetic dissipation can happen in conversation without care, and it can affect your daring. I find things get especially rotten when the goal of self-advertisement or promotion is primary. Our cultural moment is very toxic in this regard, and so I am inclined to keep my rituals and practices mostly to myself.

Unless of course, I am sharing a vegan ice-cream sandwich with someone who meets me with openness, and then it is a lucky conversation.

NDEREOM: That reminds me of our vegan ice cream sandwich meetings at Gati! I guess we will have to go back there so that I can hear the rest of your response and I respect your secrecy. What is your own relationship with objects in the everyday? Have you come across a found object with which you have found an energetic affinity?

LB: I am actually not a big object person. I have moved so much in my life that objects feel a lot like obligations. I can be quite utilitarian with the things I do own, there is a lot of tilting and falling apart. I guess I am more interested in, again, making use of the things I find. My art-making isn’t very separate from my life-making in that way. Things come into my life and then they leave and I don’t have to carry them around. What I love is space and I’m always trying to create or manipulate space.

That being said, my relationship to objects as beings and beings as objects is more nuanced. There was a dog that I really loved, Lucy, and when she died, we buried her up on the family hill behind the house. Over time, I understood that all her parts were being pulled into the soil and into roots, being eaten, picked up by branches, climbing to the top of the canopy and falling back to the earth. That helped me. This is an obvious and daily meditation for most of the rest of the world, but coming from my cultural bubble, I needed that physical experience to change my understanding of objects. Lucy has definitely expanded into Austin by now. 

I feel I owe everything to the material around me and to my body, even when we discuss consciousness and souls. I have an emotional reaction to things left on streets and objects abused without thought. You could argue that I ‘abuse’ a lot of objects, with all the disassembling and bondage and ripping, but I don’t treat them like trash.

I am interested in not only what I find on street corners but also what I find in my waking mind – thinking of everything, thoughts/memories/feelings, as material and trying to do a mental scavenge as well. That way the mystery is acknowledged and preserved, and I don’t spend my time trying to convince anyone of anything. Listening and perception is the priority.

NDEREOM: I wish I could inhabit that relationship with objects. My home is literally an archive. I think is is the Catholic in me and my upbringing with relics and the like. But back to you your work, what is a painting for you or how would you explain painting to a person who might not be familiar with this medium? I am thinking how the concept of making something to go on a wall, that can then be easily traded and transported, is relatively new. Before all of this, there were petroglyphs, for example. Also, in your case, what would be a painting is complicated… but I rather have you talk about it.

LB: It is complicated. And it can also be contradictory. I am dedicated to used and found materials and generally not buying things, but I still buy new paint sometimes. My dogma only goes so far. I love to play with color and to lay it down on a fresh and taught white canvas. It is ecstatic for me. Right now, on the backside of a show, I just want to play with color.

I do take your point about petroglyphs. We lost a sense of painting’s purpose in community when it turned into something tradable. It was useful in a much more obvious way, like a street sign. Its use now is very different for different actors. I was on reddit recently and read ‘expensive paintings are just trading cards for the rich’ and find that rings true to the sourest part of me, but I would be sorry to allow it to extinguish the sincerest parts.

I want to make some generalizations to try and work through this idea so bear with me:

The painter most often doesn’t experience painting as creating a commodity. Painters are usually poor and obsessed with something. So, there is already this divide between the painting as an object and the painter themselves. It gets more complicated as you add in the viewer and the buyer. I think everyone wants some of the magic artists are after, but the problem is you can’t buy that magic, it is immune to purchase. Though, I wonder if art historians achieve some version in research and discovery, like collectors achieve it through accumulation and social ascension. We all access pleasure and purpose differently.

Paintings are a weird commodity, because market independence is such a crucial ingredient. Popular demand is usually the driving force behind invention. That is why there is this terrible loop of dissonance that you will talk about in the future – to like painting and be repulsed by it - artists rely on and reject commercialization at varying degrees of obviousness. Painters seem closest to that money because their work is easiest to commodify, making their repression closest to the surface and so perhaps the most upsetting to everyone involved. Painters expose all our lack of purity, which is supposed be a defining characteristic of our profession.

Looking at it another way: the public expects artists to teach them or show them something inaccessible to the everyday person, to serve as the ‘visionary other’ for the rest of society. I studied Jainism for a while and there is a parallel there: Jainism describes two paths to enlightenment – one for householders, who work and support society, and one for mendicants who renounce worldly life in pursuit of spiritual purity. The mendicant can’t exist without the householder because they provide shelter and food and do all the unsavory, business activities the ascetic needs to avoid. The ascetic, in turn, offers the householder spiritual advice and guidance, and in my opinion – a form of absolution for their business, a way of saying ‘I am doing my part by supporting the righteous and the beautiful.’

I think we are doing something similar with artists, society expects a version of purity and guidance from them. In this way, artists are serving the emotional needs of the public. We just repress the dissonant aspect of payment.

But to answer the first part of your question, what a painting is and how would I describe it to someone who doesn’t know the medium, I think I would just say it is a liquid or paste applied to a surface to visually communicate. That description is simpler and probably better.

NDEREOM: I am sitting with your compelling responses and thinking about my own radicalization in the arts. What is the conversation that painting–or the act of painting–might have with your soma; your body? It is easier to see the external manifestation of an art form, but how would you say this is internalized by you, or within you?

LB: For me, painting puts you in contact with the mechanics of nature and of vision, our dominant sense and primary way of interacting with the world. It teaches you about many thing’s tendencies: fluids, atmosphere, color, your own hands. Taking enough drawing classes is a bit like taking psychedelics. It isn’t a very practical thing to look at the world around you like you were going to draw it, but with enough practice you can sort of turn that ‘sight’ on. You can collapse space into a flat plane limited by the confines of your eyes. It isn’t a big jump to go from seeing the world around you in this manipulatable way to seeing yourself like that too. Manipulable and circumstantial.

Photography has done something unnatural to our reading of the picture plane. We often think sight works like a photo, that we can see the whole image, but that’s far from the truth. Your attention is the most fundamental part of what and how you see, and then what you remember too. Painting plays with precisely this, with what is given attention, because there is the potential for complete invention. It can feel debilitating when you recognize how many variables there are.

Personally, it also really affects the way I see. If I am in the studio for more than 3 or 4 hours, my eyes act differently when I leave. I have a sense of vertigo, collapsed space, and color hypersensitivity that is very real and the more I paint the weirder my sight gets.

I am sure other artists feel some version of this as well, dancers and performers, but I can’t speak to their somatic experience.

NDEREOM: I agree with you about the inner transformation that can take place when doing something for a long period of time. I experienced this while dancing in Brazil, for 5 days, for hours and hours at a time.

As a person who very rarely makes objects, I have a somewhat fraught relationship with painting as the artform that feeds the art industry machinery and that keeps art capitalist, for the most part. But the thing is that I also enjoy painting very much. I don’t have a question, but would rather hear you talk about this medium as it pertains to life as opposed to commerce.

LB: Oh absolutely – such a riddle. I got sucked into this a few questions ago. Painting can be such a simple pleasure, but we have to accept its beautiful parts alongside its ugly parts, or we can get bitter. A thing or action can be beautifully pure, and it is our nature to want to own and accumulate that feeling or object, and that desire (followed by action) contaminates it. Around and around.

I deeply feel that fraught relationship you are talking about, but the world’s desire to commodify seems to be unwaveringly present. Maybe we can utilize it instead of allowing it to dampen our spirits.

I am tired of filling my studio, my storage, and my friends and parents houses with virgin objects from the money machine. I don’t want to fund the destruction of our natural resources. I don’t want to see millionaires flourish. I want to be out of that game, but in a way that still gives me a sense of joy and freedom, not of stinginess. Efficiency and frugality can exist inside of frivolity and generosity, and actually these are considerations central to my work. Where is the excess? And how can we find freedom from scarcity and a ‘holiday state of mind’ (as Agnes Martin puts it) in this excess? How does one free themselves from desire by recognizing the abundance of the actual?

Ultimately, the goal is to find a way to achieve that same ecstatic moment I spoke of earlier with materials outside of the revenue stream. Used packing materials, used clothes, boxes and scraps and material that takes almost no processing or shipping. Can the commodifying machine eat itself?

NDEREOM: At the moment of this conversation you have an exhibition in Dallas. Can you expand on this and maybe discuss about painting as it deals with generating a patining in one place and then installing it in another; or painting with a place in mind?

LB: Your question gets to an important point about when a painting begins and when it ends. Recently, I have been more interested in developing space for paintings to happen than in executing vision. You can see this in Sunchaser, my current show at Liliana Bloch gallery in Dallas.

Painting used to be more extractive for me. I would keep my eyes in capture mode so I could arrest and recreate something essential. Something about that way of working was always troubling, (the capture? the possession?), especially as an outdoor person. It has the flavor of imperialism. American landscape and German Romanticism especially try to recreate the grandness of the outdoors for at-home use, constructing a sense of expedition and wonder inside of comfort. They still do stop me at museums, though; I can get lost in Bierstadt and Durand. I may be mesmerized by something else there; to do with gluttony and attachment to effort.

Anyways, I found I didn’t like the way I was present in my daily life when I was making paintings in this way. It was like being awake wasn’t enough;I had to be awake with an ulterior motive. There is something so American about finding a way to constantly capitalize experiences. Someone told me there is no amount you can give to art making that will be enough; it will always demand more, and you have to set up some boundaries. It’s good to stop sometimes too, not identify too much with being the artist.

I have shifted to a much more improvisational practice where I can turn ‘seek’ mode off. I am trying to trust that experiences are being stored somewhere instead of trying to possess everything. So far, it is working. I sit down and open and some compost of my experiences and explorations comes out. My most recent work, Cedar Fire, Bones, and At Home, all came out this way. It is all sitting in the soup of my belly, and then blam, it’s out (usually in small drawing form)… and better than if I wrought it from my mind. As a naturally anxious and controlling person, it has been an effort to learn how to loosen my grip this way, but also healing.

This brings me to your question about generating a painting in one place and then installing it in another, which is similar to starting your painting in one place and then finishing it in another – a different way of turning ‘seek’ mode off. Things still catch my eye when I’m not looking, and I still enjoy replication: the mechanics of light and edge, playing with someone else’s dramas, flipping between copying and disintegrating. Sometimes, I make one piece based on a sketch and it is finished in 10 minutes, and then I make another piece based on that same sketch and it takes 2 years. I don’t understand it.

I don’t know that there is a big difference between beginning with an external reference and beginning internally. The things that show up ‘internally’ are still derivative, they have just been digested a bit more. I am in the middle of exploring that difference right now.

NDEREOM: I am so grateful, Lauz, for this conversation. I rarely engage in dialogue with people who paint. Most of my art family revolves around performance art and the like. I hope to see you later this year so we can go out for vegan ice cream sandwiches and walk through Austin admiring local plants.

LB: Yes, please. Come soon.

All images courtesy of Lauz Bechelli / For specific credits hover over the image.

Lauz Bechelli’s links: Website / Instagram

Lauz Bechelli received her BA in studio art from the University of California, Davis, and her MFA from the University of Texas, Austin, where she currently teaches painting and drawing. Bechelli is a 2021 recipient of a Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellowship Award in Vadodara, India where she collaborated with the Department of Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit at the Maharaja Sayajirao University Baroda and Carbon Craft of Hubli. She attended the Penland School of Craft residency, Chautauqua residency, and the Priyasri residency in Vadodara, India and has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad.

Michael Watson

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Michael, we met at ChaShaMa during one of the Non-Professional Development workshops that Mary Ting and I were conducting. This event was organized by Laura James, an artist and curator from the Bronx. I am happy that we have kept in touch.

Michael Watson: Yes! I remember that evening vividly. It was great to talk with fellow artists about the corruption, abuse and neglect by the art industry against its own. I left feeling very encouraged and hopeful that I was not alone. Unfortunately, it seems things haven’t changed that much even with the Me Too, DEI, and BLM movements. It is sad to see. Though, it was great to connect with you and admire the work you are doing. It has been nice to witness over the years how your practice has continued to flourish in this trajectory.

NDEREOM: You are a prolific creative, and I would like to keep this conversation on just some of the key themes/elements informing your large body of work, from painting to sculpture and performance art. I would like to start with rice. Can you talk about this in regard to specific pieces and in connection to you personally?

MW: I started using rice because I was looking for a material that could represent the body/corporeal existence without being constrained by the human figure. I wanted to illustrate the expansiveness of the body in the fleshly and spiritual realms.

Growing up in a Filipino household, rice was a staple of every meal. You could say our bodies became rice and it was a familiarity I shared with my distant relatives halfway around the world.

In the beginning, I was applying a rice porridge directly to fragments of clothing that I had turned inside out referencing the inversion of skin revealing the flesh within. The porridge stiffened the garments in animated states. I remember getting a comment at the time that the garments reminded them of the holocaust, maybe because of the crude application of the porridge on the surface. Nonetheless, I was intrigued by the dialogue and decided to continue down this path.

As the garments progressed, I started to think about containers. These garments felt like bodies and the thought of just placing them on a white pedestal or concrete floor in a gallery setting felt wrong. My research at the time led me into the topic of funerary practices in the United States and around the world, which is diverse with some even involving rice. I was also strongly influenced by my Christian upbringing, specifically the Eucharist–the use of bread and wine to represent body and blood.

I created a shallow box which I placed directly on the floor. It was the same dimensions as the holes dug for graves in the United States. Similar to how we treat coffins, it was pristine with minimal joints and constructed of a cabinet-grade birch plywood. I filled it with approximately 400 pounds of rice and placed a black suit I had treated with the rice porridge on the bed of rice.

The pristine box felt too constrained, so I took a pickaxe to it and burned it with the rice still inside. I also installed lighting underneath, so it pierced through holes in the plywood surface, illuminating the rice and the suit. The box and suit became an installation titled In the End which was my first major exhibition of the rice work and the first time I publicly displayed charred wood with the rice pattern.

My exploration of rice as medium and image in my work has continued, beginning with the charred rice panels, the Afterlife: Bodies series, which is currently on display at my solo exhibition at Saint Peter’s Church in Midtown Manhattan. In addition to the rice panels, I have also produced several rice performances. One such performance, In Remembrance of Me, uses rice as a connective body to bring people together, materializing the connection we already have to each other here and in the metaphysical realm. I pour a handful of rice into an individual's hand in the audience and ask them to pass it on to the person beside them. Acquaintances are now forever intertwined because of a shared spiritual experience. My hope is that the rice performances are solemn experiences that reveal that we are more kindred spirits than we are foreign to each other.

We are all connected in this life and the next–past, present, and future–ancestors to future generations.

NDEREOM: Many years ago I produced an audio piece entitled Arroz sin Pollo. Rebecca Herman narrated my text and Mark Shoffner recorded and edited the audio. Rice plays a big part in Dominican cultures. Just recently, a family member was staying with me and this person kept making pot after pot of rice. I could see how cooking and eating rice can kindle security and familiarity for me as well as for many Dominicans. Rice is the food item that many of us on the island and here in the diaspora eat in huge amounts (in mounds) at 12 noon every day! Your cultural link to rice comes from the Philippines. Generally speaking, Euro-Americans are not that versed on rice dishes. Tell me…

MW: The most pleasurable part of working with rice is the diversity of the stories I hear from the people who experience my work, because rice is such an important part of many different cultural traditions. I find these memories to be the gracious gift I did not expect, so thank you for sharing yours.

My mother is Filipino and grew up in Samar before meeting my father who was stationed at Subic Bay for the U.S. Air Navy in the late 1970s. My mom rarely made authentic Filipino food while I was growing up, but she made rice every morning. We would eat in that pot all day long. That mushy, sweet, buttery, and salty taste is a true comfort food. I am sure you can relate. One thing that stuck with me and ultimately led to the rice work was a story my mother told me in high school. She told me about going home for her brother’s funeral. It is common for people to travel great distances from other villages to attend funerals. Because of that, each party would make large batches of rice for the journey. When they arrived, they would mound up all the rice on a table and everyone at the gathering would eat from it. When I started to think about rice and the body, I remembered that story and thought about the beautiful parallel between the body prepared for burial and the body that feeds us. They were one and the same to me. What a powerful illustration of life–we become nourishment to the souls we leave behind like rice to the mouth, simple yet exactly what you need to survive.

NDEREOM: Thank you for sharing this story. Death and and dying are central aspects of my work and research and I am surprised that these have not yet been coopted by the art industry like what happened to healing. In your case, your creative praxis treats such subjects with great sincerity, and this is something I miss in a great deal of art today.

I very rarely get inspired by art these days. Most of what I see is self-referential. Boring. Gone are the days when life was intrinsically part of the art, even for people who worked in their studios making abstract paintings. What I see now, for the most part, is a daunting amount of objects for sale that do not hold much meaning. But you make objects imbued with rituals and permeated with energies. I would like to hear about this.

MW: Thank you. I am humbled by your comments and insight into my work. My hope is this meaning comes across in the objects I make when you experience them in the flesh.

Objects and “in the flesh” are operative here. Part of what I am trying to say with my work is that we have lost a connection to both the tactile world and intentionality in what we choose to experience. Early on I decided that I would work with materials that I felt personally connected to and center my practice around rituals that were spiritually informed. Rice became such a material. It is meaningless, fragile, and insignificant, but when you eat it, you will be full. Toss it at the right moment, and it celebrates, mourns, or symbolizes fertility, prosperity, and good fortune. This is the way I sense the power of certain materials, objects, and spaces, and especially living things. If the body is rice, then we are insignificant matter made significant by the great orchestration of Nature or God or however you want to refer to Them, through rituals of birth, growth, and death. Focusing on the origins and cycles of the biological world, I adopt these processes as artistic rituals of making, imbuing whatever material I use in my studio with certain metaphysical energies.

One example of this is Pyre, a series of burn panels I completed in 2017. I laid sheets of plywood flat and covered them in rice and scavenged local materials, including rocks and twigs. I then burned the prepared materials, in some cases letting the fire break all the way through the panel. The process of creating these pieces references the practice of cremation on a funerary pyre in which the corpse is prepared and burned over a construction of combustible materials. The fire produces an afterimage of the body’s destruction that remains indefinitely.

Another example is my break work, such as the American Terrain series. Through a destructive ritual of striking and piercing the plywood with a pickaxe and a sledgehammer, the panel expands and breaks apart. The tattered wood surface and fragments that remain become a kind of resurrected corpse, alluding to the expansive nature of the body beyond the grave and the cyclical nature of life and death.

 Destruction is an act of creation. Death is only the beginning.

NDEREOM: Indeed. Kali comes to mind when you talk about this. Can you discuss your interest in ritual or in creative processes that are fed by the spiritual? This is something that is in fashion at the moment. That was not always the case. Some curators and museums in the recent past would not touch, even with latex gloves, anything that had to do with spirituality.

MW: Yeah, I know! I felt very unpopular the past 15 years doing the work that I do, but I always knew at some point people would come around. Spirituality, or one’s beliefs, are often more essential to a person’s life the older they get, especially when they experience loss or a personal health crisis which we all eventually do. I have to admit it is difficult to talk about my religious influences even though it has a big impact on my practice. I sense a deep resentment from many folks in the art community towards religion of any kind but especially Christianity, but I get it. Many devout yet misguided Christians have said a lot of messed up, hurtful things steeped in conspiracy theories, hate speech and bad politics. They have forgotten the core tenets of all truly loving faiths: love, grace, humility, decency, tolerance, community, hope, and acceptance, to name a few good things. Now more than ever, I think it is important for people regardless of faith to embrace each other's diverse belief systems and find commonality.

Rituals are a constant in daily life, whether that is the Eucharist performed in church by a priest, prayer, or personal meditation. All of life is made up of little rituals–how you wake up, brush your teeth, get dressed, or get to work.

Ritual entered my creative practice because I saw it as a powerful tool for creating meaning through an authentic experience. Art was a byproduct of those rituals. My desire to incorporate ritual was informed by how I believe meaning is made, or perhaps more accurately how meaning is recognized. When I was a child, I used to bury the birds my cat would kill in a graveyard I had made for them. There was no meaning in the activity. It did not guarantee a certain afterlife for them or teach my cat a lesson. Perhaps, in my fantasy they would be happier together, dead, but I wanted to preserve them and honor their bodies. At a young age I recognized that life is precious, and time is fleeting. Early on in my artistic career I felt tasked with being a kind of shaman through my art. By doing so it helped me cope with personal trauma by creating a safe space to be vulnerable for as long as I needed to be. I recognized I was not the only injured bird. There were many more like me. I wanted to create a sanctuary of sorts for all of them to experience physical, emotional, and spiritual healing.

Installation comes to mind as a creative process strongly informed by ritual. Often, the goal with my installation work is to create spaces that encourage the viewer to slow down, be mindful, and connect to a higher plane not by leaving this physical world but by reframing it. In Hollow Head, I filter the artificial light coming from the gallery’s track lighting and capture it in a thin veil of fabric in the ‘hollow head’s’ ceiling, causing it to be formless and immaterial. To experience the work, viewers must crouch down to enter the installation, sit, and look up. This simple action creates a personal connection between the viewer and the work, and it changes their relationship to the space of the gallery.   

NDEREOM: You are quietly and steadily doing work that is compelling and that has its own voice. I am curious as to what keeps you focused when there is so much noise around art and healing.

MW: I chose not to focus too closely on what's going on in the art world or what others think I should be making. Rather, I keep my ear to the ground and understand the needs of the communities I come in contact with, and there are many needs. Beyond the essentials such as food, shelter, and safety there are also spiritual needs that are often neglected because it is not considered important. Just like mental health, our spiritual health is necessary to our survival. It influences where we chose to live, what we chose to eat, and how we chose to operate within society. My art practice is primarily focused on this belief.

If I had to give some advice to other artists it would be to embrace your inner voice and accept imperfection, failure, risk, and incompleteness. Let go and make. Your art practice is one large piece of art and like you, it is open, able to receive, instill and evolve with the times.

NDEREOM:  I can see blue in your paintings and in some of your actions. I kept thinking of Yves Klein, whose creative and spiritual incursions I so much admire. Can you expand on your use of this color?

MW: Klein once said, “Blue has no dimensions; it is beyond dimension.” I believe he was hinting at the metaphysical qualities of the hue. In my latest series of mixed media paintings Perpetual Twilight, I incorporate abstract, expressive painting on paper with landscape photography shot both by my grandfather and by me. I chose to work primarily with blue because its inherent spiritual quality recontextualizes these serene vistas and intimate moments to question the stability of our memories and our need to reorder or fictionalize the past to fit our current selves.

I also explore the belief that after we die, we return to our favorite memory and live it in perpetuity. The process of working with my grandfather’s photography gave me the space to embody his experiences and see the world through his eyes. His photos were taken in Guam, where he was stationed in the 1960s, and on his travels in the American West. The series also includes photographs I took of Strynø, an island in Rudkøbing, Denmark. While there, I was struck by the immensity of the surrounding water in relation to the pastoral landscape. My footing was insignificant to what I could not traverse. The depths of the water became imperceptible, immaterial, and I was on the edge of it.

Twilight is the moment when dark and light intertwine. Similarly in my layered paintings I aim to blur photographs and brushstroke, memory and fiction. As light hits the lowest atmosphere during twilight an explosion of color occurs, marked by pink clouds and golden light. This display of warmth is followed by cooler tones created as darkness consumes the upper atmosphere. There, deep blue hues are the last remnants of daylight as they overlap the vast cosmos beyond. Veiling the universe, blue acts as the grounding intermediary between our footing and the unknown. I use a similar technique, applying blue washes to elevate the similarities in my grandfather’s photography and my own experience of Stryno. Since twilight happens twice a day, it is symbolic of death as a setting or a rising sun, an end or a beginning. 

Sky and Water, the two dominant references of blue in the natural world, aren't actually blue. Rather they are created when light is caught up in molecules to create the illusion of form and depth like a permeable body, an intermediary. This is the closest we will get to seeing the soul of the world.

NDEREOM: Do you have any religious or spiritual practice(s)? It has been implied in artistic and academic circles that one could not possibly be an artist or an intellectual and acknowledge a higher power. I would say to that, “Give me a break”. While looking at your work, I see the sacred arising from it, like a mist.

MW: My upbringing in the church, coupled with the stories that my mother would tell me about the Philippines, was a big influence on the person that I became. Western religion and Filipino mysticism formed early personal ideologies that were rooted in specific dogmas, traditions, and rituals. As I got older, I became more interested in eastern philosophies coupled with phenomenology, metaphysics and otherworldliness. All were framed by perceived cultural and personal trauma and a perceptiveness of others’ grief and pain. My art attempts to distill that complex narrative. Although I am part of a faith community, I also see my art as an extension of that spiritual practice.

Spirituality is our relationship with powers and forces outside of ourselves that we recognize driving a larger movement and connecting us together. I believe this higher power is the driving force and connective spiritual body behind all things and all energies. It is in all aspects of an individual’s soul and being, which is connected to all of humanity, nature, and the cosmos. Our relationship with It shapes our everyday life. You cannot just partially obtain or compartmentalize the soul. Your spirituality must be pursued, maintained, and cultivated or you will suffer a soul death. The soul is our tether to the higher power. It is an open line of communication. Helping us to understand who we are and our place in this world. In life, our souls need to be nourished. Each person’s soul is unique. I believe it was with us before we were born, and it will be with us after we die. This brief intermingling of the spirit and the flesh is a necessary component of human experience. The body needs the soul to connect to God, but the soul needs the body to connect to the world. Many in positions of power don’t believe or practice this truth. You see it in our politics right now. You have individuals in positions of power that are not in any way tapped into the currents of humanity. They are unable to perceive real needs. They are not in the position to cure societal ailments. I think art is an important conduit for spiritual nourishment, and I hope my work can help fill that need.

NDEREOM: Thank you for this moment together.

MW: I really enjoyed the opportunity to share some of the meaning and processes behind my work with you. Thank you!

All images and videos courtesy of Michael Watson / Portrait of Michel Watson: Giovana Schluter Nunes

Michael Watson’s links: Website / Instagram

Michael Watson’s process-based paintings, sculptures, installations, and performance embrace destructive and regenerative processes relying on experimental modes of production such as improvisation, destabilization, and chance. He engages with found objects and natural materials such as plywood, rice, and fire to mine the interstitial spaces of being, substance, and imperceptibility.

Watson’s work has been widely exhibited including the Affordable Art Fair (forthcoming, 2025); Afterlife: Bodies at the Narthex Gallery, Saint Peter’s Church in Midtown (solo exhibition, current); Perpetual Twilight at Established Gallery, Brooklyn (solo exhibition, 2024); SPRING BREAK Art Show (2024); Greenville Museum of Art; Hunterdon Art Museum, NJ; Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, NY; Brooklyn Museum; SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA; Ideas City Festival via AiOP affiliated with The New Museum; The Kitchen, NYC; Governor’s Island Art Fair, NYC; and the Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN. His commissions can be found in Dior, Cheval Blanc Paris, and several residential projects throughout the world. He has attended residencies at Arts, Letters and Numbers, Averill Park NY; AIR Program 4heads Organization, NYC; and the New York Studio Program, NYC. His work is featured in several publications including The Seeds of Creation: Art and Spirituality by Cosmina Ene, Gwan Anthology: Volume Two by Forward Comix, and The Seeds of Creation: Artists During the 2020 Pandemic by Cosmina Ene. Watson is currently in the Chashama studio program in Brooklyn, New York.

Watson received an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design and a BFA in Painting from the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

Jennifer McGregor

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Dear Jennifer, this feels like the right moment to have this conversation. The sensation I have is that of the layers that have been forming throughout the years as result of our creative engagements. Our first connection was through Wave Hill and, while you just rewired from working at this space, I can still see your presence in Wave Hill’s gardens and galleries. I am happy to hear from you as to how you are and where you are at the moment, metaphorically speaking.

Jennifer McGregor: Dear Nicolás, thank you for inviting me into this conversation. It’s an honor and an occasion to look back and forward. Yes, I distinctly recall meeting with you on Wave Hill’s Sun Porch as we selected artists for Survive, Thrive, Alive, but instead we included your videos La Fritura and USA Paradisciaca, in the exhibition Transplant/Transculture. Later, while you were part of the Winter Workspace, you lay among the lush tropical plants in the greenhouse on a freezing cold day. Visitors were perplexed and intrigued to find you there, so peaceful, breathing in sync with plants. It was a first time an artist was did a performance in that space. So, thank you for opening that window of opportunity.

 At the end of 2020, I “rewired” from Wave Hill. The new voices and perspectives that Gabriel de Guzman and his team have introduced bring me great joy.  My present chapter has involved curating and arts planning with a range of organizations including Korea Art Forum where our curatorial paths crossed through Shared Dialogue Shared Space.  I’m also expanding my creative practice based on my own archive and experiences.

NDEREOM: Your focus has been public art, a field that has been changing rapidly in the last decades. For so long public art was mainly defined by the modernist monuments that populated urban spaces and that were in many cases planted into a place without any or very dialogue with communities. Now the talk is about social practice or socially engaged art. How have you navigated these waves in the arts and what have you learned from them?

JM: Yes, I’ve been thinking about how my practice has involved opening possibilities for artists to work in the built environment through public art, as well as the natural environment through curating at Wave Hill. In the 1980s I was initiated into the public art field as debates raged around the notion of site-specificity and the removal of Tilted Arch by Richard Serra. Facilitating guidelines and projects for the newly formed Percent for Art Program I regularly met with New York City agency liaisons who knew about the sculpture since their offices were steps away from Federal Plaza. As it turned out, the controversy and discussion about the sculpture was a way to bring people up to speed on contemporary art. It also broadened thinking about ways to approach public space through a more inclusive and responsive process, one that wasn’t based in the idea of imposition (aka plop art) that is often associated with Modernism.

The seeds for social practice or socially engaged art were certainly being sown during that time. I observed how artists (often female and/or younger) emphasized their interest in broader aspects of the site including its relationship to a neighborhood rather the physical proportions of the architecture. Mierle Laderman Ukeles was a particularly compelling force as Artist in Residence at the Department of Sanitation, she embodied an alternative role for artists which made a big impression on the other city agencies.

Later curating at Wave Hill allowed me to facilitate a creative ecosystem with varied entry points for artists to experiment, create new work for the site or a theme, engage directly with visitors through a residency or a workshop. In the context of the garden, we generated ways for visitors to connect with artists and learn about contemporary art. I continue to connect with landscapes in other places through my consulting projects. For example, I’ve been learning about Bay Ridge where I’m curating Permeable Shoreline/Essential Future at Stand4 Gallery & Community Space that opens in April 2025.

NDEREOM: I must say that the fixation with monuments in the arts have not gone away and that organizations and artists in the United States continue to deal with the vestiges of modernity as it pertains to public art. My experience working in places like Catalonia has been so different, as result of the emphasis on what organizations like IDENSITAT call art in social spaces, or arte en espacios sociales. For organizations like IDESITAT and people like Ramón Parramón, the focus is on interactions and on the territory as it pertains to social engagements. I feel that I am not asking questions to you, but more prompting responses from your wealth of wisdom.

JM:  You are right, we are dealing with modernity, but also with the ideals of the Beaux Arts and the City Beautiful Movement when it comes to monuments. Commemorative projects are often funded privately by a group of people who support the cause or purpose, and are frequently on public property and part of the civic landscape.  Friction can occur with the public and private interests are not aligned. Following the actions sparked by the murder of George Floyd and the outcry against repressive monuments and markers, the monument landscape has changed throughout the country. It's encouraging to see the work that Monument Lab and other organizations are doing to support projects that address events, people, and situations that have been overlooked, bringing them into civic discourse through art.

It’s helpful to consider the difference between “permanent public art” that is intended to endure for many decades, including monuments as a subset, and “temporary public art” that can also involve temporary memorials. It seems that organizations like IDESITAT are implementing the broadest definition of art that goes beyond visual to include music, performance, film/video, multimedia, spoken and written word.  Once you move into the realm of temporary art, there are many more possibilities and strategies. I think about “art in social space” engaging relationships in the moment that might not endure the burden of permanence.

NDEREOM: There is money to be made in huge sculptures and monuments like the ones that still prevail in the United Sates art circuit. The opposite can be said about social experiences centered on the ephemeral. I am wondering how this dynamic continues to imbue public art in the U.S. within a capitalist system, independently of the subjects that the artists seek to address, whether race, class, gender…

JM: There are different support systems and motivations for creating art in the public realm, which can contribute to a dynamic art ecosystem providing a range of opportunities for expression and engagement. Funding for permanent public art often comes from a percentage of the capital budget of a large construction project, so it is tied to public or private development. These “percent for art” projects may be funded by the government (local, state, federal) or developers. To the extent that the prosperous capitalist system is funding growth, the commitment to include art in the mix results in these projects.

Artwork acquired by purchase or commission for these sites must satisfy multiple  entities (government, community, people working or living near the project.) The range of locations – airports, transit, parks, libraries, water treatment plants, prisons – each come with the challenge of how the public is engaging in that place. Making art for these facilities comes with limitations, challenges and rewards.  Some artists work well in this context, they can flourish with the constraints and operate like a small business to cooperate with design professionals, fabricators, contractors and others to get the job done and not lose money.

In the realm of temporary art, numerous organizations have found ways to support art in various contexts that can be more open ended and offer opportunities for work that is topical. Tracing the funding for these projects finds a mix of support from government, foundations, individuals, businesses.

NDEREOM: I attended the City College at 137th Street in Manhattan and that was such a great time in my life. I was younger and full of the curiosity that a cultural exile would manifest in a city like New York. I was in heaven while in contact with so many immigrants and BIPOC students like me. I have been in school for 4 decades and no other place has surpassed the joy I experienced at City College. You went to the Graduate Center. How was it for you in terms of communities? I am asking because in the new corporate educational and academic model in general there is very little community spirit and professors are meant to provide a service to consumers (students).

JM: Your experience at City College is inspiring, and that it served as an important springboard for you. I attended CUNY Graduate Center from 1994 to 1996 so I can’t speak for what it’s like today. I connected with the other students, most were actively working in the arts, so we shared interests and enthusiasm, but lacked time. There I studied the underpinnings of public art in America and focused on art and architecture in the Renaissance, Beaux Arts, City Beautiful and WPA movements.  The professors were incredibly supportive, and I did independent studies each semester based on projects that I was already working on.

In the early 2000s I taught “Urban Development and Visual Arts” at NYU Steinert School in the Arts Administration department. In addition to the prescribed curriculum, the course drew on how rebuilding lower Manhattan in the aftermath of September 11th was shaping the city. My experiences seem quaint in relationship to the sprawling field of higher education and the increase in types of degrees that are available. Ultimately, there’s no substitute for experiences creating, producing, making, curating art and programming.

NDEREOM: Tell me about your tapestries, and the weaving of some of the papers that you wrote while at the Graduate Center. How did this come to be? Tell me about this creative act of composting fields and times.

JM: In 2021, I made an autobiographical chart of my working life. I laid down a timeline with blue painters’ tape, marking each year on my 8’ x 30’ workplace wall. It was filled with post-it notes about projects, places I traveled, catalogues and reports written, along with miscellaneous milestones. This exercise revealed relationships between the art planning and curatorial work that I hadn’t recognized. This reflective journey has led to creative projects using materials at hand.

One of the realizations although my time studying art history in graduate school had felt like a black hole, it actually was a formative time. Revisiting the research papers on subjects ranging from “Expressions of Power, Technology and Gender in the Sixteenth-Century Garden” to “Definition by Contrast, The Urban Frame of Prospect Park” helped me understand that it was indeed a foundational experience that had shaped and improved my research and writing. I daylighted each paper in a new form by weaving it into a tapestry. While reading each text with the professor’s comments I highlighted significant points or original thoughts on the page. These marks served as a guide to cut the paper which I wove into gridded packing material.  The physical act of weaving parallels the original researching and writing. There is something anachronistic about seeing the actual paper with its poor reproductions. The result is Finding My Voice, (2022-2023) was presented on a painted background using colors from Benjamin Moore 2023 Color Trends.

Shredded notebook paper found its way into a series of handmade paper series Listening to you, 2023, which I made at the Women’s Studio Workshop. More recently I have made “slide shows” that mirror topics of previous talks and hang in the windows of my workspace. Again tapping into the analogue visualization that was so time consuming to undertake during the first two decades of my career. Finding it hard to throw away these useless slides I transformed them into a framework to perceive the industrial Port Morris waterfront where I work.

Domiciles 1958-2023, is a textural landscape memoir that emerged from the autobiographical chart. I created it at a residency at Hambidge Center. While in residence I sketched floor plans from memory, revisited dreams and remembered the sensations of each place. I created 18 emblems ranging from 5” to 29” in diameter, sized to represent the number of years lived in each dwelling, starting with my birthplace in Concord, MA to my current home in New York. These were made from repurposed sweaters, cut into strips and formed as interdependent coils, combining a variety of textures and colors influenced by my recollections. I created the piece in the Appalachian mountains of Georgia where my studio near a creek heightened my relationship to bodies of water in my previous homes and was a platform to observe the regenerative processes of the forest.

NDEREOM: I can’t help it but to ask the curator in you about lineages. I am heading into my sixties and into full elderhood, and I see the lack of connection weaving generations of curators. I do get irritated when younger curators in New York City ask me about the work that I do or if I am an artist. It is as if the art industry only favors the new and is meant to dismiss the histories/herstories/theirstories that have taken decades to shape. This fascination with newness and youth is so connected to a model in the arts that that seems counter to the honoring of ancestors that I see happening now, at least in theory. All of the sudden, everyone is speaking about ancestors. So, why not honor and bring the ancestors to center stage and walk the walk? Perhaps a balance between the old and the new, the younger and the older would be great, but as it is now, I see an imbalance to the point where younger generations of curators have not idea at all of who has been doing the work for years. This seems so “American” to me.

JM: This concept of “ancestors” seems to be having a moment. There are positive aspects such as bringing artists to light who have been working diligently away from the mainstream. I also think about how when I was in my twenties Pop Art seemed so old school to say nothing about Jackson Pollock that from forty years prior.  Now, I think about the art of the 1980s which is what I was coming up with, which is now forty years ago and might be someone else’s ancestor.  

Yesterday I saw Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City (1969-2001) at 80WSE (80 Washington Square East/NYU), which I consider a positive example of referencing “ancestors”. The show is loosely organized over the three decades and covers three influential collectives and organizations: Godzilla: Asian American Art Network; the Basement Workshop; and Asian American Arts Centre. In gives context to the dynamism of “Asian American art” during a period that was fluid and experimental and is an excellent guide for people who were not in New York at the time (or those who were and may need a refresher.)

At this point in my own trajectory, I am more conscious of my ancestors, more open to their wisdom, and more curious about their paths than I was in my youth. Also, understanding there are more of them than I previously realized.

NDEREOM: Would you share about a project in the public that you reminisce with a smile on your face; that you enjoyed thoroughly as a curator and consultant.

JM: I’m exciting to be working again with Jeannine Bardo at Stand4 Gallery & Community Center in Brooklyn. In 2023 we presented Bay Ridge Through an Ecological Lens, a series of public art and activities throughout the neighborhood.  Now we’re planning for the 2025 version, working with 15 artists who will be activating places in the community and the gallery through performances, workshops and artwork. Everyone submitted their proposals earlier this month and there is great synergy between the work. As compared to the public art planning that I do, it’s very hands-on, working closely with artists to realize their vision.

NDEREO: You seem to embody calmness and express that in the curatorial work that you do. What do you do to care for yourself on an ongoing basis? How do you encourage others to care for themselves when working in the arts? I recall the yoga mat that you lent me when I slept with the tropicals at the greenhouse at Wave Hill. That was very helpful and it allowed my back to feel comfortable. Thank you for caring.

JM: Thank you for saying that I embody calmness. I don’t always feel that way. I loved Wave Hill’s Winter Workspace Program because it was a way to engage with artists in an ongoing dialogue over the six weeks they were in residence and to continue those conversations beyond that time and place as we are doing today. To answer your question about encouraging care, I want create ways for people to engage with things that bring them joy rather than from obligation. This means that not every opportunity is right for someone at any given time. I recognize this in myself but also respect that the time might not be right for others. 

I’ve made a concerted effort to rebalance my time and energy, and to bring curiosity to each day. An anchor for my practice is daily journaling that builds time for monthly reflection and looking ahead.

 NDEREOM: Is there anything that you would like to add or ask?

 JM: You are as person who embodies both calmness and kindness. Through The Interior Beauty Salon connect with so many people and offer a space for so many voices. Are there places whre you would like to take The Interior Beauty Salon, or projects that dream of doing? 

NDEREOM: Thank you for your words, your time and for asking this question. I would like for The Interior Beauty Salon to become a full fledged organization that serves hundred of creatives and thinkers without become institutionalize. I know it will happen and that its legacy will endure. Thank you again.

All images and videos courtesy of Jennifer McGregor

Jennifer McGregor’s links: Website / Instagram / Contact

New York-based curator and arts planner Jennifer McGregor brings deep expertise in the areas of art, ecology, gardens, public engagement and placemaking. Visionary thinking combined with a realistic approach is key to planning projects that engage communities, diverse sites and multiple art forms. Through McGregor Consulting, she collaborates with a range of clients to plan, curate and implement artwork in the public realm.  She writes and speaks regularly about public and environmental art.

From 1999 to 2020, she conceived place-based arts programming at Wave Hill, a world-renowned public garden and cultural center in the Bronx. She activated connections to the environment by producing adventurous exhibitions, performances and a residency program that explore nature, culture and site.

She founded McGregor Consulting in 1990 as a platform to engage non-traditional public spaces, diverse audiences, and amazing artists through commissions, forums, reports and exhibitions. Clients and collaborators include non-profits, museums, park advocacy groups, government agencies, and architects and landscape architects.

She established her expertise in public realm as the first director of New York City’s Percent for Art Program from 1983 to 1990, where she wrote the operating guidelines and initiated the first sixty projects.

McGregor Consulting maintains general and professional liability policies and is a MWBE certified business with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey.

Moses Ros Suárez

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: ¡Muchacho¡ Here we are after the election night, and I am thinking, “How can I sit with all of this and refocus?” Perhaps talking with you is a good place to start. I don’t recall how or where we met, and I do remember your supportive presence through the years. I remember your laughter as well and your thoughtful optimism. All of this will be needed in the years to come. So, tell me about your beginnings in the creative field.

MR: We met at an art exhibition opening of Dominican artists in New York City. I enjoyed drawing as a child–from nature to comic books. Born and raised in Manhattan, I got involved in the subway graffiti art movement in the early 1970s. My tag, my graffiti name, was SAL-161, and my work ranged from magic marker tags on walls to spray painted top to bottom masterpieces on subway cars. I transitioned from the subways to canvas when I joined up with the Nation of Graffiti Artists (NOGA), a neighborhood organization that gave support to graffiti artists to help them transition to the mainstream art world. It was here that I sold my first painting, a large, seven-foot by five-foot spray-painted canvas. I am featured in the book Nation of Graffiti Artists by Chris Pape (Beyond the Streets, 2021), which isnow in its second edition.

In 1975 I was living in Santiago, Dominican Republic, where my mother’s family is from. I participated in the National Art Contest in Santo Domingo, and I won a second-place prize for a surreal oil painting, Mundo Destruyéndose.

NDEREOM: I was born in Santiago as well. I was talking with a curator, and she mentioned your connection with Keith Haring. I have read how Haring’s work was inspired by life in our barrios in New York City, and by creative responses to the day-to-day and the struggles in our ghettos. I am saying this directly and after reading books like Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails, by A. Cruz Malavé. A great deal of our Latinx legacies have been lifted off the pages of our narratives and claimed by others.

MR: In the late ’70s I started attending Pratt Institute, where I studied architecture. I continued to create numerous large paintings and murals, staying connected to the graffiti world. In 1982, I met the artist Keith Haring and invited him to participate in one of my mural projects on 84th Street and Amsterdam Ave in Manhattan. This is a mural I updated every year from 1981 to 1995 as part of the Dome Project Street Festival.

NDEREOM: I can picture that mural clearly. That was my neigborhood of 15 years. I think that there is a clinic where this piece is. We have talked briefly about the influence of your mother in what you do, and you shared with me how she carried Dominican legacies and strands from one island to another; meaning from Quisqueya to Manhattan. Can you speak about this?  

MR: My mother came to New York City in the 1950s, fleeing the tyranny of the dictator Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. It was in New York that she met and married my father, who was also fleeing that tyranny. Subsequently, they had me and my older brother, who is a priest. My father returned to the Dominican Republic in 1959 as part of the 14 of June group to put an end to Trujillo’s brutal dictatorship. He was killed in his effort to free the country.  My mother never remarried and worked as a seamstress in a factory making children’s clothes while raising my brother and me. Their legacy is loyalty, devotion, and perseverance.

I curated an exhibition in 2016, Tyranny’s Tear, at the Bronx Art Space with mostly Dominican artists addressing the Dominican dictatorship. I exhibited an artwork dedicated to my parents titled Honoring My Mother and Father.

NDEREOM: I am very sorry to hear about your father. We belong to some kind of field that speaks of Dominicanyoridad (my neologism) and diasporidad in terms of ways of being, ways of relating to New York City, ways of talking and dressing and eating, ways of going back and forth in mind and spirit to our Island… I have seen this sensibility become more tenuous and to be on the verge of being slowly dismissed. I will open the space up for you to talk as you wish of anything and all things Dominicanyork…

MR: As a Dominican York, a person born and raised in New York City of Dominican descent, and given my family history, my Dominican identity is very important to me. I created an artwork Provincia 32 Nueva York Republica Dominicana, referring to New York as the 32nd province of the Dominican Republic due to the vast Dominican cultural community that exists here. El Reggaeton Del Bachatero is another artwork that addresses the experience of Dominicans in New York, split between their adopted city and their homeland. I have met many influential individuals, from poet Pedro Mir to musician Luis Díaz, here in New York. In addition, I am a founding member of the artist collective Dominican York Proyecto Gráfica, a group of Dominican artists working in New York. Everything on the island is here–the language, the music, the dance, the food, and its people. The Dominican Republic is part of the United States, and the United States is part of the Dominican Republic.

NDEREOM: Your creative work continues to be centered on communities at a time when art has tried commodifying street art, as in graffiti. How are you able to retain this level of honesty and continue to thrive as a person and as a creative?

MR: Direct to the public is the best way I know how to retain a level of integrity in my art practice, working on subjects and ideas that are important to me. For instance, I recently completed an interactive sculpture, The Welcome Table, commemorating the one-hundred-year anniversary of James Baldwin, the American writer and civil rights activist. The table will be part of the James Baldwin Plaza in the North Bronx. The public will be able to sit at the table and interact with one another to promote dialogue and perhaps stir action to create a sense of community and progress.

NDEREOM: Plantains are the new thing now. But new to whom? No to me.  They are new to an art industry that is willing to receive the most recent and trendy objects, shiny goodies, dealing with this subject without connecting them to history. You have been working with the plantain for decades, maybe before I did in the 1990s, when I would fry plantains in museum and gallery spaces. With all the talk on elders, I simply wanted to acknowledge your legacy and hear you talk about it.

MR: I want to uplift people, and part of that work is to counter a term like “banana republic,” a disparaging phrase to describe poor, exploited agricultural Latin American countries whose main staple and export may be the plátano (plantain banana). In my art, I give the plátano wings to fly, thus empowering this “lowly” symbol and expressing a sense of freedom.

I had a solo exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Aterrizaje / Landing, which was a reflection on migrations to the United States caused by environmental and manmade disasters and catastrophes that have wrenched people away from their homelands.

In this exhibit, I created large, freestanding sculptures using cut-out plywood sheets to form a type of DIY “assembly kit” of the work. The large-scale, painted winged forms, along with the post-cut template panels that once held them, are juxtaposed within the space. Set against the terrace walls and surrounding the composite sculptures, the now empty forms of the template panels are reclassified and labelled with the underlying socio-political reasons behind the mass migrations. 

NDEREOM: You live in the Bronx. How do you weave such disparate realms, the place where you live in the Bronx and the Other places in our borough where you do a significant amount of artwork?

MR: Where I grew up in Manhattan in the 1970s, I was poor in a rough neighborhood with gangs and drugs. I have worked hard to achieve a level accomplishment for my family and me.  As for navigating the city, this is the capital of the world, and one has the opportunity to explore all that it has to offer. People are people, and I treat everyone fairly, joyfully, and generously as best I can.

NDEREOM: What would be your message to the pillars of Dominicanyork culture in the city? These are the ones who have walked the path when we were a handful and who have been doing the work in a physical community before Instagram and the age of influencers.

MR: We are stronger together; this is very challenging and needs to be encouraged. To support each other is no easy task, and communication is key to success. Create a nurturing environment for growth to flourish. Empower each other to achieve significant progress.

NDEREOM: What is your message for the younger generations of artists of Dominican descent in our city? There seems to be such a gap, where many of the younger have no idea of what we have done in the last four decades.

MR: In addition to pursuing individual careers, work together to achieve collective goals. As I have said previously, we are stronger together. The rewards outweigh the challenges.  When we pursue collaborations, a boost is given to everyone and their work.

NDEREOM: What are your intentions for the days ahead?

MR: I will continue to be a positive force, spreading a joyful message with laughter and high spirits.

All images and videos courtesy of Moses Roe Suárez

Moses Ros Suárez’’s links: Website / Instagram / Contact

Ros has had solo exhibitions at Sugar Hill Museum, Bronx Museum, and the Yeshiva University Museum in New York, as well as the Paterson Museum in New Jersey. He has also exhibited in the Yoryi Morel Room of the Institute of Culture and Art in Santiago, Dominican Republic.

Ros has received several public sculpture commissions from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The Bronx Council on the Arts, and the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

His artwork is found in corporate and public collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, El Museo del Barrio, and the AT&T Collection, among others. He is a founding member of the Dominican York Project Gráfica (DYPG) printmaking artist collective and the ArteLatAm artist group. He began printmaking at The Bronx Printmakers and has worked at some of the top printmaking workshops in New York, including Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, Lower East Side Printshop, and Manhattan Graphics Center. He is a registered architect in New York and earned his bachelor's degree in architecture from Pratt Institute University.

Ros is a sculptor, painter and printmaker of Dominican descent who lives and works in New York City.

Rosalina Mestric

Nicolás Dumit Estevez: Thank you again, Rosalina, for inviting me to visit the garden that you created at Pomonok Houses in Flushing, Queens. It has been six years since we met at the Queens Museum during the workshop on art and life I taught with that organization.  Life as Material for Art and Vice-Versa

Rosalina Mestric: I never gardened before. One day, I was walking around the neighborhood and saw a bunch a people. I wondered what was going on. I spoke to a guy named Greg and he informed me that he was part of Pomonok Green Community. Green Community was teaming up with an organization called Million Trees NYC that donated trees to Pomonok Housing and asked if I would like to help. I signed up. We planted 12 trees the following week. I joined the Green Community and then went to get my pruner’s certification. The rest is history.

NDE: Where does the idea of using recyclables, such as discarded toys, car tires, teddy bears and shoes come from?

RM: I walked around the neighborhood and I saw things people used to throw out. I decided to use them in another way; that not everything you throw out is trash. After a while, people loved the work I did and they would leave stuff in my garden so I could use it.

NDE: What are some of the reactions of those who encounter your garden on a daily basis?

RM: I received a lot of positive feedback from people. People enjoyed seeing the artwork I created and the stuff they contributed. I would always go home and have a better idea. I would constantly change the garden around. Every day people would walk by and the next day see it completely different. Lots of people also questioned, how was I able to do it all? “Lots of work and no breaks.”

NDE: How did you go about creating a garden in a public housing community in New York City and what are some of the steps you had to go through to realize your vision?

RM: You have to ask management for permission for a garden. Public housing has a garden competition that you must register for every year. That’s how I started displaying my art in my garden. My first garden was dedicated to my husband who had passed away. I focused on military themes because he was in the military.  After that the children in Pomonok loved the garden and would always ask questions. Some would leave their toys in the garden. After that, I wanted to create one for the children of Pomonok using the toys they left behind.

NDE: Your garden combines all kinds of elements: war, public service institutions, U.S. symbols, memorials, as well as the personal and the imagined. Can you talk about how you developed and brought together all of these parts?

RM: My husband was part of the military. He passed away in 2010 and I wanted to do a garden in honor of him. Gardening helped me focus on him without remembering that he is no longer with us on earth. But he will always be on my mind.

NDE: Your garden includes paintings, sculptures, signs and installations. Can you elaborate on your work process?

RM: Lots of my signs are inspiring quotes so people can read them while they walk around Pomonok. My paintings came from many ideas. Some were inspired by people: a neighbor, Prince William’s Royal Family, and even the Manager of Pomonok. Some were ideas that I wanted to recreate like the Lorax. I can’t tell you in detail my working process because it all comes from inside my mind. There’s a lot of thinking involved and probably not enough space in an interview.

NDE: During our recent encounter, you mentioned that your garden keeps changing over time. You also mentioned that, because of construction, you were required to pack your artwork the next day after our meeting. What do you have in mind for next year in terms of themes?

RM: I have some new ideas but nothing set in stone yet. You are going to have to stay tuned.

NDE: What are some of the lessons that you have been learning from working with the Earth?

RM: The most useful painting tool I found is a Q-tip. You don’t need expensive tools to make great art, just imagination. Planting requires lots of patience and love.

NDE: What have you learned as an artist from working in your garden/sculpture park?

RM: Everyone is going to have an opinion, some good and some bad. But as long as you’re loving what you’re doing and it’s not harming anyone or thing… continue doing it.

NDE: I feel that our relationship has gone full-circle. When I taught at Queens Museum in 2008 I gave students tangerines and asked them to return the seeds. I went on to plant the seeds in Corona Park. This was a symbolic gesture. When we met in Flushing six years later, you gave me some bulbs as well as seeds that I planted in my garden in the South Bronx. I hope that next time you come to see me in the Bronx we can plant together–along the Bronx River–some of the bulbs I have left, and so continue to expand on the experience that was born at the Queens Museum. We can also dance along the Bronx River “like nobody is watching us.” Would you be up for this?

RM: Of course. It’s always great to give back to nature. After all, nature is always giving us without ever asking for anything back.

NDE: Nature ask us to care and to treat all beings with respect. I am grateful for the time you and your daughter Glaucea spent with me. I am also grateful for the teachings of Linda Mary Montano, a friend and mentor. We studied her work during our workshop. I can feel her presence during our conversation today.

All images courtesy of Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful / None of these images can be used without previous consent from Nicolás

This interview was first published in 2015 with the New New Yorkers program at Queens Museum / To go to the original interview click HERE

Payge Rumler interviews Nicolás

Payge Rumler: Based on first impressions, what about Albion caught your interest enough for you to live here, even temporarily?

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo:  Thank you, Payge, for suggesting this interview and for blessing my work here. You are the first person I have interviewed with as part of Caminata.

I must admit that prior to moving to Albion I knew very little about this place because I had purposely refrained from doing any preliminary research regarding the town. The idea was to arrive here with the least amount of preconceptions. Through the years, I have realized how much happier I could be if I did less judging and comparing, and instead embraced life with an open spirit/mind/body. We are at a time in our country where room for conversation has become so narrow, as a result of all of the misinformation that we are been constantly fed about one another–by the news and politicians–as well as by the misperceptions of others that many of us tend to form.

PR: When you go to create a project such as Caminata, how developed is the project before traveling to your residency? Can you briefly explain your process once you begin a residency/project? 

NDERE:  This will be my second decade in the arts since I received my MFA. That said, I have accumulated skills and experience that can be translated into different contexts, sort of! I work within life and life can give us plenty of surprises with each step we take. Let me explain myself more. My understanding of art has been evolving and at this stage I see art as being part of life, because what we call life encompasses all we do and experience. Some of my colleagues will argue that art is not life. While I respect their opinion, I see what we call art as a creative stream within life that we can tap into or connect to. Art is always there. It is like an electric current, or a water vein that we can unearth. So, I am doing less and less planning before I undertake an endeavor like Caminata. In other words, I work with what unfolds minute by minute, and with what presents itself along my path as I walk. Of course I write proposals encapsulating some of the key points of what I will do, and present these points to the organizations or communities I will engage with. However, I try to be as open as possible.

There are some precursors on which I built when conceiving Caminata: Take Out, produced for a residency at the Artists Alliance Inc. in Manhattan, NY, and for which I worked with neighbors from the Lower East Side creating a compilation of dishes having to do with home; Help Offered, presented as part of Jamaica Flux, in Queens, NY and with CAFKA in Kitchener, Canada, for which I approached different businesses with the intention of working with them for free for one day; and Pleased to Meet You, produced with IDENSITAT in Catalonia, and later on as part of the MacDowell’s Centennial Celebration. In Pleased to Meet You, I sought to meet the inhabitants of Calaf, a small town near Barcelona, Spain; and the inhabitants of Peterborough, New Hampshire.

PR: Where did the idea for a pilgrimage come from?

NDERE:  Many before me have undertaken pilgrimages. There is Linda Mary Montano, for example, my mentor, friend and art mother. Similarly, Catholicism has been the closest to organized religion I grew up with, and in the Catholic Church, journeying by foot to the sacred is part of the history of this institution. Starting in 2004 and through 2007, I developed For Art’s Sake, a series of pilgrimages to seven museums in the New York metropolitan area. With these journeys I sought to reverse the traditional relationship between art and religion and put religion at the service of art. Personally, I have done pilgrimages to the Black Virgin of Monserrat, in Catalonia; Lourdes, in France; Guadalupe, in Mexico; Medjugorje, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, Spain. In the case of Caminata, this is a secular/cultural pilgrimage, a walk through the city of Albion with the intention of connecting with people and being in community.

PR: Was Albion more appropriate for a pilgrimage project than another city? Why or why not?

NDERE:  The size of Albion makes it ideal for walking and meeting people. Also, the journey in Albion is of a symbolic nature, Yes, I walk almost everywhere I go in this place, but I do have a home I go to for breaks and at the end of the day to sleep for the night. If anything, the kindness of the people in Albion has made this a remarkable experience at a personal level. There is a great deal of love and caring in this place.

PR: How has your perspective of Albion developed as you talked with its citizens?

NDERE:  I have learned that there are so many good people out there, in Albion and beyond. I have also learned not to make assumptions about peoples and communities before listening to them. Albion might not be perfect, because there are no perfect places, but residents here show up for things, and that in itself speaks volumes about the town. I heard from Wes Dick how, after the 60 plus first African Americans arrived from the South to work in Albion, the place would never be the same, because of the richness that their presence represented. I will not be the same after leaving Albion, because the town has certainly changed me a great deal.

PR: How much do your personal experiences influence the work you create

NDERE:  All of my work is personal and at the same time, I think, it speaks a common language that others can relate to. Aside from the particularities that inform our life stories, we all have something to say about migrating, relocating, searching for community, seeking to belong, and finding out what our calling is. Then, there are the more basic threads we all share: wanting to be happy, finding fulfillment in what we do, and being seen and appreciated. The work I do deals with all of that, it so just happens that we sculpt our biographies based on what we believe makes us different from others, but when we strip all of the externals, our essence is a common one.

PR: Is traveling an essential part of your work?

NDERE:  I was born a traveler. Part of my family is Lebanese and part is Dominican. Lebanese have the pilgrim in us, and we have moved to the most distant parts of the planet, from Venezuela to Haiti and to France. It is very sad how many of us had to pack and leave our country because of wars and financial constraints caused by these. My great aunt, two great uncles and my grandfather left Lebanon when they were young and some never returned to see their parents. Bu we were extremely brave and did our best to be in communities so distant from our social location, and in places where we had to speak a different language and even change our names. Dominicans are travelers too. Many of us leave the island we share with Haiti because of economic inequality. Others leave because of intellectual, political and gender related reasons. Dominicans are curious about the world. I am both Lebanese and Dominican, so that explains my passion for traveling and my courage to relocate in the unknown.

PR: In your opinion, what is the role of performance art in the contemporary art world?

NDERE: I will quote Linda Mary Montano. She talks about performance art as “giving us permission to…” Performance art has given me and many of my friends and colleagues permission to do things we would have never imagined. For example, in 2007 I surrendered my personality as Nicolás with the intention of embodying the Holy Infant of Prague in the Czech Republic. It is a long and complex story. Linda also talks about not harming ourselves or others when performing.

PR: Do you have any future plans set for after your residency at Albion?

NDERE:  Being in the South Bronx. Travel to the Caribbean. These are two key point of reference for me. Then I will work with Casita Maria in the South Bronx, organizing another chapter of Performing the Bronx, an undertaking that I initiated in 2015, and for which I co-perform with iconic Bronxites. In the past I have co-performed with Arthur Avilés, Wanda Salamán, Danilo Lachapele, Mili Bonilla, Caridad de la Luz 'La Bruja', Bill Aguado, and Dr. Drum. The 2020 summer gathering at Casita Maria will focus on Benny Bonilla, a renowned percussionist. In 2021, I will be mostly engaged in curatorial projects with the Leslie Lohman Museum in New York City, and The Margaret Lawrence Gallery in Melbourne, Australia (this exhibition was canceled as result of the pandemic).

PR: Do you have any hobbies outside of artmaking?

NDERE:  Caring for my rescued four-legged creatures and adopted plants, reading non-stop, learning from fields and occupations other than art making.

PR: What is some advice you would offer any undergraduate student pursuing a career in the arts?

NDERE:  Love what you do. Listen to your calling. Do not make the art others tell you to do unless your only goal is to be “famous” or have a commercial gallery. Seek mentors along the way no matter how many years you have been making art. Study outside your field and learn new skills, from embroidery to making pies and to sign language. Learn to listen. Do not harm animals, peoples or plants to make artwork. Think about the Earth when choosing materials for your work. Remember that art does not belong to anyone but to all and that you are just a facilitator for a creative force that already exists. Collaborate instead of competing. Care for your body/mind/spirit. Be kind. Have fun and do not take things too seriously.

All images courtesy of Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful / None of these images can be used without previous consent from Nicolás

Paige Rumler’’s links: Albion College

This interview was first published in 2020 as part of Albion College’s art journal.

Elizabeth Kirwin

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: We met because of Antiga. I happened to be reading a book by Diane Stein, The Goddess Celebrates: An Anthology of Women’s Rituals. Antiga had a piece in it, which I thought was the most compelling chapter in the entire anthology, and which mainly dealt with menarche. After reading the piece, I searched the internet for a way to get in touch which Antiga and found your Q&A with her. You mentioned that you have not seen her since 2014. Would you be willing to tell us about Antiga and your encounter this wise witch?

Elizabeth Kirwin: I was privileged to meet a witch like Antiga, who was very well respected in the community of Asheville, North Carolina. When I met with her, she had a devotee who was living with her, a younger witch who had come to serve the goddess and learn about her work. Antiga’s house was nestled into the side of a mountain in the North part of Asheville. Antiga was going blind. She told me that she had been teaching these pagan chants to people in the pagan community for many years, and that witches came to her circles to learn them. I told Antiga I was from the fairy tribe, and she knew about our presence in Asheville. She took my hands in hers and offered me a blessing. Then she gave me permission to publish her audio files of the chants she sang. I am so grateful I saw her and was able to share her work. 

NDEREOM: You too identify as a witch and have been engaged with work focused on rituals, ceremonies and healing. All of this is so trendy now in the visual arts and in performance art. To me, a great deal of people working with this herstory might not be familiar with the legacies of people like Antiga, Z. Budapest, Oberon Zell and Morning Glory, and you, to name a few. How did you become involved?

EK: I have been a witch since 1994. I came to ritual practices in Philadelphia, where I worked with a woman named Elizabeth Angelo, who showed me the craft. We had a ritual in my home that was so intense it almost blew the doors off of my apartment. She came to the ritual with a birthing blanket. A cat had given birth to a litter on it. My cat went nuts when he smelled this scent, so we put it in the bathroom. I was with my lover at the time, Jo Mariner. The cauldron was in the north window of my bedroom. During ritual, Jo pushed a candle into the cauldron, which had a hot charcoal piece in it, that was burning herbs. The candle caught fire in the cauldron. We were afraid we might burn the apartment building down. Thank the goddess we were able to put it out. I was 28 years old then. I learned tarot and divination, as well as pagan chants. My ritual practices in Philadelphia were mind blowing. I learned to manifest things I wanted or needed to get rid of, using ritual. I began to connect to others using the psychic mind. I discovered telepathy and precognition are my special talents. I studied my dreams, and I spread good energy through magic. I was taught to utter the phrase, “harm to none” with my magical incantations and spells. I kept a book of shadows. I became a white witch.  When I turned 30 I was in graduate school for literature. I wanted to learn more about my heritage, which is Irish. I began exploring the works of R.J. Stewart (Earth Light and Power within the Land) and Starhawk. I had a revelation. I realized I was an earth born fairy being.  I began to embrace this as my identity.  

NDEREOM: Can you talk about your practice? What are some of the elements that inform this and how do you see yourself relating to the world at large as a witch?

EK: My practice as a pagan and a witch has always been tied to the moon. I taught young witches to align their menstrual cycle with the moon through ritual, concentration and constant observances of the moon’s cycle. A witch ovulates on the new moon and bleeds on the full moon.  Once aligned, her psychic powers become more prominent in waking and dream states.  I moved to Asheville, North Carolina, where the pagan community is strong, and the fairy tribe lives in community. I had a small circle of friends who were also witches. Together, we embarked on a journey of devotion to the dark goddesses. My dark Goddess is and will always be Hecate. I have been devoted to her for decades. Me and my companions practiced ritual on the edge of the wilderness areas. Chanting has always been part of my magic. We chanted to raise the energy during rituals and to alter the energy in our lives. I feel it is important to practice magic outdoors whenever possible, so we can experience the natural world as a deep and abiding part of our being. We built fires, drummed, danced and chanted. On feast days, such as the solstices and equinoxes, I would ingest magic mushrooms and take long hikes into the wilderness and camp for several days. These were the most amazing times! I lived in Asheville for 15 years. I believe in ‘everyday magic.’ I am always thinking and feeling magic, which has helped me throughout my adult life. My family is terrified of my identity as a witch and a fairy. I never discuss magic with them and have become estranged from the family I have left. I was raised Catholic, but ceased this religious practice at 16.  Many sects of Christianity are taught to fear witches. I’ve had personal encounters with people who loathe and fear witches, and I always explain paganism as an earth-based spirituality, where we believe in harm to none.I am pretty advanced at using crystal magic to heal, manifest and see into the future. I also vibe with the plants and animals. I am an open channel, and can call spiritual entities like angels and guides, or speak to the dead, if I wish. I am trained in cranio sacral therapy, a healing modality that manipulates the fascia, using the same meridians as acupuncture, but without needles. I offer healing to those who need it – and have never made money this way. I do not practice within the context of a coven, I have magical companions. Fairies use an egalitarian form of magic and ritual that is nothing like modern Wicca or Gardenarian craft. We focus on the elementals, sex magic and plant medicine and do not believe in the traditional high priest/priestess. We all take part in creating the ritual and calling the four directions. I have been a solitary witch for about 7 years now. Living in Philadelphia again, where my magical journey began, I have come full circle. I am looking for other fairies and witches to practice with again.

NDEREOM: We are living in dire times, politically speaking. I understand that witches have traditionally advocated for women identified people, for Earth, for four-legged ones, winged ones, and for other creatures which patriarchal society has seen and treated as objects. On the other hand, it has been shocking to see some of the New Age align with the most regressive and damaging forces of our times. How would you say are you and some covens supporting the ecology when the governmental push is to drill and drill, basically to continue to rape our Mother/Lover Earth?

EK: I hate the modern thought patterns, so pervasive, which takes the power of the earth and its contents and uses it for greed and gain. I am against the removal of trees in large tracts of land for building. I oppose the constant drilling and harvesting of minerals and fossil fuels that increases daily. I support the use of solar and wind power. I see and feel Gaia as an organism. She has a body, with blood and breath and fire. Gaia is being raped, and each time a colossal catastrophe strikes, such as hurricanes or forest fires, I see this as Gaia striking back at humanity for our constant abuse of her. I see and feel Gaia expelling humans from her body, because she cannot survive and thrive with constant abuse. I know many covens and ritual practitioners are working to put good energy into Gaia, by honoring her with devotions when we walk through the forests and swim in her streams. I care for animals, gardens and most of all I love trees. I feel a part of me is being ripped out when a tree is felled. My happiest times have been spent in the forests, where my fairy magic comes alive. Gaia will be here when we are dust. So we must take steps to preserve her while we walk the earth. 

NDEREOM: What are the politics of hexing? I remember seeing an ad posted on a door at a store on the Lower East Side in Manhattan asking witches to put a curse on DT. Sorry, I refuse to write his name here. How do you deal with neutralizing evil forces pushing our planet into complete collapse?

EK: First, I fully support witches that do hexing, as it’s part of their creed and their practice. Hexing helps them to survive the atrocities of this world by thwarting the actions that injure us, rape our minds and invade our bodies. I am glad witches on the US are hexing DT and the witches of Europe and other places are doing the same. But I know so little about hexes because it has not been taught to me, even after 30 years of practicing the craft. I was taught not to place dark spells on people, because this magic would come back to me, and could possibly make me ill. Instead I use mirror magic when I feel I’m being attacked psychically. I turn the mirror on my enemies and return the bad energy to them with threefold power.  I set up psychic defenses with the use of white and clear crystals (and sometimes dark crystals) as a way of making myself feel safe. I cast a magic circle of protection around myself, my cats, my dwelling, my car and my friends and lovers. On a larger scale, I participate in worldwide meditations, to help raise the energy.When called, I teach younger witches and fairies the secrets of the craft.  

NDEREOM: What plant, non-human animal and flower do you relate to, or see as being part of your family? I feel that I was a cat before, and that I used to be a mullein plant.

EK: I have always related to the rosemary plant and have often kept a plant growing near the threshold of my home. It means, ‘a strong woman lives here.’ I may have been a cat in another life, because I want to come back as one. I always have cats in my home. They are fierce little creatures who love deeply. I love the rose, and have kept rose bushes in the yard behind my home, tending them. I use rose oil as part of my magic, rubbing it onto my third eye and sprinkling a little on the threshold of my home to bring good energy.    

NDEREOM: What advice do you have for the younger generations of artists working with healing? Mine would be to educate ourselves, to honor legacies, to research, read and do the work (as in training with key people), before venturing to call spirits and summon ancestors. There is a great deal of this happening, and I am of the opinion that I do not or call spirits or ancestors unless I know how to guide them back to the dimension where they came from. This is not a game or a joke. 

EK: I would say that magic is real. It’s a powerful essence and knowledge that pervades everything, and so we must respect magic and use it for good, and share it with others. I have met many magicians who use magic to control others. I would advise people to stay away from this path. Magic is sweeter if you share it, like the fairies do. Rather than setting up hierarchies and bragging about what you’re capable of doing magically – learn to respect the art of magic and allow it to show you what it will.  Look for signs, and when you see them (such as a certain animal or bird crossing your path, or a phone call from a long forgotten friend) learn to read the signs and divine their meaning. Pay attention, or you will miss the magic that is afoot.  If you do a spell, just let the energy go where it may go, and don’t bother ‘feeding’ the spell, just trust in the powers of the universe. Put love into all of your magic, even when it’s for defense, or you feel you’re being energetically attacked. Never do magic out of anger. Let the mood pass, and do your magic from a positive place. Learn through books and by finding teachers. I don’t believe in gurus. I have had many, many teachers of magic throughout my life. Each teacher has crossed my path in a magical way, and I recognize them. I have never paid for magical instruction. If you give a healing, you get a healing, so healer, heal thyself. Learn about crystals by collecting them and wearing them or carrying them with you.  If you dare to summon a spirit or ancestor without proper training in this art, you could really wreck your life and befuddle your consciousness.  Be cautious about meddling in the world of spirits. There are some malignant spirits who will enslave those with a weak(er) mind. Many who call spirits are on intoxicants, which makes them prone to a walk-in (a spirit that takes up residence in you, like a possession).  Embrace sobriety when calling spirits or ancestors. Begin with training, and at first, only call the spirits of your blood ancestors. Learn how to send spirits back to the light so you can dismiss them when they are troubling. Do not ever let a spirit control you! Remember, they can always be sent away. 

NDEREOM: Where do you go to find balance, as in a place on Earth where you become attuned with All and connect with the larger picture; with the spirit that moves as parts of this vast cosmos where you and I are a tiny grain of dust?

EK: I climb a mountain with a magical friend or spend time in a forest, by a stream or river. I am really attracted to gorges in the mountains, which are valleys that are cut by water. I have found so much peace and connection to nature by traveling by foot in the wilderness areas, and hiking for days on end down a familiar trail. Mountains remind me that the world of humanity is oh so small, compared to the vast, untainted tracts of land that still exist on earth. I have been so lucky to have seen many wild places and inhabited these places for days. I venture into the woods unafraid – and I have never carried a gun with me. Some of my favorite places are Grandfather Mountain, near Boone, North Carolina and Shining Rock Wilderness area in North Carolina. At the core, these mountains are made of white crystal, and they are power points in the land.

NDEREOM: I thank you.

Elizabeth Kirwin’s links: Instagram / Facebook / Website / Contact

To read Elizabeth Kirwin’s and Antiga’s interview click HERE

All images courtesy of Elizabeth Kirwin

Elizabeth Kirwin is poet, fiction writer and performance artist. She has been published in The Oyster Boy Review. Kirwin is owner and editor of www.FairiesInAmerica.com  - a website that is based in the neo-pagan tradition of the Americas. She has written for magazines on art and culture, travel and education. Kirwin is a web entrepreneur and was a pioneer in content development strategies for the web in the early aughts. She has published and performed the lyrical poems, the Fairy Gothic Ballads, a collaboration with electronic music composer Liam Sckhot. She lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Contact her on Facebook

Sofía Reeser del Rio / Interviews Nicolás on Performing the Bronx

Sofía Reeser del Rio: Nicolás Performing the Bronx began in 2015. Can you share what initially sparked the idea for the project and how your vision for it has evolved over time?

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel:  Sofía, here we are a decade after we worked together at El Museo de Barrio on Office Hours, the experience that put me in touch with all departments at this organization and that kept me playing there for one full year. You were then an Assistant Curator at El Museo and acted as the Project Manager for the idea that I set in motion with El Museo’s staff, audiences and with a group of artists. I have such good memories about this and remember how supportive you were of all of my creative mischievousness!

2015 marked the fourth year of my baptism as a Bronxite at Drew Gardens. This was a rite of passage officiated by Martha Wilson and for which I asked Bill Aguado and Susan Newmark to be my Godparents. This action involved interactions with neighbors, communities and organizations, as well as with other creatives. As a result of my baptism, I understood that I was called to learn more about the place that I call home, the South Bronx, and so Performing the Bronx was a way of being guided as to histories/herstories/theirstories, stories and legacies by some of the luminaries of our borough.

Up to now, I have performed the Bronx with Arthur Avilés, Bill Aguado, Benny Bonilla, Mili Bonilla, Caridad De La Luz ‘La Bruja’, Dr. Drum, Ana ‘ROKAFELLA’ García, Reverend Danilo Lachapel, Wanda Salamán, and Rhina Valentin. Like most of what I do, I do not see Performing the Bronx as a project because this experience is very much about life and not an endeavor in the sense of getting something done career-wise. What happens is that, with Performing the Bronx, like with a great deal of the actions I kindle, I was mentored by people with whom I continue to be in communication with at a personal level. This is one of the reasons why I purposely choose carefully who I want to work with, because of the ties that are formed in the process. I have been blessed with a circle of people who I support and who support me.

Regarding your question pertaining to whether my vision for this experience has evolved over time, it depends. The core of Performing the Bronx remains intact conceptually yet, if I were to continue to think of new chapters, I would like to focus on African American, First Nation, and Mexican individuals whose contributions to our neighborhoods are central to our part of the City. I am curious as to how Mexicans moving into our area are layering the conversation with cultural forms that were not necessarily here 10 years ago to the extent that they are today. I would love to learn form the Black activists who have been keeping our place alive through many of the crises, including the fiscal one in the mid 1970s, and who are a tremendous part of the culture of our city. This is to name just a few of the communities who continue to shape the South Bronx.

SRdR: What changes have you observed in the Bronx since you began working on this project, and how have these transformations influenced the stories you’ve chosen to highlight?

NDEREOM: Rather than trying to cover too much territory, in nine out of the first ten chapters in Performing the Bronx, I work with Nuyoricam, Puerto Rican and New York Rican Bronxites. My entry point into the South Bronx as a community has been influenced for me by many people connected to this Caribbean island. After my baptism I became aware how, for me, in order to be a Bronxite I also needed somehow to explore the possibility of becoming Puerto Rican, New York Rican and or Nuyorican. I also wanted to learn how these Caribbean siblings of mine have managed to generate culture, overcome adversity, remain proud of themselves, and continue the struggle in a city that not always thought much of people like us. I have been visually and emotionally inspired by the presence of the Puerto Rican flag all over the Bronx, and I was like, wow. This, in my opinion, is about claiming space without having to apologize to oppressive systems, and making sure that those systems that are still seeking to exterminate Others who look, speak or are seen as unlike them know that the Other is here and has not only managed to survive but to keep the cultures alive.

I do not think that growing up I ever heard about the Bronx. It was not on my radar. I was in the Dominican Republic and my world revolved around Lebanon and the Caribbean as cultural threads for who I was. I do remember that a Cuban friend born in Puerto Rico had told me that if I visited New York, she would speak with her Cuban husband’s family to see if I could stay with them. She told me they lived in the South Bronx and things there were rough. It was not until 1991 when I started to visit places like Hunts Point, where I finally became an Art Consultant for a series of Head Starts name La Peninsula, which Martha J. Watford had founded with parents in the community. And before La Peninsula, it was the Bronx River Restoration Project, where I was hired by Nancy Wallace, a Bronx River advocate, to work teaching art to children in the Fordham Road section. The Bronx was meant to be in my life and I am happy it did. I am who am I am today in great part because of the Bronx and its peoples.

So, to answer your question, I was visiting the Bronx at a time when there were many empty lots, when I would sometimes be the only soul in the train car traveling there from Manhattan, and when national and local fear about the place ran high. I did witness some of the danger in the form of muggings, shootings or killings, and I always felt emotionally safe there because the love I received was greater than any other force I could have encountered. Part of me is aware that places change, that New York City neighborhoods shift rapidly. Part of me understands that many of the neighborhoods in the South Bronx are underserved and still I would not like to see gentrification wreck our place the way it has happened in Brooklyn and Queens and on the Upper West Side in Manhattan where I used to live. I am here because of the people. I am here because I wanted to live in a place where neighbors look like me and vice versa, and where I would not be asked one more time where was I from: that has been the Bronx to me. Plus, the blessings from passersby. Where else? This is of course my personal story and it might certainly not match those of others living here. Life is and can be very difficult for many, many Bronxites as a result of environmental racism, obvious city neglect, and the stigma of the borough which persists, until developers find a way to tell newcomers that this is the cool location to move to. All of what I have shared here so far has influenced the narratives that Performing the Bronx brings forward and which speak of hardships but also of playing stickball in the streets, of dancing in legendary nightclubs, of writing poetry with neighbors, of bringing mothers together to protest rapacious landlords, or feeding blocks of people, and drumming as nourishment for the spirit.

SRdR: As part of Historias with The Clemente, a program centering the impact of Latinx communities in NYC, how do you see your work resonating with broader themes of Latinx heritage, identity, and transformation across the city?

NDEREOM: I have been talking about how Latinx are invisible in the USA imaginary. Nowadays, you hear more about us because we supposedly gave Trump a victory. Aside from this, this country, in my opinion does not know who we are as a people. But perhaps we do not know either. Latinx can be all and many things and I am not so keen with the term–although I value the gender affirming x part. I see myself first and foremost as a Lebanese Dominican from the Caribbean. But, for when it comes to supporting our common struggles, which are real, I am Latinx. You can count me in. Many of our stories in our city run the risk of being dismissed, no matter how many of us live in this place. You come to my neighborhood and we might be the majority, our languages are everywhere, and our food and cultures cannot be hidden, but they are. When I thought of launching Performing the Bronx in 2015, I wanted to offer a platform to the many people in the Bronx who have been here for me and countless others, who have shown me and many neighbors kindness and who understand oppression. I personally wanted to honor them, even if modestly and let them know that I see them and that what they have been doing means a lot. I have said this here before, the Bronx is the only place in New York City that registers as the City in my psyche. People here set chairs on the sidewalks to engage in conversations. That says a lot about the spirit of our neighborhoods. The reality is, that this might not last for decades to come. Gentrification is always lurking in a city like this. We have been lucky in this respect. We might have to deal with wilted vegetables and overpriced processed food, but there is still community.

SRdR: The artists and cultural figures featured in Performing the Bronx are deeply rooted in their communities. How did you approach collaborating with these individuals, and in what ways did their contributions shape the final work?

NDEREOM: These are all individuals who I admire. I cannot work with a person just because of the potential success that that they could bring to my career, especially at 57. And I don’t have a career, since I do not see myself running after anything. Instead, I see myself walking a path. This is where inviting others comes in. Sometimes the path can get lonely and it is wonderful to have company, to be guided by mentors, to mentor others, to co-create, or to share what we are going through in life. To be more specific about Performing the Bronx, I met Arthur Avilés years before I conceived of this experience. Bill Aguado is my Godfather as it relates to my baptism along the Bronx River. I met Wanda Salamán, and Danilo Lachapele through Alicia Grullón. Wanda Salamán introduced me to Mili Bonilla. Milia Bonilla introduced me to Dr. Drum. Christine Licata introduced me to Benny Bonilla. I had worked with Caridad De La Luz ‘La Bruja’ as part of a program at Bronx River Art Center for which I served as a consultant. ‘La Bruja’ put me in touch with Ana ‘ROKAFELLA’ García. As for Rhina Valentin, I met her 20 years ago at Longwood Art Gallery/BCA, when Edwin Ramoran introduced us. Isn’t this wonderful? I very much enjoy seeing how this web was been weaved and how it continues to expand.

SRdR: You place a strong emphasis on reclaiming histories and narratives at risk of erasure. How do you see Performing the Bronx contributing to the preservation of cultural memory in the borough?

NDEREOM: There are several places in the Bronx that preserve histories and stories, including The Bronx Music Heritage Center (BMHC), led by Elena Martínez and Bobby Sanabria. There is also BAAD! the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance where Arthur Avilés and Charles-Rice González have given a home to the queer theirstories in our borough. The thing about the Bronx is that, at least creatively, it is a very atomized place, and therefore I don’t feel the same kind of cohesiveness that I experience in the Lower East Side in Manhattan, where artists from each generation know and support each other. I see this as unfortunate, but remember that the Bronx is big and that it does not tend to generate the kind of homogeneous situations like the Lower East Side, Washington Heights or Williamsburg. Take as an example the considerable number of Dominicans moving to the Bronx. and yet nothing resembling Washington Heights will be replicated here in terms of a single distinctive culture. This will likely inform how Performing the Bronx will proceed if I were to co-create many more chapters in the years to come. As I stated above the stories and histories of the Mexicans arriving in Longwood section are crucial, and so are the Black and African American ones, and the Garifuna and Jewish European ones. The Bronx to me resonates with the US mainland in ways that the other boroughs might not. We are tangibly connected by land to the rest of Turtle Island.

I would like to close my response by saying that Performing the Bronx’s contribution to the telling of histories/herstories/theirstories/ourstories is done in a non-linear way, more like in a spiral. Remember that I am approaching this experience from the perspective of a person versed and trained in performance art. Therefore, when I invite an iconic Bronxite to tell their story it is about enacting it together. It is about walking, dancing it and awakening the narrative in their/our bodies and communities and giving it shape beyond words. That is what makes what other creatives call social engagement and storytelling and sharing different for me. In my case, it is about living it in the present and not only about remembering.

SRdR: How do your broader artistic practices—particularly your interests in ritual, ceremony, and healing—intersect with the creation of Performing the Bronx

NDEREOM: It is interesting that you are asking this question because I did not think of it, the reason being that ceremony and ritual have been common threads in what I have been doing creatively for decades. I did not learn about staging ceremonies and rituals through art, it has been the opposite way around. I grew up in a syncretic home in the Caribbean where I had my own altar in my bedroom. It is at the core of religion and spirituality where I am introduced to the arts and to performance, and I must clarify that those were not names or terms that were used. Creativity and performance were imbued in the ceremonies and rituals that I partook of, and ranging from family weddings to Catholic and Afro-Caribbean spiritual practices. I can say with no hesitation that I received my artistic education through spirituality. In the 1990s doing healing work in an art context was not accepted as it is now, and those like Linda Mary Montano, Donna Hennes (Mama Donna), Liz Munro, Billy X Curmano, Linda Sibio, Josefina Báez, Charo Oquet, and Geo Ripley, to name just a few, are among the trailblazers who younger artists seriously experimenting with healing should definitely research.

Like attracts like. I would not tell those I invite to be part of Performing the Bronx what to do. However, both ritual and ceremony have been present in many of the chapters. There is the silent dance which Arthur Avilés and I did around the block where he lives in Hunts Point and which was informed by whirling in slow motion. Arthur drew inspiration for this from the Sufi Whirling Dervishes. The action with Dr. Drum entailed percussion and the winter solstice. The gathering was absolutely trance-like, with people attending having the option of an array of percussion instruments. Rhina Valentin chose to recreate hers and her mother’s walk from their former home in Parkchester to the subway station nearby. Angel Rodriguez played sacred music from the Caribbean. As for healing, I am trying not to use this word anymore because it has been so coopted by Art, but sometimes I have no choice so I have to say it. My consolation is that I am trying to use it sincerely. Yes, healing is part of all 10 chapters. It not possible to perform the Bronx with Ana ‘Rokafella’ García, or with Caridad De La Luz ‘La Bruja’ and not to undergo some kind of healing. Thank you so much, Sofía, for asking.

SRdR: With the ongoing changes in the Bronx, what’s next for Performing the Bronx? Do you plan to continue expanding the project, and if so, in what direction

NDEREOM: The direction will unfold organically. I do see dance and movement continuing to be central to all of this. I have so much territory to cover and just enough time to respond. I would like to do a 45-minutes to 1 hour documentary on the legacies of late Martha J. Watford, a community organizer who helped open seven Head Starts in the Bronx, named La Peninsula. This effort has meant a lot to teachers, parents, families, children and to communities at large. I worked at La Peninsula for a decade and what a school to learn about the Bronx! When I first got the job, I was commuting from the Upper West Side in Manhattan, where I was living then and I had no idea of the realities of the many in the Black and Brown communities in the South Bronx. This place opened my eyes as to the rampant oppression that the systems imposed on us have made the norm. I also got to experience the joy of laughing, dancing and being creative despite all of this. La Peninsula remains in my heart and I would like to honor Martha by putting together a video with interviews from as many of those who worked with her and whom she supported, and I would like to generate a gathering with stories, music and food. “It is nice to sit together and have food with friends.” That is what children and teachers at La Peninsula used to say before each one of the communal meals in the classroom. I too want to do a chapter with Nancy Wallace, one of the women who helped care for the Bronx River, together with many others. When I came to the Bronx to work with the Bronx River Restoration Project I was in my mid-twenties and had no idea of the significance of what I was trusted to do: to teach some of the younger generations of Bronxites and care for the Bronx River. 30 years later, I am still walking along this fluid being and loving it more and more.

SRdR: In a borough known for its resilience and diversity, how do you navigate the balance between representing personal narratives and the collective identity of the Bronx?

NDEREOM: As you know, I was born in the Dominican Republic. I am an adopted child of the Bronx, and I am conscious of those who have been here for generations. I am relatively a newcomer. I approach my relationship with the Bronx from the standpoint of learning and a desire to be in community. With Performing the Bronx, I work as a conduit for stories to be told, enacted, lived, contested and experienced. It is clear to me that my role is to allow the individuals and groups I work with do the talking. I am here to listen and to facilitate.

Pertaining to personal narratives and the collective identity of the Bronx, these are intertwined and feed each other. Those with whom I have co-created actions belong to and work with communities and all aspects of this back and forth shows up in the whole persona of the borough. To say that there is one Bronx would be to essentialize a rather complex place where there are peoples of all cultures, and yet everyone is constantly nurturing this being and shaping it and reshaping it–some more than others. This is the reason why I chose to focus on movers and shakers in the Boogie Down: the one writing poetry that speaks of the soul of our streets, dancing queerness, organizing mothers to talk back to slumlords, interacting with the drums that decolonize the heart, and re-membering (as in putting together the scattered parts) where we have come from so we can have a clear view of where we might want to go.

Part of my family was a rescued cat from the Bronx name Scooter Marie. We would take her to Upstate NY for the weekends and for the summer. When traveling back home Downstate, she would curl up into a ball in the car, but she would perk up and get up the minute we would arrive in the South Bronx. She knew she was had arrived where she belonged. The same happens to me.

SRdR: What role do you envision the audience playing in engaging with Performing the Bronx? Do you see them as witnesses, participants, or something else?

NDEREOM: There is not one single format that Performing the Bronx deploys in terms of engaging audiences. Some of the actions can happen in private. In the case of Artur Avilés and A Gentle Act of Men in Hunts Point, the audience included an intimate group of friends, then mostly passersby, and a neighbor who was dying in her living room. I recall not knowing what was happening toward the end of the dance piece. The agreement was to start and end at Arthur’s home on Manida Street. All of the sudden he was guiding me into a home across the street. We entered the ground floor apartment and there was a beautiful elder in a hospital bed to whom Arthur had thought to bring the performance to. She was approaching the end of life.

The audience in Taking it to the Streets, with Wanda Salamán was passersby and, at the end of the journey, those attending a large meeting held by Reverend Danilo Lachapel at Iglesia Evangélica Española del Bronx. In I have been There, with Danilo Lachapele, there was no audience per se. We walked at sat at different locations in the Bronx to talk about key issues pertaining to our communities. This action will find its audience through those who will watch the recording of the encounter. As for Bill Aguado and Sitting on the Stoops, we had an audience that traveled from different parts of the City, as well as some neighbors from different parts of the Bronx. Mili Bonilla and I did some Walking with a Timeline but without a Watch, and met people along the streets. Some were curious passersby who wanted to know more about the photographs from Mili’s personal archive that we carried with us on a clothesline. Other were people who Mili had met during her early years of activism. Caridad De La Luz ‘La Bruja’ and the Bronx Mic brought together friends and neighbors into her performance space in Soundview called El Garage. Participants wrote poetry in situ and then shared it. The action with Benny Bonilla took a detour as a result of the pandemic. Casita Maria and I had planned an in-person celebration and it all had to be moved to a documentary format. I was sad that we missed the opportunity to dance in physical form, yet the good part of this is the historic document that resulted from putting all efforts into filming a carefully edited video on Benny Bonilla’s legacy. Dr. Drum and I put together a solstice celebration, Winter Drums, to which neighbors and friends showed up and joined at the Andrew Freedman Home. Rhina Valentin wanted with The Metropolitan Portal to do a walk and ritual honoring her mother Christina María Bruckman, and she extended the invitation to master percussionist Angel Rodríguez, and BronxNet Executive Director, Michael Max Knobbe to perform with us. The site of this were the streets of Parkchester, right at the height of the pandemic. I remember we all wore masks. The last action to date was with Ana ‘ROKAFELLA’ García, and we worked together Befriending the Pavement. We did that on the plaza where the 6 train station in Hunts Points is located. We wore masks again, and I even wore blue latex gloves since we had to be on the sidewalk and touch it.

It is worth pointing out that Performing the Bronx has been first and foremost generated with the Bronx in mind. I am happy that people from all walks of life and places get to experience this work yet, as with my praxis in general, my aim is not to produce actions in communities that are then meant to be canned and consumed by the mainly Euro-American audiences who attend museums and galleries far removed from where the experiences took place. I am uneasy about this form of creative trafficking, in which even some BIPOC artists engage. But hey, most artists want to make a buck, have The New York Times write about their work, and get to ride the cool curators, funders and art star guaguita, little bus, of success. I would like to remain truthful to the communities who have trusted me. Thank you again for this opportunity to have this conversation.

Thank you to Elias Rischmawi, Rafaelina Tineo, and Argenis Apolinario for your help photographing the different chapters of Performing the Bronx / Thank you Geofery Jones for filming and Editing / Thank you to Michael Max Knobbe for the additional footage and filming

All photographs in this interview are courtesy of BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance / Photographer: Richard Rivera

ABOUT Performing the Bronx / A Living Archive of New York City’s Most Iconic Borough: Nicolás invite a group of remarkable Bronxites to co-develop with him actions embedded in the day-to-day of their beloved home borough. The gestures that emerge between them are presented in private spaces, as well as in the Bronx's public realm, and focus on the roots that weave these visionaries with specific communities and neighborhoods in our part of the City. Performing the Bronx is an expansion of Nicolás’s ongoing efforts to generate work with and within different communities in the Bronx and, more specifically, in the South Bronx. It is also representative of his interest in honoring, recovering, reclaiming and remembering herstories/histories/theirstories of the area’s inhabitants and its trailblazers that run the risk of being effaced by time, lost in the midst of neighborhoods in flux, or dismissed by dominant discourses that often position themselves at the center of the conversation.

Performing the Bronx as a whole has been supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Casita Maria’s South Bronx Culture Trail Festival 2020, and the Bronx Council on the Arts. It has also received love, space and support from Mothers on the Move, BronxNet, The Andrew Freedman Home, and BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance.

About Historias / Celebrating the transformative impact of Latinx communities in New York City: Historias is an expansive citywide initiative that weaves scholarly research, oral histories, and cultural programming to re-center Latinx narratives in NYC. Unfolding between 2024 and 2026, presented in partnership with the LxNY Consortium with lead support from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Historias marks the largest initiative in The Clemente’s 30-year history.

Historias, meaning both histories and stories, is more than just a celebration—it is an urgent political intervention. Historias aims to fill voids in the collective understanding of New York City's evolution by presenting a more honest, thorough, and intersectional perspective that celebrates the profound impact of Latinx communities.

Sofía S. Reeser del Rio is a curator, scholar, and artist whose practice bridges the arts, education, and community engagement. She co-leads the Historias initiative at The Clemente, where she serves as Associate Director of Programs & Curator, and collaborates with Mujeres de Islas, Culebra, PR, since its founding in 2013. Her work focuses on ecological experiential practices, access, equity, and the power of art to reclaim narratives.

Sofía began her curatorial career at El Museo del Barrio, where she contributed to over 30 exhibitions and played a key role in cross-departmental initiatives that engaged artists, educators, and donors. She has curated and exhibited work at institutions including BronxArtSpace, The Latinx Project at NYU, EFA Project Space, Museo Memoria y Tolerancia, Loisaida Center, The Clemente, and Museo Casa de África.

A graduate of SUR Escuela at Universidad Carlos III in Madrid (Master’s) and Pratt Institute (BFA), Sofía is also the recipient of fellowships from CCCADI, NYFA’s Executive Leaders of Color, and the A&L Berg Foundation. Her ongoing project, Localidades Alternas, reflects her commitment to exploring resilience, identity, and place.

Sofía Reeser-del Río’s website

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel treads an elusive path that manifests itself performatively through creative experiences that he helps unfold within the quotidian. He is the founding director of The Interior Beauty Salon, an organism living at the intersection of creativity and healing. Nicolás served recently as a Senior Lecturer and Social Practice Artist in Residence in the Art and Art History Department at The University of Texas at Austin; and is currently a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. Nicolás has exhibited or performed at Madrid Abierto/ARCO, The IX Havana Biennial, PERFORMA 05/07/21, IDENSITAT, Prague Quadrennial, Pontevedra Biennial, Queens Museum, MoMA, Printed Matter, P.S. 122, Hemispheric Institute of Performance Art and Politics, City as Living Lab, Princeton University, Anthology Film Archives, El Museo del Barrio, Center for Book Arts, Longwood Art Gallery/BCA, The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Franklin Furnace, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Nicolás has received mentorship in art in everyday life from Linda Mary Montano, a historic figure in the performance art field. Residencies attended include P.S. 1/MoMA, CEC ArtsLink, The Performance Project, Soaring Gardens, Jentel, Henry Street Settlement, Center for book Arts, Lower East Side Printshop, Artists Alliance Inc, Yaddo, and MacDowell. He teaches widely with different art and healing programs including EmergeNYC, Transart Institute, Copper Beech Institute, and the Breath-Body-Mind Foundation, among many others. Nicolás holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, where he studied with Coco Fusco; and an MA from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. Born in Santiago, Dominican Republic, he was baptized as a Bronxite in 2011 https://www.interiorbeautysalon.com

Ernesto Rivera

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Ernesto, we met through Scherezade García. I think that the three of us attended Altos de Chavón in the Dominican Republic. We do represent different generations of students at this school. Scherezade and I were there in the 1980s and you were there at least two decades after. What year were you in?

Ernesto Rivera: I attended Chavón, The School of Design, for only a year—actually, just a few months between 2016 and 2017. Before that, I was living in Mexico City, pursuing a master's degree in design theory and history at UNAM, which lasted three years. Immediately before enrolling at Chavón, I worked for a year in my previous profession as an interior designer for a firm in Santo Domingo. Interior design was my first university degree and the work I did for a long time. I met Sherezade later, in 2017, when I arrived in New York for the two years of Fine Arts at Parsons.

My friendship with Sherezade is interesting, and whenever we talk, I feel very energized to do creative things. Sherezade is like my bridge to other generations of artists from the Dominican Republic and to San Cristobal, the town where I grew up and where the Renville family, the maternal side of Sherezade and her sister iliana Emilia García's family, is from. And I think that's beautiful because I don’t know if you know that their father, Luis Reginald García Muñoz, is a prominent bridge engineer in our country. Through the social bridges Sherezade builds, I was able to connect with you. In 2018, I attended a talk you gave with artists Pablo Helguera, Chloe Bass, and Martha Wilson at The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, but I didn’t dare to approach you. Perhaps it wasn’t the right time. I still remember your reflection about the keys. I truly believe that what really connects us all is poetry. 

NDEREOM: I did not know that you were in the audience! Regarding Chavón, I vowed never to return there which, when I attended this school, was in the city of La Romana. I felt that I did not need to go back to a place where I co-created so many memories and where I lived one of the freest times in my life. We could talk volumes about this mythical place perched on top of the Chavón River in the Dominican Republic. I was a student at this place before art became thoroughly engulfed by the market, networking, branding and all of that stuff. How was your experience there?

ER: "No one can cross the same river twice," says an ancient saying. And that is true. Neither the place of origin is the same nor am I the same. Frankly, I have never been able to see Chavón as a mythical place. Demystifying Chavón has always been my relationship with the school. I arrived there when I was thirty-three years old, with two university experiences, after living abroad for three years, with ten years of work experience, having left a religious community, and fully assuming my own personal identity. That is to say, before being a student, I was a heretic. So, I always found the idea of a magical or dreamlike place very suspicious. For me, arriving at Chavón was like entering a small theater, not as a spectator, nor as an actor, but as someone observing from behind the scenes the performance of an act at play: the affected behaviors, the dramatic effects of emotions, the performativity of authority figures, and the voluntary collective acceptance of a script imposed by others were always visible to me.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a place of much personal learning because I could test my own motivations and the daring decision to be an artist in the Dominican Republic. But the collective emotional devotion to Chavón sometimes seems like excessive enthusiasm. Now I believe I understand it in its proper dimension. I also recognize that the school is a historical and political project that emerged under very particular national circumstances that are not always transparent. What does it mean to place an art school in the midst of a tourist paradise accessible only to 1% of the inhabitants of a relatively poor country? The invisibility of the social injustices behind that scene of privilege and glamour is, in my opinion, the tragedy of our national art. Entering Casa de Campo is at the same time leaving the national reality. For those who are not part of the alumni collective, Chavón appears as an image upon which many social prejudices are projected, which are also the common prejudices of a small colonial island with a very authoritarian, conservative, and prudish culture. An essentialist view of the school's identity has been tied to its location. But the true identity of the school lies in the people who work there and have passed through it. This is something the school's owners do not fully understand, and it's a shame because many stories are being lost. Chavón, which is in reality a private foundation, has survived thanks to the dual public efforts of a State that operates with much opacity and a large group of alumni who maintain an emotional bond with the school because of the shared memories they don't want to see lost. It's a fascinating story, and I hope that someday someone takes on the task of writing it... even if it’s in the form of a novel.

In the Dominican Republic, there is a lot of fear of freedom, particularly of freedom of thinking, and that has hindered the development of the arts in a broad sense. The main responsibility for any Dominican artist is to find their personal voice and create art from that place of emotional maturity. Everyone who self proclaimed a black sheep of Chavón becomes a mirror for the school, and that social service is necessary to train artists who can navigate the tentacles of dehumanizing financial capitalism out of a bubble.

NDEREOM: I was only 19 years old when I entered Chavón. I had come out of three years of medical school and I was shifting paths. I had never studied visual arts before and I had put all of my efforts into studying theater, where I studied with the luminaries of our country like Rafael Villalona, José Núñez and Elvira Taveras, among many others. I started theater when I was 8, and at that early age I was able to socialize with intellectuals of the magnitude of Delta Soto and Augusto Féria. I acted in a play where Augusto Féria played the main character. I was at a loss at Chavón. I wanted to break into performance art and the school was centered on design, so professors did not think much of me. And, while I agree about the huge mirage that Chavón represents, I feel great that I was actually able to navigate this institution at a young age and leave somewhat intact. It was not easy for my mother financially. While I come from a family of prosperous Lebanese immigrants, my own immediate family did not have the means to send me to Chavón. There were times when I went hungry in school or stole groceries at the fancy supermarket in the village in order to feed myself, or dressed as a tourist and attended the fashion shows at Casa de Campo so I could eat their hors d'oeuvres. The fact that I could pass for a European tourist of some kind, helped, and I understand that this privilege was not available to my Black and Brown classmates who could not take on the disguise of a white looking traveler.

You followed the path that many of us at Chavón did. You moved to New York City. In retrospect now I think how, at least my generation, was not prepared by this school to share our talents with our own country and people, but to leave the island as soon as we could. However, it could be said that New York City is an extension of the Dominican Republic; a satellite city outside our country. Tell me about your transition to New York City in any way that you may wish to do so.

ER: In this past year, I have come to the conclusion that the Dominican Republic shares with New York an artificial acceleration of time. This can be perceived in our music (note that Haitian music seems to be more slow paced)... in the frenetic use and consumption of social media, or in the speed with which we speak our rough and violent Spanish. I never understood why my Dominican friends always had such a packed social agenda, jumping between birthdays, weddings, and baby showers. The rest of the Caribbean seems to live in more episodic time spans, but in the Dominican Republic, time is continuous, without any interruption. The Dominican Republic is a 24/7 live performance. If there is a culture prepared to survive the neurotic New York atmosphere, it is the Dominican, because I feel our neurosis is more clinical. It was not difficult for me to integrate because, in my case, returning was never an option.

I have to be honest about my privileges. I cannot compare my experience with the multiple sufferings and collective traumas of a broad community of Dominican immigrants who were deprived of their country and loving ones by government inefficiencies and the insensitivity of the wealthiest. One of my blessings was arriving when I already had some of my family here, studying for two years on a scholarship, finding a very stable job as an archivist, and having a network of friends who have also been a great support. I am aware that I am part of a larger Dominican diasporic community and that what I build here rests on the foundations of that ancestral legacy.

Like everyone who arrives in a new territory, in the first years I was constantly comparing my new reality with my previous experiences, but I can tell you that since 2020, New York is my home and the place where I began to put down roots. I love the energy of NY; this infinite mix of cross-references stimulates me. It is a fertile place to think and create things.

NDEREOM: To some extent, I was always an immigrant in the Dominican Republic, and I was raised to think like a Lebanese immigrant and to save resources. This would clash with the impetus in Dominicans for celebrations. I have come to value and embrace Dominicanness more and more in my role as an exiled in the USA. This, in fact, is where I learned to be Dominican, whatever that means, which I know is highly subjective. I therefore consider myself Dominicanyork.

Going back to your work, you serve as an archivist/registrar for another artist. You also continue to develop your creative praxis; and you write, discuss art in ways that I find quite inspiring. How is to balance all of this?

ER: The activity I enjoy the most is learning and feeling challenged by the vastness of the world. The scale of work in the artist's studio where I work is extremely different from the scale of my personal practice in my small studio in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. But the contact between these two worlds, I believe, is reflected in the materiality of my art or the ideas in my texts. A shared sensitivity among all these spheres is that of essay writing, which in Spanish can also be translated as ‘rehearsal’. Essay writing is working with remnants and starting a conversation with the fragments at hand. That's why I am enjoying this conversation with you so much, because it is so instinctive. See, the two rooms in my apartment overlook a magnolia tree in the backyard, and sometimes I watch the house sparrows that arrive flying without warning and hop from one branch to another, happy in their improvisation that seems purposeless but is part of the tree's architecture and the sounds of my thoughts. No day of my work is the same as the previous one, and my personal studio is like my own magnolia tree, where I can come at any time and jump from one creative gesture to another. What people see as results are the remnants of these continuous improvisations, which are only connected by their being traces, the signs of a human presence.

NDEREOM: I am very enjoying our conversation and I am aware that this diálogo can go in so many directions and extend itself considerably. A week or so ago we joined a Zoom conversation with some Dominican colleagues on the island and in New York City. The subject of the discussion was the generation of the ’80s in the Dominican Republic. I learned so much from this program and I was able to translate some of the information shared, however specific to the Dominican Republic, to the arts as practiced more broadly and through our current times. Some of the points that came up were those of curators, institutions, and the government in regard to the arts. I come from the generation of the ’90s when Art was not the colossal capitalist business that it is now. At least not to that extent. How are you, and perhaps some in your generation of creatives, including curators, working to undo the structures that, on the surface, seek to dismatle the outdated systems that Art continues to perpetuate?

ER: That online talk was very enlightening for me, not only because of the archival material they showed us but also due to the reflections that emerged during the open mic session. These types of meetings always provoke a lot of thought in me because they help me understand other perspectives and piece together a possible history of Dominican art, which still appears very fragmented and dispersed among artists. In a sense, I think that this feeling of impossibility in completing these individual histories is what keeps me attentive. And I think about how inadequate the current methodologies are for documenting these experiences, because given the importance of oral tradition in Dominican culture, one would think that these kinds of meetings to share lived experiences would be more common, but they actually are not.

Perhaps the methodology of microhistory would have more to contribute to this project of historical documentation, but the use of chronologies and very conservative ways of narrating things, with no complexity or nuances, still carries a lot of weight among Dominican institutions. It seems that highlighting individual achievements is more important than understanding ourselves as a collective. To be honest, I think gossip among artists has more relevant things to say than any book on Dominican art history. It seems like everything is yet to be written, and even when it is written, something is always left out. I find what is left out to be fascinating.

Now, regarding capitalism, I honestly believe that the current state of financial and platform capitalism is a rather bizarre monster with a surprising capacity for reinvention. Think about it: capitalism emerged from that first great accumulation through the violent conquest of our lands, and since then, it has reinvented itself with surprising agility. Capitalism is like those AI images that keep regenerating with each new input. But art has always been linked to power and those efforts of capital accumulation. I think what’s needed is to humanize and diversify the ways we attribute value to artistic experiences—in other words, not letting money be the sole determinant of what has or doesn't have artistic value. In the Dominican local context, that seems very difficult to achieve because the ways of conceiving art or what has cultural value are still very rudimentary. The first art fairs in our country emerged as extensions of agricultural fairs, and in that sense, I believe that vision of art as an appendage of something else that determines it still survives.

We haven’t managed to emancipate art from the excessive control that wealthy families exert over the content that needs to be created and shared. And precisely because of this, little effort has been made to deepen conversations and to develop professional profiles that think with true scientific criteria about the dynamics of the social order, which is where any creative production fits in for me. This happens with all forms of artistic expression. If you talk to people in theater, dance, or writing, you realize that this sense of orphanhood prevails, which has always been a hegemonic political project to stifle any possibility of feeling and imagining other ways of living together. That’s why I say that for artists of my generation, but even more so for younger artists, the main challenge is to maintain optimism. Dominican cultural institutions, still represented by few individuals, have failed younger generations because they have preferred to appease money rather than create deep emotional connections among people. I belong to a pre-internet generation and have witnessed this progressive deterioration of the achievements that could have been made with the return to democracy in the 1980s and the idea that popular culture also had value.

But despite all this, I can tell you that there is a group of few creatives that resists all these dynamics by working from the margins. That’s why I believe our strongest art has always been marginal. It's something that those looking at us from the outside still fail to grasp because there are two or three people who are like official charming sirens controlling the official narratives. For me, the best form of resistance against the progressive financialization of everything is to cultivate strong bonds of friendship between people and to reclaim the value of two seemingly useless disciplines: poetry and philosophy. The real tragedy of Dominican art is art without poetic content.

NDEREOM: This makes so much sense to me, personally. I can see more clearly why I have been moving into writing and now into dance and movement. I find that most of the visual arts have succumbed to advertisement and to what I call Instagram art and selfie art. Curators know who the good artists are, and yet many of them have to play the game in order to secure their jobs and put food on their tables and have a roof. 

There is not a deep questioning within Art about consumption, the use of materials that continue to destroy our planet, as well as roles and gatekeeping. Interestingly, Art has been so critical of institutionalized religion and its hierarchies and, in my opinion, the hierarchy in the art industry (as I call the art world) resembles that of the church, with its popes, bishops, and beatified saints. I am curious as to new fields where creativity can thrive unencumbered by all of the BS I try not to give my attention to.

ER: LOL, all that BS. I totally get you. But I wish it were something fascinating to witness. When you watch religious rituals, at least you can enjoy the theatricality of the liturgy, the coordinated movement of the bodies, the detail of the vestments, the scents of the offerings—you know, all those things designed to excite the senses. But the things you're referring to have lost all magic, any power of evocation. I'm not talking about sacralizing art; in fact, I believe there's more power in profanation, in the intentional return of art to the realm of the earthly and communal.

But what I perceive now are these very sectarian behaviors, people like automatons who do the same things, make the same art, say the same things, operate under the same codes, and exist within these pyramidal relationships where they have to constantly flatter to climb the ladder. It's a performance so predictable it's become boring. It has lost the aura of novelty it had between 2000-2015. You’d think that after the traumatic experience of a global pandemic, there would be a slowing down of processes and a desire for reconnection. But "returning to normal" has actually meant ignoring the opportunity for certain lessons, and now we're very divided—between those of us who want to see real social changes -perhaps more than ever– and those who want to keep living as if nothing is happening. It's truly unsustainable. It's an extension of our planet's economic unsustainability. I mean the responsible use of resources, including the personal resources that any artist has in order to create and say things.

I'd like to see more people working in culture with greater social and ecological conviction. But it's difficult to break through the echo chamber of discourses that are disconnected from life. I always say that the Dominican Republic is the country with the most wannabe celebrities per square kilometer, and social media has only exacerbated this collective pathology. Sometimes I wish I could be completely invisible, you know, make a kind of secret art that people discover by accident, through clues or vestigial remnants. But I'm always betrayed by the urge to speak out. There's no force that drives my art more than being a heretic of everything. But many artists, out of the need to belong, have forgotten the necessary art of knowing how to renounce.

The farce in the art world is directly linked to the farce in the political world. We are facing a crisis of trust because our leaders are not honest voices. The ongoing genocide in Gaza, perpetrated by Western Zionist lobbies, has, for over a year now, exposed the emptiness behind many cultural discourses that, before fall 2023, were considered paradigms of social engagement. In the face of this relentless bloodshed and the depravity of humanity, it has become nearly impossible to sustain any pretense of such discourse. What does it mean to be an artist amid all this? Amid a genocide in Palestine, funded by our taxes, amid the sadism of western democracies… and amid racist state policies in the Dominican Republic targeting poor Black individuals. These realities are truly sickening, and we must resist these structural violences, but equally important, we must empower people to imagine a better future. Both resistance and imagination are deeply connected to feeling—feeling the struggle now and feeling the future possibilities. The essence of art is to reclaim those feelings for the sake of life, any life.

NDEREOM: There is a tremendous amount of tearing apart, knocking down and demolishing going on. Most of it is long needed. However, I ask myself as to what is being built. Sometimes, my response is that Art is so bankrupted that perhaps my call is to envision new fields where creativity can flow again away from the devastation of professional development workshops and tips for how to get a commercial gallery. Please chime in.

ER: I believe it's important to maintain a balance between building and demolishing. Sometimes, the best way to repair a house is to tear it down and rebuild it. This is, for example, my view on many cultural institutions in the Dominican Republic that have perpetuated numerous "structural flaws," and at any moment, everything might come crashing down. Well, I say, "Let's leave this building that's about to collapse together, tear it down, and create something new from scratch." But it's like the parable of Simonides of Ceos, where it's hard to convince people that are having the most fun to leave the banquet and survive.

However, the most dangerous aspect of that compulsion to destroy, which you point out, is when it's done out of anger or impulsiveness. Even to tear down a building, you have to calculate the costs, and much more so to create something new. It's what engineers call "cubicar" (calculate costs per volume) which is basically a lot of strategy and planning. When I write very critical articles, I've sometimes received responses labeling me as a destructive person, but I believe what underlies that perception is a reluctance to engage in honest conversations. It's impossible to think that we will all agree on everything, and that is why politics is relevant, but when it comes to things that are truly rotten, there shouldn't be such a diversity of opinions or this extraordinary ability as we commonly say in our country: ‘to justify the unjustifiable’.

American culture has a lot of that. You watch the news, and it's pure ethical juggling from the most powerful USA institutions. That lack of honesty has been normalized and spread at all levels. We saw it with Trump, we saw it with Biden, and it seems we'll keep seeing it regardless of who the next president is. While it's true that truth is always an interpretation, there are still rules and principles for interpreting. When there's so much lack of transparency, what is presented to us as the most plausible becomes the substantive truth of things.

The true role of art is to enrich interpretations and open up possibilities, sometimes to demolish and other times to build. Both are necessary. Over the last two years, I've been involved in political work in the Dominican Republic through a minority political party, and I initially thought that, as a simple artist, I had little to contribute to them. But it's been fascinating to realize how small gestures that open up new interpretive possibilities can challenge established power structures. And that can be seen as either wanting to destroy or wanting to build, depending on whether you're inside or outside the building.

NDEREOM: Creatives have given too much power to a structure that cannot function without us. No artists or creatives = no museums, no curators, no biennials, no galleries. Power is usually misinterpreted and seen in connection to a few, to scarcity, and to dominance. The power I am working to reclaim as a creative is one that allows me to share this divine force with others and let it travel through me rather than grant me a place at the top of a social pyramid of any kind. What spaces might come to mind for you to set creativity free?

ER: I wish artists were more aware of how they are being instrumentalized by power structures and how their creative work is used to generate money for banks. Not because it's the only solution to the problems artists face, but because it would give them greater agency in deciding when they want to participate in these social dynamics and when they don't. Personally, I'm not against the art business; I find it a fascinating world where there's much to learn to break out of the bubble in which artists have voluntarily enclosed themselves. However, there is a need to diversify both the ways of doing business and the ways of creating art. The new ways of doing business should be the responsibility of people in the business world—a talent I fortunately don't have, but I value when I see it working for the common good.

To answer your question more directly about how to emancipate oneself from the control exerted by those in power, I'll share my personal strategy. My strategy is to have a 9-to-6 job, which fortunately is related to the art world. But if that weren't the case, I wouldn't have any problem working in another field as long as it covers my material needs and, above all, allows me to maintain the freedom to speak my mind. It's the strategy of the Apostle Paul, who made tents so as not to corrupt his preaching by accepting money that came with strings attached. Well, it's not that being an artist means being specially chosen, but sometimes I feel that what’s needed is more commitment and seriousness about the craft itself.

I know it's not a popular strategy because some people aim to live exclusively off their art, and that's also fine. It's a life choice that I find very brave. But my approach to being an artist is more aligned with the mystique of certain cultures where being an artist doesn't mean being an enlightened individual who belongs to a separate class, but rather it's a way of living in the world, integrated with all forms of inhabiting it. In this sense, being an artist would be like being a mail carrier, a gardener, a supermarket shelf packer, or a nurse—essential professions with little monetary appeal. Protecting the freedom to speak is the only true responsibility of any artist, and once you have that freedom, it's about saying something meaningful. Sometimes the most meaningful thing is to say nothing and continue working in silence. Obviously, business people don't like that because "what isn't exhibited doesn't sell," hence all the showcasing.

NDEREOM: Like you, I have refused to sell my soul to the D… The perks are enticing, but I value my freedom more than the goodies. As an independent creative I do not have anyone telling me what I do, so that my work can be traded for dollars. I am happy with being a passerby rather than to try to get a ride on the curated guaguita of success. 

Is there anything that you would like to say, to ask, to complain about, or to celebrate as we conclude?

ER: Nicolás, I think if we sat down to talk, we would never finish. That’s beautiful because, in a few words, it’s how I imagine true friendship.

NDEREOM: Thank you so much for the voice that you bring forward. It is needed. Let’s talk again. 

ER: Thank you for creating the conditions for this gathering. I hope it happens again soon.

All images and videos courtesy of Ernesto Rivera

Ernesto Rivera’’s links: Website / Instagram

Ernesto Rivera (b. 1983, Santo Domingo) is a Dominican artist based in Brooklyn, New York, since 2017. His practice primarily focuses on drawing and installation. Ernesto completed coursework for a Master’s in History and Theory of Design at UNAM, Mexico City, and earned a Fine Arts degree from Parsons School of Design at The New School in 2019. In addition to his artistic work, he serves as an archivist and registrar for a private collection. He also contributes cultural criticism articles that are widely read and recognized among younger generations of thinkers in the Dominican Republic.

Bella Maria Varela

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Bella! We met in Austin a year ago and it is a pleasure to connect with you. I admire your curiosity for learning. What keeps you wanting to get up in the mornings and propelling forward into life through this mystery that we call the body?

Bella Maria Varela: FOOD, of course! The epitome of pleasure. It's usually the first thing I think of when I get up in the morning. Just the thought of tasting something delicious in my mouth is enough to drag me out of bed. Ever since I was a little kid, my mom would wake up extra early and make us a thorough breakfast: a smoothie, beans, tortillas, eggs, and a slice of queso fresco. She would wake us up by yelling up the stairs “ el desayuno está listo!” and we would come running down the stairs. Now as I start a life with my partner and all our pets, I do the same for them.

Food creates balance in my schedule and life, and I count on it to keep my schedule balanced. A significant part of my artistic practice revolves around experiencing joy through sadness, and nothing materializes this sensorial experience like food. Not only does it get my body and bowels moving, balancing my systems, but it is also a vehicle to start conversations and connect with other people and creatures. Whether it's a hearty meal around the dinner table with friends, munching on appetizers during the cocktail hour before a party, having coffee with my partner every morning on FaceTime, or feeding my dogs a hearty meaty meal; food plays a crucial role in these connections.

NDEREOM: I have such strange relationship with food. I like the idea of it, and food almost killed me twice as a baby. I tend to eat alone or with people I feel safe. Interestingly, food has been big in the actions that I generate, and so there is usually something to eat in my performances and experiences. Also, I carry food in my backpack all of the time and share it along the way. It makes me feel safe.

When was the last time that you cried and when was the last time that you laughed? I am asking because emotions seem to be such a taboo and so much of my work deals with emotions. This might be true for you as well, since I witness you navigating issues of immigration in your creative practice. Tell me about it…

BMV:  Feelings are at the core of my work; at its essence, it is a way of navigating the challenges and triumphs of being first-generation and watching family and loved ones navigate the immigration system. So, to answer your question, the last time I deeply cried was when I was working on job applications. There is nothing that triggers my imposter syndrome like working on my application material, having to synthesize all the things that make me a qualified candidate; it's about condensing all my life experiences into a couple of pages that could determine my future. However, sometimes I struggle to be the best reflection of myself, so I really rely on others to help me through this process. Whether it's editing a cover letter with a peer, meeting for lunch with an old mentor, or simply chatting with others about their career paths, these conversations help me recognize that everyone faces challenges when applying for jobs or opportunities. Transitioning from one opportunity to the next is challenging, and migrating from one country to another adds an additional layer of difficulty that I aim to visualize in my work.

I recently showcased my textile piece, Purple Unicorn, in the exhibition titled Somos Recuerdos at the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas Austin. This exhibition was curated by three talented undergraduate students: Fabiana Muñoz-Olmo, Alan Aguilera, and Julio Martínez, whom I had the honor of mentoring through this process.  The dye sublimation print is a video still of a documentation of a performance featured in the video @border_becky (2021). A drone captures the main character, Becky Lopez, waving blissfully in the San Rafael Valley, a grassland on the border of Nogales, MX. On either side of the fleece print are two leather cowboy boots arranged on cinder blocks.

On one boot, a photo transfer showcases an image of a Bureau of Land Management agent looking through binoculars, actively surveying the land for unwanted visitors. Conversely, on the opposing side, I incorporated a photo transfer of an Application for Naturalization N-400 form, a document necessary for applying for US citizenship. This visual representation serves as a reference to a memory of witnessing my mom in tears after being denied citizenship. I vividly remember her frustration as she walked away from the government building, having been denied her citizenship. We recently talked about this memory and she told me she called the office for a week straight until they finally approved her application. The next week she booked a flight and went to Guatemala to see her family for the first time in 12 years.

Purple Unicorn is a term used to describe a candidate profile possessing skills and experiences believed to be so rare they are almost mythical. These application processes make you feel like meeting their requirements is impossible, that reaching the other side might be unattainable, hindering the ability to seek safety, refuge, reunite with family, and live one's dreams. This piece, like many of my others, is a manifestation of my anger and frustration with the immigration system.

NDEREOM: Texas in general is one if not the most contested spaces I have been to. You helped me film and edit the first video-performance-dance that I conceived in this state and you were a first-hand witness to what came out of my somatic depths: yells and cries and screams. How have you navigated through your work this section of the Earth?

BMV: Yes, it was a beautiful experience that validated my feelings of frustration. Like yourself, I have also filmed myself in vulnerable states. Typically, when I reach this point in my work or life, it signals a need to gently encourage myself to step out of my comfort zone and experience something new. This practice proves especially helpful when living in contested and controversial spaces like Texas and Arizona. While these places are marked by sadness, violence, controversy, and trauma, there are also people, families, and communities making it work and finding joy within sorrow.

During graduate school, I took a class taught by my mentor, Sama Alshaibi, which I referred to as the "walking class" because the exercises prompted us to work outside the studio environment. This experience taught me to find inspiration outside of the class, take risks, and learn how to be a balanced artist—lessons that I am now passing along to my students. In Austin, I enjoy walking my dogs in new neighborhoods, swimming at Barton Springs, trying new food and restaurants, exploring thrift stores (even if I'm not buying anything), attending art shows, and mentoring students, all of which help keep me grounded. Engaging with the perspectives of young people through mentoring allows me to feel entangled with the place.

NDEREOM: I have to say that there were moments during my residency in Texas when I felt more at home in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or Kyrgyzstan than in Austin. It took me a year and half to get my feet on the ground in this place, and I thank my amazing neighbors in East Austin for helping me see hope in this Republican state. I now greatly admire their lucha, their struggle, and all it takes to be a activist in Texas and to go against the oppressive top-down systems that seek to dominate communities there, to silence languages other than english (lower case in purpose), and to deem all Others as a threat to the Euro-American national narrative. You too are doing the work through your creative praxis. How do you stay balanced? What are some of your practices for equanimity?

BMV: It's important for me to get involved in community organizations, spend time with friends and family, and cultivate personal interests—these activities provide a necessary balance to my own practice and teaching. I recently became a member of Mass Gallery, a queer experimental gallery on the east side of Austin, and I'm thrilled about investing in this community. Last month, I helped one of the members curate an exhibition titled Hyper Femme, and it was rewarding to assist someone in realizing their vision. In March, I'll be curating an exhibition, and it's nice to plan within a community in which I know I'll be provided support and won't feel alone.

I also enjoy trying new things, especially those that make me feel anxious and insecure, as these are usually the things I believe will push my own practice forward. When I moved to Austin, I got involved in the Scottish Rite Theater alongside theater and dance professor and Director, Roxanne Schroeder-Arce. I learned how to stage manage, act (sort of), dramaturg, and direct multimedia works into performances.  I appreciate getting my hands dirty, working my way from the bottom… up, understanding all the different roles, and examining what already exists. This approach helps me see how my work can contribute to an ongoing conversation. It's a community-facing method of research that requires patience, but I'm thinking long-term about how to ensure my practice is responsive, keeps me connected to others,  and brings me joy.

NDEREOM: I brought up the topic of experimentation when we met. In my opinion, the expectation is that us artists of cultures or of color should circumscribe ourselves to producing work that addresses the ills that plague society. I shared with you that I want to do that and I also want space for making work that does not make sense. I want to have the luxury and the privilege to work conceptually or abstractly when and If I choose to. How has this situation been for you?

BMV: Oh, I really struggle with this. I think part of it is because I've been, what I call, institution-hopping for six years now—well, maybe my whole life, honestly. From non-profits to the Smithsonian, to grad school, residencies, and now this fellowship at UT at Austin. So, I've always felt the need to make "important" work or work with a clear purpose that speaks to broad audiences. In the times I've made experimental and nonsensical work, I feel like I've been met with a "huh?" and that has been off-putting and slightly embarrassing. But I'm currently at a point where I believe that the confusion could be a sign that I'm moving in the right direction. For me, the key is to find ways to vocalize the importance of the nonsensical, play, and experimentation as methods to inform my more political work. I see it as an integral part of the creative process, and I believe it's worthy of appreciation and, if I'm fortunate, could be funded. I aspire to begin creating for myself again, and I believe it will provide me with more direction as I move on to the next stage of my career.

NDEREOM: I want to hear about your four-legged ones, and I am purposely shaping this conversation in a way that does not always make sense. That is where the essence of things usually is; in the unconscious, in the chaotic and in the messy and non-literal. Please go ahead and talk tails and hooves.

BMV: Ah, my favorites! I live with two medium/small-sized dogs named Darla and Ifwe. Darla is from Tucson, Arizona, and we became a family when I was in grad school at the University of Arizona in 2021. She is the most stubborn dog ever, but so loving and intelligent—probably smarter than me, honestly. Then there is my gentle Ifwe; he is from the El Paso/Juárez area and joined our family in 2022 after I saw his picture on the Humane Society's Instagram and I knew he would be a great fit for us. My goal would be to live somewhere where I have more space and live with more animals. They are a great source of happiness in my life.

I've learned a lot about loving animals through my artist friends Raven Moffett and Marianna Hoffmeister Castro. I've learned that they are autonomous creatures that I coexist with, not that I own or that I saved, but beings with their own lives. Even in conversations about the US-Mexico border, I ponder how animals, creatures, and critters cross manipulated boundaries to seek safety and find resources. How does this man-made infrastructure keep them from thriving? On a slightly better note, scientists recently captured an image of a jaguar on the Huachuca Mountains in southern Arizona. The photos taken of the juvenile jaguars so close to the U.S. border could suggest that this beautiful species might be breeding and expanding their territory. Within Latino culture, animals like wolves, eagles, tigers, and jaguars are often depicted as symbols of strength and resistance. I wish, rather than just symbols, we could put these ideals or values into action and secure a future for them within our landscape as well.

NDEREOM: I agree. All creatures, in my opinion share this thing called life. I know that this can get complicated ethically, and I dare to say that we are all ONE, and that all beings are animated by the same force.

What is the role of your family in your creative practice? How does their role in your life inform the mundane in your art, such as meals and hugs and affection and challenges?

BMV: Oh, they are all models; this is a family business, haha! I always return to documenting my family in my work because I'm consistently considering the ethics behind capturing images of my younger family members, especially babies. They don't have the ability to consent, so I struggle to find a way to include them in a narrative. Currently, their existence is the most important one guiding me and giving me purpose. I’ve introduced a nautical baby doll as a stand-in for the babies, contemplating the future of my family and community. I'm currently thinking of ways to implement VR tech to be able to replicate the gentle and tender moments I enjoy with my family. We will see how that goes!

NDEREOM: I had the fortune of staying with your family in Washington, D.C. and spending time with them. Your parents and I had such meaningfull conversations and I am very grateful for their hospitality. I thank you. Is there anything else that you would like to say that you have not articulated yet?

 BMV: I love your interview questions; they were so much fun. When I saw the first one, I was like 'hell yeah.' The only thing I want to add is that I'm in a moment of transition in my life, so I think if we chat in a year, my answers might be different. Who knows?

NDEREOM: That is okay. We are always in transition. Thank you for this dialogue and I will see you soon, Goddess willing, at the next spot where we will film. I have a skirt, a crown, and a pair of pants ready for the camera.

BMV: Thank YOU!

All images and videos courtesy of Bella Maria Varela

Bella María Varela’s links: Website / Instagram / Spotify / Vimeo / email

About Bella Maria Varela: Using video, photography, found objects, and textiles, I create installations that layer my personal experiences with American history and popular culture. Navigating the fine line between playful and critical, my work explores the intersections of immigration, family, gender identity, and sexuality. Within my work, I dissect iconic materials and archives to critique mainstream anti-immigration rhetoric and subvert the appropriation of Latinx culture. I rearrange personal and found video footage, TikTok songs, thrifted souvenirs, and San Marcos-inspired blankets to create physical gaps where new meanings can be interpreted and carve out spaces where hybrid identities can exist and thrive. Using rasquache sensibilities, I distort ideas of patriotism and nationalism, revealing the hollow promises that lie beneath them. Through my multimedia practice I have developed my own hybrid language to visualize my family's migration from Guatemala through the US-Mexico border to Washington DC and the shores of New England. 

My video and photography work combine analog photography with green screens, 360 cameras, and drones to create non-linear narratives that reference viral political and pop-culture moments and critique the way online audiences consistently create, consume, and virtue signal during times of crisis.  I play the role of multiple characters within my videos–e.g. Border Becky and Koncious Kyle–as a method of self-examination, seeking to encourage a deeper understanding of my own actions and their impact within my communities.

I use dye sublimation printing to transfer my imagery onto fleece blankets and then combine them with found polyester blankets .The pictographic fleece blankets are inspired by San Marcos Blankets that were first manufactured in Central America and bear images of pop culture icons, homeland heroes, and picturesque landscapes. These blankets are passed down through generations, traveling across geographic and cultural borders, and are emblematic of the immigrant experience. My soft sculptures and assemblages replicate the atmosphere of informal marketplaces found near the border including parking lots, roadsides, and swap meets. The mixed media installations mimic being wrapped up in fuzzy warm blankets, doom scrolling through images of the silly and banal next to images of violence, racism and war. This convergence serves as a poignant representation of American experiences of privilege and confusion. To access Bella Maria’s CV click HERE

Blanka Amezkua

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Blanka, I first heard about you in connection to the Blue Room Project in the Bronx. Can you tell me how you are (I really mean asking this question and I can handle an honest response from you beyond fine and okay), and then talk in detail about the initiative just mentioned?

Blanka Amezkua: Why can’t the brain, which is such a marvellous, intricate, superb instrument, why can’t it solve our human agony, misery and chaos? It is because we are always trying to answer it by thought, which is the past. Quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti online, From a Students Talk, Madras (Chennai), 9 January 1970.

You ask how I am...I began my morning by reading this quote by the great Jiddu Krishnamurti. And he’s absolutely correct.  We must definitely pull from the past but it’s in the present that we must discern and act. I am reflecting on his quote as I am sitting in my living room in Mott Haven where with the help of so many artists, friends, community/cultural organizations, infinite family support I initiated the Bronx Blue Bedroom Project (BBBP) back in 2008. The apartment christened as a “liberated domestic space” by playwright friend Virginia Grise, welcomed so many people, for so many years. The exhibition space indeed was inside my bedroom and it was painted blue. It was an artist-run space where invited artists took over my bedroom for an entire month and during that month in addition to exhibiting their work, artists were invited to share a meal for about 20 people, a meal often cooked by the artist. Certainly, this was a project that invited experimentation, community gatherings in an unconventional space, BBBP was open to the general public, but above all the project was about sharing.

NDEREOM: Why blue? Why the Bronx? What brought you to this borough? I grew up in a blue bedroom in the Caribbean and ended up using one narrow and long wall to paint burning fire. I am not sure why I did this, but I needed this element near me in a visual and symbolic way.

BA: Why blue? I suppose I also needed blue in a symbolic way…That was Sebastian’s favorite color, my nephew who was tragically killed by a DUI teenager in California in December of 2007. Why the Bronx? When I moved to NYC in 2003, the first job I found was working in a quirky shop, La SIRENA, owned by my now friend Dina Leor, a Jewish Argentinean/New Yorker lover of everything Mexican, so much so that her partner is even Mexican! She created such a unique shop jam-packed with Latin American crafts, mostly Mexican folk art; it’s as special ofrenda in the Lower East Side.  I met so many people working there, the singer from Gogol Bordello bought his Virgen de Guadalupe t-shirts at La Sirena. Phillip Glass lives almost in front of the shop. It was such a special place, it still is! One day, the principal of a Jesuit middle school on Manida Street stopped by and bought a Che Guevara bag and we talked a bit as she perused through the shop. Turns out she was looking for a teaching artist for her summer camp program in Hunts Point. She suggested I applied for the position. I did and I got the job! After the summer camp was over, I was hired as a full time art teacher and that’s how and why I moved to the Bronx in 2005.   

NDEREOM: I am very sorry about Sebastian’s death. It makes sense to honer this being though color. Regarding the Bronx, that is also where I got my first job in the United States. I was hired by La Peninsula Community Organization in Hunts Point, founded by Martha J. Watford.

You talk about Mexico, and so I would like to ask about your work with papel picado. Can you explain some of the histories/herstories/theirstories of this art form and how this became part of your creative language?

BA: I am formally trained as a painter. But with time, I’ve become an interdisciplinary artist. I’ve worked with textiles, pipecleaners, paper, canvas and paint, and my work has been heavily inspired by comic books and many traditional/folk art techniques. I arrived at papel picado by accident or need. During the politically challenging years we faced from 2016-2020, I began creating large scale collages using exclusively festive papers such as confetti, tissue shapes ,  streamers, quilling paper and papel picado. The social polarization was really getting the best of so many of us. So, I dove into paper and color. Not as a way to negate reality, but rather to contest it. And since I began incorporating papel picado in these large paper collages I felt the need to understand how it was made. Papel picado has such a prominent presence during my favorite Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos, that I wanted to understand how these beautifully crafted banners were made. In 2018 a Youtube, bendito Youtube, search led me to a city in Puebla called San Salvador Huixcolotla, which happens to be the cradle for this unique paper cutting technique. It was there that by pure luck I encountered don Rene Mendoza, the artist that would become my papel picado maestro.

NDEREOM: Puebla is a dear place to me. I have been there several times and have good friends in town such as Cristobal Miranda, a prolific creative. Tell me about your teachers and about your own teachings.

BA: Too many teachers to list! I've had countless teachers who have enriched my life in so many ways. Some have offered lessons in formal settings, while others reveal their wisdom informally and even later. And not all teachers are human. These days, my plants teach me profound lessons about life. It's awe-inspiring to grasp how a humble seed, when mixed with soil and water, can grow into a perfect plant—sometimes nourishing, sometimes not; the never-ending mystery of life after all. But still, it’s a perfect natural construction. I was fortunate to have taught art in three different Jesuit middle schools in NYC, which gave me firsthand insight into the city’s history, its urban planning and demographics. It was through this experience that I discovered that the uniqueness and richness of New York City lies in its incredible and inimitable diversity.

As a child, I lived with my paternal grandmother in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Now, I teach art to senior citizens through the SU-CASA program across the city, mainly in the Bronx. I love helping seniors rediscover their creativity and realize how much they still have to offer. And the lessons they’ve shared about their struggles and resilience are by far greater lessons for me, than anything I could ever teach them.

NDEREOM: New York. New York. What can I say about our city! What are the lineages that inform your artwork and teaching? I know that you have roots in Mexico and on the West Coast of the United States.

BA: My parents from Michoacán, Mexico, come from large rural families that were very connected to the land. My father has eight sisters and three brothers. My mother has five sisters and four brothers; most have migrated within Mexico and a handful to the United States.

The feminine presence, touch, and concern have always been central in my work. I often feel a responsibility to reflect some aspect of what it means to be an immigrant woman in this world. More than just a responsibility, I’m deeply sensitive to this experience because it has fundamentally shaped my own reality.  I am a bicultural woman, almost tricultural, married to Leonidas for nearly 25 years. I was born in Mexico City and immigrated to South Central, LA at the tender age of 5. At ten, I returned to Mexico to live with my paternal grandparents, and at sixteen, I returned to California.

My work is informed by the work of so many artists, so many ways of understanding and being in the world both in Mexico and the USA, Latin America and many other parts of the world. From the first artist I ever met,  Guillermina Dulché who was my next door neighbor in Cuernavaca and Rufino Tamayo, was the padrino of my Jr. High class in Cuernavaca. I have been extremely blessed. The chicano artists in CA that influenced and inspired me directly, my first painting professor in college the late Ernie Palomino, the wonderful Patricia Rodriguez, and the amazing and incomparable Amalia Mesa-Bains, I hold them all dearly close to my heart.  I have been touched by all the work I have been exposed to in the many places I’ve called home; I’ve been influenced by the streets/galleries/museums/cultural venues in Mexico, California and everything in between and now in NYC. The cultural energy in the Bronx is something you understand if you live, love and breath here, otherwise, you’ll never get it!

 NDEREOM: I will say again, no place like the Bronx. One central element in the work that you generated at Hispanic Society as part of a fellowship organized by visionary Alexander Campos–in which both of us participated individually–was the Cruz-Badiano Codex. I would like to hear more about this publication and how it influenced your ideas.

BA: One day, while waiting for Dr. Marcus Burke, someone I worked closely during my residency at the Hispanic Society, I saw a book titled An Aztec Herbal on his bookshelf. It caught my attention because I had never read such a title, so I brought it down and I quickly realized that it was the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano. I knew of the Badiano from a special edition published by Arqueologia  Mexicana in 2013 that I purchased in Mexico but I had never heard of An Aztec Herbal. So I was intrigued.  The Codex de la Cruz-Badiano, also known as the Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis (Libro sobre las hierbas medicinales de los pueblos indígenas or Little Book of the Medicinal Herbs of the Indians) is a beautiful book, adorned by 185 illustrations of medicinal plants. It contains Nahua medicinal recipes compiled by Indigenous scholars of the College of Santa Cruz de Tlaltelolco, written by Nahua physician Martín de la Cruz and translated by another indigenous scholar,  Juan Badiano. The book was completed in the summer of 1552, as the region recovered from the most devastating outbreak of the century, the cocoliztli of 1545, and the ensuing mumps outbreak of 1550.

As you can well remember, we were invited by the wonderful Alex Campos, who had the brilliant idea to welcome us to the museum during such difficult times. It was a perfectly timed gift. Having experienced Covid-19 on March 2020 while living in South Bronx, location that became the epicenter of the pandemic in the USA, it was extremely challenging for us. With all the bad news pouring from everywhere, they were hard times for everyone. From day one, I realized that the only way to heal was to resort to natural medicine, in this case drinking plenty of medicinal teas and resting. This is precisely what I did. And I was doing all this, I was reminded of my paternal grandmother, Aurora, who always had a tea for any malady; her natural herb garden was our pharmacy after all.  Therefore, the codex entered my life in the precise moment, as the entire world was going through a pandemic, and we were all desperately finding ways to heal. I have been working with the beautiful illustrations in the book and creating my own work. As I work with the illustrations, I'm also learning about the remedies described and discovering how many are still in use today. Thanks to the indigenous communities that have preserved these medicinal plants and practices, many of these plants continue to thrive—otherwise, this knowledge could have been lost. Isn’t that how everything in life works? When you care for something, it endures; neglect it, and it fades away.

NDEREOM: There has been so much historical arrogance in terms of not accepting non-European wisdom and knowledge as valid. I am glad that there is a shift happening. Háblame de Hierbitas de Saberes, as well as of some of the flowers, herbs and remedies of the lands that once extended from what is called Mexico today into the occupied territory that is defined as the United States. What are some of the plants that are family to you? My family includes Mullein, Plantain (as in Llantén), and Palm trees, among others. Interestingly, Plantain (as in Llantén) was brought by the European colonizers, yet I do love this being for its healing properties.

 BA: Plants, how they heal and nourish us, don’t they? Lately, I’ve been reflecting a lot on flowers and their healing properties. For example the flower known in Mexico as the flor de pericón, or tagetes lucida, is a marigold plant with several uses. It is used as a medicine, dye, and in religious ceremonies. Pericón is used to treat ailments, such as the common cold, intestinal gas, diarrhea, colic, and digestive problems. It has been used medicinally since pre-Hispanic times. In Nahuatl it is known as yauhtli, or herb of the clouds. Besides its great medicinal value it plays a great role in ritual. In ancient times it was associated with the rain god Tlaloc because it sprouted with the first rains. And I am thinking of this one specifically because it was recently gathered to be used in the festival of Saint Michael, the Archangel, September 28. On the eve of Saint Michael’s Day, September 28, people make crosses of pericón and hang them on their doors, windows to make sure the chamuco, or devil, stays out. And this crosses stay there until the next year. So it’s common to see these pericon crosses in all their stages from being very green and lush until they dry up.  In the installation I created last year in Arkansas, Hierbitas de Saberes / Tiny Herbs of Knowledge, curated by the incredible Lucas Cowen, I incorporated various medicinal flowers from the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano. My goal was to highlight the healing power of nature and encourage people in that region to reconsider the natural resources available to them for healing their bodies.

NDEREOM: Marigold or Clavel/Flor de Muertos, how we call it in the Dominican Republic is one of the plants I so much love. I enjoy its presence, its smell and its colors. When I was a child, we had a garden full of them.

I understand that your apartment in Mott Heaven still serves as a gallery. You introduced me to Devin Osorio, a gentle soul, during their exhibition at your space. How does this locus function at the moment and where would you like it to go and to take you?

 BA: As Mercedes Sosa beautifully reminds us always, CAMBIA TODO CAMBIA, what a gorgeous song verdad? My apartment has been used for many purposes. First and foremost it’s my refuge but it hasn’t been used as a traditional domestic space since I moved in. Thanks to the support and collaboration of so many friends, community, neighbors and local cultural organizations, my bedroom housed the Bronx Blue Bedroom Project for two years 2008-2010 and from 2016-2024 my living room was the site for AAA3A, Alexander Avenue Apartment 3A, the acronym for my actual address in Mott Haven, South Bronx. After existing as artist-run spaces/projects, and everything that that beautifully entailed, thanks to the support of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation the space is transforming once more. I am happy to say that since May, we finally have a sofa in the apartment and it is becoming my art studio; but we are also gestating AAA3A/migrates, and I cannot wait to share more information about this new initiative and to begin collaborating with others in 2025.  

NDEREOM: I admire creatives like you, who do not wait for institutions to make things happen for them. More and more creatives like these are needed now, at a time when Art has been so thoroughly monetized and, while still talking of issues of gender, race, class…is so complicit with the same systems that it seeks to debunk. I am a big proponent that I do not need to operate exclusively within Art to do my work. I have no questions.

BA: Gracias querido! I agree with you wholeheartedly…this is the reason why I have admired and followed the work you do closely and others that don’t wait for things to happen. I believe that in the heart of the matter, what we need to emphasize and highlight is that what we are all doing, all cultural workers, artists, organizations, museums every single cultural entity is providing an experience. And those cultural experiences can and should happen everywhere! Resources also must be provided so that in fact, those experiences are crafted the way they need to be presented in ways that leave lasting memories and/or have transformative effects within communities. So as independent artists, how do we access the resources to make sure this takes place? I believe, each individual artist has the obligation to find allies to materialize these ideas and to not give up on the first no. The house has many windows and doors to be open, we must insist and persist.

NDEREOM: How was working with Alexander Campos? This is a person I have known for decades and who has been here for me through thick and thin. Alex, was central to our path through the Hispanic Society, an institution I saw as isolated from its communities and inaccessible. My view of this place shifted some as I got to spend time with its wonderful curators and staff. Many of them went out of the way to support my pilgrimage from the South Bronx to their organization. How was your time there?

BA: I met Alex when he was Executive Director at the Center for Book Arts. My work was included in There Goes My Hero, in 2009. A wonderful show curated by the unforgettable Erin Riley-Lopez, then Associate Curator, The Bronx Museum of the Arts. Alex and I remained in touch since then. The idea of inviting us to the Hispanic Society during the time he did was transformative to my practice. I mean, I discovered the Aztec Herbal or Codex de la Cruz-Badiano once more and I intend to work with this incisive medicinal book for many years to come.  Everyone at the Hispanic Society was extremely generous, Dr. Marcus Burke, offered a wealth of advice and taught me so much regarding art/history in New Mexico that I intend to visit NM one day thanks to his experience. Dr. Margaret Connors McQuade included my work in the Tertulias de Arte Hispano on Papel Picado concerning the traditional Mexican paper cutting technique.  Dr. Noemi Espinosa offered a hand and helped me access documentation during the entire residency. I will forever be grateful to have entered the Hispanic Society to experience amazing art pieces in their amazing collection first hand, to have been in a wonderful cohort of artists, you included, and to see art that has inspired so many generations of artists.

 NDEREOM: Apapachos with sliced semi-ripped orange mangos sprinkled with red chili powder.

BA: ¿Qué comes que adivinas? That is one of my favorite snacks, mango con chile piquín. ¡Gracias por la oportunidad de compartir y nos vemos muy, muy pronto y muchos apapachos para ti también! BESOTE!!!!

All images courtesy of Blank Amezkua

Blanka Amezkua’s links: Website / Instagram / Facebook / email

Blanka Amezkua ‌is‌ ‌a Mexican-born/Latinx American immigrant interdisciplinary artist, ‌cultural‌ ‌promoter,‌ ‌educator,‌ ‌and‌ ‌project‌ ‌creator ‌based‌ ‌in Mott Haven, South Bronx.  Formally trained as a painter, her creative practice is greatly influenced and informed by folk art and popular culture, from papel picado to comic books. She combines traditional and contemporary art practices and techniques, as well as sociocultural-based mythologies and philosophies as a way to preserve evidence of the past, not for sentimental reasons, but as a form of nourishment for the creative spirit of the present.

Her current project involves research she began at the Hispanic Society in 2021, expanded at Wave Hill in 2022, built further at Lost and Found Lab in Cos Cob during her residency in January 2023 and continued developing during the most recent residency at LMCC’s Workspace Program, 2023-2024. She is invested in the ways in which we re-indigenize our own practices as artists. What are the tools of survival we inherit from our ancestors and their traditions?  What can they teach us, not only about how we make work, but how we move in the world and how we share and create space?

With exhibitions at MoMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, The Bronx Museum, Queens Museum, El Museo del Barrio, El Taller Boricua, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, San Diego Art Institute, Wave Hill Public Garden & Cutlural Center, the Mission Cultural Center, Galeria La Encantada, the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Art Base in Brussels among others. In‌ ‌2008‌ ‌she‌ ‌began‌ ‌an‌ ‌artist-run‌ ‌project‌ ‌in‌ ‌her‌ ‌bedroom‌ ‌called‌ ‌the‌ ‌Bronx‌ ‌Blue‌ ‌Bedroom‌ ‌Project‌ ‌(BBBP), which ‌ran‌ ‌from‌ ‌2008-2010.‌ Blanka operated ‌‌AAA3A‌‌‌(Alexander‌ ‌Avenue‌ ‌Apartment‌ ‌3A)‌ ‌an‌ ‌alternative‌ ‌artist-run‌ ‌space ‌which‌ ‌offered‌ ‌food,‌ ‌dialogue,‌ ‌workshops,‌ ‌and‌ ‌art‌ ‌in‌ ‌her‌ ‌living‌ ‌room from 2016-2024.‌ AAA3A is currently becoming AAA3A/migrates. She is an active member of ‌Running‌ ‌for‌ ‌Ayotzinapa‌ ‌43,‌ ‌an‌ ‌international‌ ‌community‌ ‌of‌ runners‌ ‌based‌ ‌in‌ ‌NYC‌ ‌that‌ ‌promotes‌ ‌dialogue‌ ‌and‌ ‌consciousness‌ ‌concerning‌ ‌human‌ ‌rights‌ ‌violations‌ ‌worldwide.‌

 Mentions‌ ‌of‌ ‌her‌ ‌work‌ ‌and‌ ‌projects‌ ‌can‌ ‌be‌ ‌found‌ ‌in‌ ‌various‌ ‌notable‌ ‌national‌ ‌and‌ ‌international‌ ‌publications.‌ ‌‌ 

Pancho López/An Interviú

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Dear Pancho, I always like to highlight how connections have been forged, but I am not sure how we met. The first time that we coincided in person was at my home in the South Bronx. You are continuously traveling for research and to host performances. How did this all started with you?

Pancho López: Todo comenzó en México cuando se presentó allá el Museo Peatonal. Seguramente entre los cientos de objetos que lo integran habrá algún objeto con el que yo haya colaborado. Luego comencé a seguirte en Instagram y empezamos a charlar. Aunque también recuerdo haber hablado contigo en el Hemi de Brasil, cuando bailaste durante horas.

Nos vimos en la presentación de mi libro en Grace Exhibition Space en Nueva York, y también me acompañaste a conocer y hablar con mi amigo panameño en un Starbucks para darnos tus consejos.

Siempre has sido muy buena onda conmigo, y de hecho recuerdo aquella ocasión en la que fui a tu casa y me recibiste de una manera tan agradable con café, galletas y un tazón enorme de cerezas...

NDEREOM: You are curating a performance art festival at Grace Exhibition Space in Manhattan, focused on artists from Central America and the Caribbean. I know that not long ago you also published a book on performance art from Central America. Can you talk about the links between the publication, your ongoing research in the area and this upcoming festival, to which you have kindly invited me to perform?

PL: Tuve la fortuna de recibir una beca de la Fundación Jumex, en la Ciudad de México, con la que pude viajar por los países de Centroamérica y escribir siete ensayos sobre performance en esa región. El libro Centroamérica en acción, una aproximación al performance centroamericano y algunos de sus protagonistas fue editado y publicado en 2021 por el Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo de Costa Rica, con el apoyo de la Fundación Jumex, el Museo la Neomudéjar, el Centro Cultural España de Costa Rica y la Red de Arte del Centro de América -RACA-, fue presentado en México, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Panamá, España y Nueva York. En esta última ciudad, la presentación tuvo lugar en Grace Exhibition Space, y desde entonces, Jill McDermid, la directora de esta Galería dedicada desde hace más de quince años al arte acción, me propuso organizar un festival de larga duración en Nueva York con 24 artistas de Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panamá, Puerto Rico y República Dominicana, que constaría de seis noches con cuatro artistas por evento quincenal, entre septiembre, octubre y noviembre de 2024.

Muchos de lo artistas que participan, fueron piezas clave en la investigación, sin embargo, esta vez la exploración se extiende hasta algunas Islas caribeñas, pues estoy interesado en acercarme a estos territorios que sin duda forman parte del diálogo y que tienen una importante relación con el Istmo centroamericano.

De alguna manera el libro ha sido el punto de partida, el pretexto para convocarme para curar el festival y la invitación para iniciar el juego.

NDEREOM: Who are some of those performing as part of the Grace Exhibition Space event? We are also talking about a round table or panel involving organizations and people like EmergeNYC and Marlène Ramírez-Cancio. How do you foresee this gathering of performers in New York City? I am personally looking forward to meeting many of the people in the program who I don’t know.

PL: Nueva York es la meca del arte, por lo que tener la posibilidad de realizar un festival en esta ciudad significa una magnífica oportunidad para crecer artísticamente y presentar artistas que cuentan con una trayectoria reconocida en la región centroamericana. Participarán artistas como la reconocida Performer Regina José Galindo de Guatemala, Alexia Miranda de El Salvador, Humberto Vélez de Panamá, así como Leonardo González de Honduras.

También se contará con la participación de jóvenes artistas con una trayectoria muy prometedora, por ejemplo, Milko Delgado de Panamá, Pável Aguilar de Honduras o Manu Tzoc de Guatemala.

Participan artistas centroamericanos y caribeños radicados en Nueva York, como Alicia Grullón, y Eduardo Velázquez, ambos de República Dominicana; Mauricio Esquivel de El Salvador, Alejandro De La Guerra de Nicaragua, Carlos Manuel Rivera de Puerto Rico y no podía faltar mi querido Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel, con una trayectoria de al menos 30 años en esta ciudad. Son muchos artistas, algunos de ellos radicados en ciudades cercanas a Nueva York, como la costarricense Paulina Velázquez Solis que se encuentra en Ithaca, o Marton Robinson, que vive en la ciudad de Toronto, Canadá.

También vienen Quintín Rivera Toro, y Vanessa Hernández Gracía, ambos de Puerto Rico, la poeta hondureña Valeria Cobos y las panameñas Blanca Van Hoorde, y Susana González-Revilla, así como el salvadoreño Crack Rodríguez y la sensacional Elia Arce de Costa Rica.

Es muy importante decir que este festival está dedicado a la memoria del artista hondureño César A. Manzanares, uno de los pioneros del arte de performance en Centroamérica que no pudo acompañarnos porque nos dejó a principios de este año.

Como parte de las actividades del festival le propuse a varias organizaciones que trabajan en Nueva York llevar a cabo alguna vinculación, con ello, importantes figuras como Marlène Ramirez-Cancío, directora de EmergeNYC y BAX Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Ezequiel Taveras, Chief Curator de New York Latin American Art Trienal NYLAAT, Natasha Voliakovsky de Argentina Performance Art, así como los codirectores de Grace Exhibition Space, Jill McDermid y Erik Hokanson y, por supuesto, The Interior Beauty Salon, ofrecerán un panel para dialogar en torno a la importancia de realizar un festival de arte performance que visibilice esta región de América y que le permita conocer a los Neoyorkinos otras maneras de crear.

El festival contará cada noche con observadores invitados para hacer un review que se incluirá en un librillo descargable en PDF al final. La primera en la lista en hacer estas reseñas es nada más y nada menos que Diana Taylor, una de las voces más experimentadas en el arte performance a nivel mundial.

Seguramente será un festín para los sentidos. Pueden consultar el programa completo visitando este enlace.

NDEREOM: Why performance art and why now? I will actually be perforing right after the US election? I pray that I perform within a spirit of celebration and not one of sorrow. What is in your opinion the role that politics might continue to play in the creative process in Central America and the Caribbean?

PL: El arte de performance es por lo general un arte contestatario. Es un arte que surge del cuerpo y utiliza al cuerpo como uno de sus elementos principales. El performance tiene más de cincuenta años de existencia, pero mucha gente todavía lo considera como el patito feo, como si fuera un arte menor. Ciertamente en Nueva York el arte del performance es una actividad común y constante, con importantes foros y espacios dedicados a la producción y promoción de este tipo de propuestas artísticas.

¿Por qué el arte de performance? Porque aún sigue siendo un arte experimental y vivo, capaz de generar reacciones inmediatas. Cabe señalar que el performance en muchas partes de Estados Unidos y Europa proviene de las artes escénicas, mientras que en México y otras partes de América, muchas veces nace de las artes visuales, con notables diferencias creativas y de uso de recursos, por lo que es un arte que se presenta a nivel mundial e incluso en algunas ocasiones han prohibido esta práctica en países como China.

Grace Exhibition Space tiene esa vocación, la de difundir el performance, de abrir sus puertas para compartir experiencias y disfrutar del arte a través de acciones sin límites ni censuras. Cabe destacar que en muchas ocasiones el performance toma sus temas de la vida misma, criticando la realidad y los acontecimientos que afectan la vida cotidiana. Los países de Centroamérica y el Caribe tienen una historia interesante en cuanto a performance, no tan conocida ni estudiada, pero con una larga trayectoria que vale la pena compartir.

Es un proyecto que se viene gestando desde hace meses y ahora es momento de disfrutar los resultados.

NDEREOM: Tell me about your own performance work and how this might dialogue with your research and curation?

PL: Mi trabajo personal va hacia las estéticas de lo cotidiano, me interesa la manera en que surgen las relaciones interpersonales y la manera en que nos vinculamos afectivamente con otras personas. Mi trabajo surgió explorando mi cuerpo, la manera en que me veía la gente y como yo me sentía invisible por la obesidad, Empecé explorando los efectos de comer, de sacar de contexto el acto de comer y posteriormente el tema de las recetas, del ritual de la comida, el ritual del café, qué pasa alrededor del café y la sobremesa, el uso y abuso de la sal, las enfermedades que a veces produce el desorden alimenticio, como la diabetes, que en mi caso se desató por un abuso de refrescos como la Coca-Cola.

Como dije, me interesan las relaciones interpersonales, y eso fue lo que me llevó a curar festivales de performance, vincularme con artistas de otras latitudes y poder generar encuentros. Eso fue lo que ocurrió en los festivales que organicé: Performagia que duró siete años desde el Museo Universitario del Chopo, o los festivales independientes Transmuted y Extra, así como el festival de videoperformance Eject, todos ejemplos de esa interacción y la vinculación entre artistas, instituciones y el público asistente.

Me interesa generar diálogos, la convivencia, el reto de organizar los foros, conversatorios y presentaciones de performance. Siempre falta presupuesto, siempre hay problemas que resolver para organizar los festivales, siempre alguien se enoja, y aunque a lo largo de estos años he tenido algunas pérdidas, los resultados siempre son formidables.

Las investigaciones que he estado realizando se han hecho a partir de la entrevista, afortunadamente estudié periodismo en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México UNAM, lo que me ha dado algunos instrumentos para trabajar desde otros ángulos con herramientas que muchos artistas no necesariamente tienen. Aprendí a redactar desde muy joven, y eso me ha ayudado, lo único que no aprendí bien a bien, fue a cobrar y hacer dinero…

Actualmente, y hasta el 6 de octubre de este año, se exhibe mi retrospectiva de 25 años de trabajo El Picnic y la Sobremesa en el Museo de la Ciudad de México, misma que cuenta con la curaduría del comisario Mexicano Irving Domínguez.

NDEREOM: What is your relationship with Grace Exhibition Space?

PL: Conocí a Jill y a Hoke en 2009, en el festival Open que tuvo lugar en Beijing, China. Desde entonces, hemos estado en constante relación; nos vimos después en San Luis Potosí, México, en otro festival. En ciudad de México, hemos estado juntos en festivales en Ex Teresa, Casa Viva y otros lugares. Son amigos muy queridos y muy generosos, que me han invitado en muchas ocasiones venir a Nueva York, a participar en Grace Space y en la granja Rose Kill en up state Nueva York. Me tocó también conocer al hermano de Grace Space, una Galeria llamada Gray Zone, en la que pudimos hacer una noche de performance. He trabajado con ellos prácticamente en todas las sedes que han tenido, en GES cuando estaba en Bushwick y ahora la nueva sede en Manhattan, en Lower East Side. También me tocó participar en línea con Grace Space en la pandemia con performance en streaming, en vivo, donde pudimos vincularnos con Celeste Flores, Lucy, Magaña, Isis Pérez, y Laura Lubozac, mis colegas de perfoREDmx, la Red Mexicana de Performance.

Sin duda, Grace Space ha sido un lugar importante para mi crecimiento, un lugar donde he podido llevar a cabo mis fantasías curatoriales y hasta algunos caprichos performáticos.

NDEREOM: I will miss seeing performances from Mexico and some of the incredible amigues like César Martinez Silva. Are there any common threads activating current performance art actions in Latin America or do these threads change as we move through different regions? I am asking because of the political similarities as well as differences within our part of the planet?

PL: En ocasiones anteriores me ha tocado trabajar con Grace exhibition Space trayendo artistas mexicanos, hace un par de años vine con la famosa y fabulosa artista pionera del performance mexicano María Eugenia Chellet, así como los y las artistas Niña Yhared, Edgar Avila, Quetzal Belmont, etc. En esta ocasión la propuesta surge por la publicación de mi libro Centroamérica en acción. Por esa razón es que decidimos trabajar específicamente con los países que integran la región centroamericana e incorporar artistas de Puerto Rico y de República Dominicana. Espero que más adelante se puedan llevar a cabo presentaciones con artistas mexicanos y que no sea el primer y único festival CENTRAL.

Regularmente los países latinoamericanos trabajan desde la política, desde la queja, la rupture y la incertidumbre, desde poéticas generadas por la opresión y la marginación, con un cuerpo de obra que muchas veces no es complaciente, por el contrario, es feroz, punzante y hasta violento, se trabaja desde el cuerpo, pues muchas veces no hay otros elementos, eso es lo que hermana la creación de performance latinoamericano, pues lamentablemente en muchos de estos países, la violencia es el punto de partida del performance. Este festival es solamente un termómetro y no está afiliado a ningún otro partido más que al del arte acción y la creación artística, buscando compartir con el público para generar el diálogo.

Y tienes toda la razón, el compa César Martínez, es a todo dar.

NDEREOM: Now that I think about it, it has been such a huge loss not to witness, attend or even hear about the Encuentros that The Hemispheric Institute for Performance Art and Politics used to organized in different countries of the Americas. What you are doing at Grace Exhibition Space carries in some ways that tradition and keeps the spirit of la convivencia creativa alive. Any comments?

PL: Yo creo que el Encuentro Hemisférico de Performance y Política fue un evento que marcó a muchos de nosotros. Diana Taylor tuvo la visión de generar un encuentro intercontinental que pudo unir fronteras desde el arte, el performance y la antropología, de una manera muy orgánica. Yo tuve la fortuna de asistir a los encuentros en Monterrey, Montreal, Sao Paulo y Ciudad de México, así como a un curso especial que el Hemi hizo en San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México. Aprendí muchísimo y sobre todo, gané muchos amigos, entre ellos, tú.

Este festival de performance centroamericano, ciertamente tiene ese espíritu, el de disolver fronteras por medio del performance y hablar desde el cuerpo, criticando la política, los abusos y la cuestión de la disidencia sexual. Es un espacio para comparar puntos de vista sobre temas fuertes y actuales. De hecho me da mucho gusto comenzar con Diana Taylor como observadora de la primera noche, con ella siento justamente el espíritu del Hemi en presencia, metafóricamente hablando. Hay otros observadores, uno cada quince, y además habrá una charla donde artistas, gestores y curadores locales, donde hablarán de la relevancia de hacer un festival como éste en una ciudad como Nueva York, tomando en cuenta que Grace Exhibition Space es una galería que no ha dejado de hacer presentaciones de performance dándole la oportunidad a artistas emergentes de presentarse a la par de renombrados artistas como Guillermo Gomez-Peña o el grupo Non Grata, por mencionar a algunos. GES Es para mí una referencia en el mundo del performance neoyorquino, abierta a todo mundo.

Como ya mencioné se suman interesantes iniciativas locales: BAX y EMERGENYC, The Interior Beauty Salon, Argentina Performance Art y NYLAAT, lo que yo creo que certifica la presencia y relevancia de este grupo de artistas centroamericanos en la ciudad de Nueva York. De otras partes del mundo, se suma el Museo La Neomudéjar con Francisco Brives y Néstor Prieto, codirectores de este espectacular museo, ubicado en el centro de Madrid, así como Building Bridges, una galeria ubicada en Santa Mónica, California, dirigida por Marisa Caichiolo, quienes ofrecen sus redes para replicar lo que ocurra en el festival, asimismo -RACA-, comandada por Ever Rodas, será un importante aliado desde ciudad de Guatemala. La Red Mexicana de Performance –perfoREDmx- ha sido la plataforma que yo he utilizado para conformar los festivales de performance en los que me ha tocado trabajar como curador/organizador, siendo un espacio de difusión desde el cual he podido colaborar con otras instituciones. Como sea, la suma de organizaciones amigas, creo que me ayudará a ampliar el impacto de CENTRAL, y espero que la comunidad artística neoyorquina, reciba con gusto e interés esta actividad, y que nos apoye y acompañe.

NDEREOM: I am so much looking forward to seeing you in New York and meeting the group that you are bringing together. Apapachos masivos, querido.

PL: It will be a continuous party for me receiving groups of artists over three months. And of course it´s a pleasure to participate with The Interior Beauty Salon. Nunca te di las gracias por las cerezas, todavía me las sigo saboreando.

NDEREOM: Espero regreses a Nueva York cuando sea el tiempo de cerezas.

Pancho López’s links: CENTRAL / Instagram

Pancho López (México, 1972) es un artista de performance interesado en la vida cotidiana y los sentimientos de la naturaleza humana, y cómo ésta se conecta con las expresiones artísticas. Egresado de la licenciatura de Ciencias de la Comunicación en la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Fundador y director de Extra! Festival Internacional de Performance Art. Durante once años fue jefe del Departamento de Performance y Arte Actual del Museo Universitario del Chopo. Coordinó el Encuentro Internacional de Performance Performagia del 2003 al 2009 y editó en coordinación con la UNAM siete catálogos de este encuentro en 2011. Las series de performance más importantes de Pancho López es “Picnic Formal”, presentado de 1997 hasta 2007 en México, Estados Unidos y Canadá; “Sal de Mesa”, presentada en México, Venezuela, Uruguay y República Dominicana; e “Ira (Rabia Contenida)”, elaborado en México, China, Canadá y Polonia. Fue columnista por cinco años en el diario La Crónica de Hoy (sección Cultura). Trabajó como coordinador de Proyectos culturales en 2012-2013 para la Fundación UNAM. Ha recibido becas del Centro Multimedia del Centro Nacional de las Artes (CENART), el Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo (PAC) y de la Fundación Jumex. En 2021 publicó el libro “Centroamérica en acción. Una aproximación al performance centroamericano y algunos de sus protagonistas” editado por el Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (MADC) de San José Costa Rica, con el apoyo del Museo La Neomudéjar, el Centro Cultural de España de Costa Rica, la Red de Arte del Centro de América (RACA) y la Fundación Jumex. Ha sido curador de exposiciones para el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá, el Museo para la Identidad Nacional (MIN) de Honduras, el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Querétaro, el Museo La Neomudéjar de Madrid y el Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (MADC) de San José, Costa Rica. Actualmente realiza una estancia curatorial en el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Querétaro y la residencia en Governors´ Island organizada por NYLAAT, en la ciudad de Nueva York.

Violetta Bogdanova

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Violetta, we met in Almaty, Kazakhstan, through Anvar Musrepov. What a gorgeous city! My time there was brief and yet I was able to connect with creatives in the area and to get a general sense for the work that is happening in this place. For example, Zhanar Bereketova’s exhibition was one of the highlights of my trip. You and I discussed your interest in performance art and now I would like to hear more about it.

Violetta Bogdanova: Hello, Nicolás! I’m happy you enjoyed your short stay in Almaty! I can’t describe my love for this place.

I am really interested in performance and, so far, the best feelings I’ve experienced as an artist were after my performances. These were really transformative experiences. I felt that life divided “before” and “after.” But I think you can’t make these kinds of performances often and you rarely can repeat them. So, I don’t want to call myself a “performance artist.” I want only to do them when I feel that I have no choice; when I have something to say.

NDEREOM: Would you tell me about the birthday celebration that you organized in 2023? It is obvious that people were coming out and starting to gather after some of the most intense Covid waves. What was the impetus for this event and what were some of the synergies that manifested?

VB: Actually, we planned to repeat the poetic performance that I made on my show opening, but the accordionist with whom we made it got traumatized and we cancelled it. In a couple of days I decided to celebrate a Birthday of Everyone in the exhibition space. I love spontaneous art, I love humor and I love joy, game, something childish in art. Usually in the walls of Tselinny, people talk (exhibit) about very serious discourses. I wanted to do something that made absolutely no sense but that brought joy. We sat at a huge table with mostly people who have never met each other. When a new person joined, we would scream to them, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY.” I also asked everyone to show their talents. Some people could fart with their armpits. Anvar showed how he can spin plate on his finger and beatbox. Some people from the streets, children, my friends, serious curators and artists–we were all in this absurd, stupid, cringing situation and I loved it. I also loved that everyone became an artist in this situation.

I think we should take art less seriously and do it only from a clear inner desire; like a child.

NDEREOM: Food seems to be central in Central Asia. The beautiful breads, the fruits… Everywhere I went, the gatherings involved food and eating in ways that many people have done away with here in the United States. Food in Central Asia, much like in Europe and Latin America is meant to nourish the soul, deepen friendships, and bring time to a halt. I often joke as to how in the United Sates we swallow our food, and how food is seen as fuel to keep the body producing in a capitalist society. Flavors here are related to mostly salty and sweet items. That’s it. Tell me about art and eating for you?

VB: Here in Kazakhstan food was always something that unites people. From cooking to eating. I love it and it’s a bit sad that in big cities people, for some reason, rarely invite people to their place for dinner, etc. Maybe I am mistaken but that is what I have noticed while raveling the world.

It is also interesting how Almaty formed a new food culture. To be honest, the best restaurants I’ve been to were in Almaty. Here people know how to enjoy life. We have hundreds of restaurants with absolutely beautiful summer terraces (we call it letnik). And even if it’s your last bit of money you cannot deny yourself from ordering something delicious in a fancy restaurant–at least once a week, and better still once a day.

Speaking of art - in my personal practice I used food only on the Birthday of Everyone. But food was not that important in this piece. I would say, it was part of the “stage design.”

NDEREOM: For one thing, it was difficult for me to find vegetarian or vegan food in Central Asia. Similarly, I noticed how several artists used bones as well as other non-human animal elements in their work. What would you say are the materials that inform your performance-based work, which you mentioned is a field that you are starting to explore?

VB: Most of my performances are narrative or poetic, so my main material is language–for now. Maybe something will change.

And yeah, here in Kazakhstan we have different views on animals. My friend killed a sheep when he was 10 because “it was time for him.” I also play with my friends. It’s a game with the knee bones of a sheep (called asyk). So, it surrounds us everywhere; and of course finds its place in art.

NDEREOM: A great deal of my interest in the work that is produced in the region is its connections to the avant-garde, but also to play, to the absurd and to humor. What is the story behind How my Dad Sold the Garage? Would you be willing to publish this book online, through The Salon? 

VB: I am happy that you liked it! I think life is the best artist. Everything from this book is the absolute truth. My dad really sold the garage and our life changed.

I always record my relatives in my Instagram stories and people always say they are so funny. Maybe they formed who I am. I think so many things around us deserve being an art. Even the story of my dad selling our garage.  And yeah, I don’t mind publishing the book!

NDEREOM: In Nothing Important, the series of drawings that you generated during a full year, you speak of poetry and the day-to-day. In your description for this piece, you wonder about the locus for the mundane within the gallery space. What made you ponder on this particular issue?

VB: I have read different philosophers. I was close to become part of different religions and I also studied journalism at a university. This all brought me to the idea that we know nothing (hi, Socrates). I was kind of sure only about things that surround me. Now I know only that I am sitting on the sofa and replying to your questions. That was period when I didn’t believe in anything except the physical reality around me at that exact moment.  I am also huge fan of the Japanese poet Basho. He definitely affected this series.

NDEREOM: BOOK IS A BOOK put a smile on my face. I am drawn by the simplicity and the humor in this publication and the video that you created. How do you balance the political and the experimental in your work?

VB: To be honest, I believe there’s nothing political in my practice. Of course, any artistic gesture can be political. Of course, not making political art is also a “position.”.But I honestly enjoy life. I love life. And it’s so much more complicated and amazing than social structures. Also, as I mentioned, I studied journalism at a university and there are reasons why I was disappointed with that. If I wanted to save the world and fight for justice, I would have become a journalist, not an artist. And book is a book is also ode to material world, to simplicity, to life.

NDEREOM: As result of climate crisis, we barely see snow in New York City anymore. I have a closet full of vintage coats that I yearn to bring them out and wear again, but it is not cold enough. Your video The Snowman made me nostalgic for contact with this wondrous being that descends from the sky to kiss the world. Who is snow in your video?

VB: I was born in Northern Kazakhstan and winter and snow are very important for me. It’s nothing. It’s zero. It’s silence. It’s white paper. It’s something that filters in your brain and body. I moved to Almaty and I always complain about winter in here. I need my -30 Celsius. I need my 6 months of whiteness.

NDEREOM: It is very difficult to be at peace in life with so many of the events that are happening, from the genocides in Palestine and Ukraine, to the systemic ravaging of Haiti by empire. However, you have titled one of your pieces I am Satisfied with Everything. How so?

VB: My opinion, this phrase is probably not very popular in the 21st century, but I am satisfied with everything in my life. I have faced sorrow, sadness in love, death, but I have also experienced huge love, pure joy and beauty. And I don’t regret anything. And I adore everything that I have experienced.

In this performance I told everyone everything I am ashamed of: from some stupidity (like I put my snot in places that were not made for that), to sincere and serious things (like I never told my mom that I love her) and that “I think that what I am doing is mediocre.” I also shared how “I watch complicated movies to seem smarter than I am” and that “I don’t pity homeless animals.” I haven’t killed anyone–you know–but I feel guilty of being me. I even feel weird that I’m satisfied with everything. I do think the world needs changes in a lot of fields. I also think you should save yourself first. Then the world. And listen to yourself.

And speaking of world disasters, if an earthquake would happen in Almaty I will go and save people from the ruins. If my hometown Petropavl keeps flooding, I will send more money and clothes. If I need to sign a petition for criminalizing domestic violence in Kazakhstan, I will. But I don’t know what a 24 years old girl from Kazakhstan with poor knowledge of history can do with the situation in Ukraine and Palestine. And why this should affect my enjoyment of life and art.

NDEREOM: How is it for you to be creative in Almaty?

VB: I love it. We don’t have huge museums, educational programs, grants…, but in this situation you only make art if you cannot to make it into the art world because you know that you won’t get famous or make money. I see some honesty in our art scene. I visited Bishkek some weeks ago and their art community seemed even more alive though. As one of their artists said, “artists from Almaty know a lot of terms, but our artists have thinner (more developed) brush.”

I also love that we are not a huge city. I love this feeling of community. I love that everyone knows each other, but there’s always a chance to meet someone new here.

NDEREOM: I am grateful for this conversation with you.

VB: Thank you for your questions. I enjoyed our conversation too!

All images of Violetta Bogdanova

Violetta Bogdanova’s links: Website / Instagram

Violetta Bogdanova is an artist born in Petropavlovsk and now based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She is engaged in painting, performance, theater, poetry and video art. Her works almost always contain humor, simplicity, extreme sincerity, vulnerability and fragility. 

In 2022 Violetta’s first personal exhibition Nothing Important took place in Tselinny. The artist also participated in Artbat Fest, the April Fools' competition in Bishkek, and has exhibited as well at Sapar Contemporary, TSE Art Destination, YEMAA Art Space.

Violetta has worked in cities such as Petropavl, Tokyo, Shanghai, Milan, Moscow, and Beijing.

David f Ostwald

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: I attended Soaring Gardens in 2010, and I stayed at the church. I recall how I specifically asked for this space because of the nature of my work and its connections to spiritualities. At the time, I also wanted to be by myself. What are the histories/herstories/theirstories of the house and the church in regards to Ora Lerman and her own work?

David f Ostwald: Ora bought the Laceyville house in 1973. At the time it felt financially daring, but it was the fulfillment of a dream. From the moment she finished her graduate degree in painting at the Pratt Institute in 1968, she had longed for a place in the country where she could explore her interest in landscape painting. At first it was out of the question. She was barely eking out a living working several part-time teaching jobs in New York. Then in 1971 she got a faculty position at Suffolk Community College. With her improved financial prospects, she began searching for a place in New England, but was quickly discouraged by how far beyond her means was even the smallest bit of Vermont.

However, fortune smiled when she went to visit a painter friend in Pennsylvania. As Ora told it, her friend took her by the hand and drove her around the countryside to find her a place. When they discovered a rambling old five-bedroom house with an adjacent two-story machine shop sitting on twenty-three acres of untended farmland, her friend was sure they had hit paydirt. How could you beat the $20,000 price? Ora hesitated. Could she really come up with $151.61 each month? Fortunately for us all, her friend insisted.

It turned out that the property has an interesting history. The story is that two local brothers went to California and hit at least a small amount of “paydirt.” They returned, bought an entire section of land, built this house and the barn next door, and began farming.

Ora began to spend her summers at her new country home. Although she only sort of camped out in the big house, she converted the upstairs of the machine shop into a most satisfactory studio with a bank of windows looking out over the nearby rolling hills. On the far horizon her view included the silhouette of the “Endless Mountains,” as the locals call the northern end of the Appalachians.

For the first couple of years, she did watercolors and paintings of the surrounding landscapes and many studies of flowers. Ironically, after only a few years Ora’s interest shifted away from landscapes to figurative paintings, and except for her continuing delight in doing water colors of flowers, her paintings were set in interior spaces. 

Curiously, the event that brought about the biggest change to the landscape of her country place occurred in France. In 1988 Ora received a grant from the Readers Digest Foundation to spend six months as an artist-in-residence at Monet’s estate at Giverny. The gardens there reignited her love of flowers, and she began to wish for a garden of her own. It was then she realized that she could create a “Giverny” in Pennsylvania. And so she began creating “Soaring Gardens.”

By the spring of 1992, when we met, she had already created the allée with its five green arches and many of the old stone walls had been rebuilt. She had also created flowerbeds and erected curious trellises. Once a gardening novice, Ora soon became an expert on the plants that interested her most. Inevitably they sported extravagant flowers: wisteria, lilacs, clematis, peonies, lilies, and tulips.

By the time we were married in 1994, the house and studio were no longer just a summer retreat, but the refuge where we also spent most of our spring and fall weekends. Ora remodeled her studio again with a dramatic slanted ceiling designed to catch the northern light; we created a small lake, and the house itself began to get the loving attention that it so badly needed.

Ora had no relationship with the Church because it was gifted to the Trust three years after she died. I hope you’ll be able to come back and stay there again, as I think you will be happily impressed with the way we have gradually improved it.

NDEREOM: I would love to return, David. It is interesting how Ora Lerman traveled the world–I would say for inspiration and for connection–and how today the movement outwards that she made into other places has reversed. I am saying this because you have creatives from many locations traveling to Soaring Gardens, so the pilgrimage has changed course. Any thoughts about that?

DfO: Although Ora was born and raised in a small Kentucky town, I think in her heart she was always an internationalist. As soon as she could, she fled Campbellsville for New York, quickly dropped the use of her southern sounding name Ora Ann for Ora, and just as quickly erased every bit of her southern accent.

The seeds of her internationalism may have been planted by her parents, particularly her father, who came to New York with his four brothers from a small village in the Ukraine in the twenties. How they landed in Kentucky I’m not sure, but, like other Jewish immigrants of the time, they began making their way as street merchants and ended up owning a chain of successful department stores. Her father, however, was never much interested in the business and as soon as he retired, he and Ora’s mother moved to Israel where he could pursue his real passion which was Torah studies.

Ora’s foreign travel started with a Fulbright she received at 25 to study sumi-ye (brush calligraphy) in Japan. That trip was highly influential and led to visits to many countries over the years. As she later wrote, “To develop a repertory of images, I have needed to visit, work and explore symbols in key places on the globe.” I’m quite sure that her awareness of the importance of travel to support her creativity, made her sympathetic to that potential need in other artists.

In a sense, between being born before World War II and being of European parents, her grounding was quite old fashioned—consider her attraction to traditional Japanese brush painting, the works of Manet and her commitment to painting with “the old masters medium” which she mixed herself. Somehow, she had a profound affinity to the artists who gathered in Paris at the turn of the last century and their bohemian lifestyle, which manifested in her fierce commitment to the women’s movement and, in a more light hearted way, her eclectic mode of dressing.

As we know, after the end of World War II, the center of the contemporary art world began to shift to the Untied States and by the late sixties New York had become the new Paris. So it is hardly surprising that the United States became the new pilgrimage destination for artists from around the world. We are fortunate to offer a creative space to at least some of them at Soaring Gardens. 

NDEREOM: Tell me about the gardens within the context of the residency and perhaps the impetus for those who apply to attend the program? I am curious as well about residents working with themes of healing, something that some of us have been doing for decades and that now have been accepted within the arts. Have you seen any shift in this direction in terms of residents?

DfO: To my observation the importance of the gardens as a magnet for the residents varies enormously. For the plein aire artists their attraction is obvious; less clear is how important they are to the other visual artists, the writers and the music folks. However, I think of near universal appeal is the chance to get out of the city and to be in a setting that emphasizes the opportunity to “create in tranquility,”–our motto, and one of which I am proud. (It is in support of a tranquil environment that we do not allow children, guests, or pets.)

This year, for the first time, thanks to the energy of our residency manager, we were able to have an extensive vegetable garden, which not only supplied an abundance of healthy food, but gave our residents a chance to enjoy more direct interactions with the plants and soil. Our two locally based gardeners are very knowledgeable about the amazingly large variety of herbal and edible plants on our twenty-three acres. Sensitive to the increased interest in combining art and healing, the very trend you mention, they offered occasional guided walks which were much appreciated. In fact, there is sufficient interest among some residents and certainly in our gardeners that we will be expanding our plantings of native and medicinal plants and herbs this year.

In the years ahead we are planning to develop an historical garden, a “Giverny in Pennsylvania,” based on Monet’s garden in France. I expect, like his, it will have edible plants as well as ones chosen for their beauty. 

NDEREOM: What is the vision for Soaring Gardens as more artists are working outside and seeking to connect with communities? And how would you say the space might serve as a refuge for those who, like me, do work centered on encounters and with social networks within towns and city? 

DfO: It seems as if we’re thinking in the same direction. It is my hope that in the next few years we will increase our interactions with the surrounding communities. We are starting in this direction by reserving the Church for a week this June where we will offer art classes for young people from the Montrose area, which is about 20 miles north of us. As we expand our offerings in the coming years, we are committed to using working artists as our teachers. I can imagine that in the future some of the faculty will be Soaring Garden’s alumni or artists who are in residence. This summer the teacher will be artist Josephine Dunn. 

We see this as the beginning of a commitment not only to bring local people to our home base, but to make a variety of offerings available in nearby communities.

In a different, but not unrelated direction, starting last summer we began making an active effort to make our residency program known and available to artists from minority and under-served communities. And in one season we went from a program attended almost exclusively by white artists to one in which almost half of our residents were from those groups. 

NDEREOM: The issue of legacies and archives comes up over and over for creatives, especially as we age. There is the impeding presence of mortality. How would you say programs like Soaring Gardens can serve both to honor and keep an artistic legacy alive, while going beyond the honoree to open possibilities for other creatives? This is a major concern for artists who make objects.

DfO: It is not a problem for folks like myself who make various forms of theater, which only exist while they are happening. However, along with the residency program, the other branch of the Ora Lerman Charitable Trust is taking care of Ora’s artistic legacy. The Trust is deeply committed to exploring legacy issues. To that end, we have sponsored a series of public panel discussions in NYC discussing them. But, of course, the center of our focus is taking care of Ora’s legacy. We hold about 90 of her oil paintings, and 1,500 of her works on paper. In past years we have published an elegant catalogue and sponsored several exhibitions of her work. Currently we are making a compete survey with images of all our holdings, which will be available in digital form into the future. More immediately the archive will serve as a resource from which we intend to develop a number of small exhibitions as well as for sales and possible gifting.

NDEREOM: I know your title within the foundation. However, what is your involvement in the program behind the scenes. In other words, how do you continue to keep in touch with it beyond administrative tasks?

DfO: My arrangement with the Trust is that the Trust has the use of our property near Laceyville in Pennsylvania from mid-May to mid-September for use as an artist residency. I have the use of it the rest of the time. The house is not winterized, but I and my wife are regularly in residence there from mid-March into May and in October and November. While we are there, I pay close attention to the maintenance that needs to be done. I oversee the work, as well as envisioning improvements that will make our spaces serve our residents better. This brings me into close contact with our staff of gardeners, maintenance and cleaning people. We have made a commitment to taking good care of the environment. We compost, have solar panels and a heat pump and we only use organic materials to take care of our gardens.

NDEREOM: What parts of you does Soaring Garden might nurture? I will always remember my meeting with the church space. I never told you, but the work I did while in residence entailed caring for the place. I dusted, swept, cleaned… every corner. Not that this was not cleaned, but that was my way of building relationship. I actually wrote a piece that I hope to find and publish in the near future. It is somewhere in my archives. 

DfO: My quite constant supervision of improvements to the House, Studio, Church and gardens, although quite time consuming, does feed my sense of being of service. At the same time, my wife and I enjoy luxuriating in the magical tranquility of Soaring Gardens, nurturing our spirits with walks in the woods and quiet morning meditations. For me it is also a place of creative work. Much of my book on Acting for Singers published in 2005 was written there. It has also has offered creative space for writing my current book on Opera Stage Directing, which is serving to help bring closure to my more than fifty-five years of directing.

NDEREOM: Thank you so much, David. I hope to visit Soaring gardens soon.

David f Ostwald’s / Ora Lerman’s / and Soaring Garden’s links: Acting for Singers / I Gave You My Song: The Art of Ora Lerman / Soaring Gardens website / Application to Soaring Gardens / David f Ostwald’s website / Ora Lerman’s webiste

David Ostwald has directed over 170 productions of plays and operas in the United States and abroad. They span the centuries from the Renaissance to the present and encompass Shakespeare to Shepard and Monteverdi to Moran.

David has also maintained an active teaching career specializing in teaching acting to singers. His book, Acting For Singers, published in 2005 by Oxford University Press has been widely adopted as a classroom text. It is available at Amazon in both printed and e-book formats.

In June 2019, David directed the world premiere of COLLOQUIA, a play by David Zarko in Orvieto, Italy. In July 2019, he was on the faculty of Premiere Opera Vocal Arts Institute, Trani, Italy.

Currently he is team teaching an acting class for singers online for the University of Central Florida with Thomas Potter, Head of the Opera Program there. He is also engaged in writing a book on opera stage directing.

Best known for her colorful narrative paintings inspired by folk tales and Aesop’s Fables, Ora Lerman often drew on her personal collection of handmade toys and dolls acquired during her travels. They appear in her work as protagonists, delivering life’s most essential lessons.

Born in Campbellsville, Kentucky, of Russian Jewish parents, she earned a BA at Antioch College and an MFA at Pratt Institute. From 1971 to 1998, she was professor of art at Suffolk Community College.

During those years, she maintained active studios in New York City and Laceyville, Pennsylvania, where she had a country home. After her death in 1998, her Laceyville property became part of the Ora Lerman Charitable Trust, and since 2000 the trust has offered summer residencies through the Soaring Gardens Artists Retreat.

A dedicated activist for women in the arts, she was one of the founders of the New York chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art and contributed a number of articles about women artists to ARTS magazine. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for study in Japan (1963—1965) and later studied in India under an International Exchange of Scholars (1989). Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Regional Fellowship (1992), Reader’s Digest Artists-in-Residence in Giverny, France (1988), Pennsylvania State Council on the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship (1988), and Andrew Mellon Fellowship (1984).

Her impressive sixty-foot mural, Inside the Ark (1993—1995), commissioned by New York City’s Percent for Art program, is permanently installed in Public School 176 in Manhattan.

Soaring Gardens Artists Retreat in Laceyville, PA, offers visual artists, writers, and composers, and instrumentalists a quiet country setting for residencies to focus on their creative endeavors. Spaces are available from mid-May to mid-September. Soaring Gardens has no fees, makes no demands, and there are no intrusions from the administration—only the studios, gardens, deer, other creatures, and time. 

The residency is located in a farmhouse with an adjacent studio building and in a small nearby church. At any time, there are only a few artists in residence—usually three or four residents at the farmhouse and two at the church. Since residents share the living spaces, we encourage artists to apply as a group (a combination of artistic disciplines is fine), although applications from individuals are also welcome.

Residents are encouraged to have a car to get to Soaring Gardens and to use while they are in residence. However, transportation will be provided to and from nearby cities for arrival and departure at Soaring Gardens, and to help run some errands during their stay as needed. There is no public transportation close by. With the exception of a weekly communal dinner, artists are expected to shop, cook, and clean up after themselves; a gardener maintains the grounds. As the purpose of the residency is to provide time for undisturbed work, no children, pets, or overnight visitors are permitted. Read our Native Land Acknowledgment

Yuliya Lanina

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Yuliya, I first saw your work at Artpace in San Antonio, while I was traveling during my residency at UT, Austin. The gallery was on the way to the place that I had rented and I went inside to see if anything interesting was happening. I am so glad I did stop and got to experience your installation Mother/Land. How did this installation come about?

Yuliya Lanina: I was very fortunate to have been selected for participating in Artpace by curator Gabriella Rangel and to have time, space and resources to dedicate to the project. The installation that you saw was about the war in Ukraine. My father was from Ukraine and my mother from Russia, so the war affected me to my core. Since Russia invaded Ukraine I could not do anything other than follow the news. My previous work and projects had lost their meaning and I had stopped working for a while. As weeks went by, I felt that I needed to find a way to express how I was feeling and I started making drawings about what I was witnessing: people, events, feelings. I would spend hours making drawings while listening to the news. While at Artpace, I turned my drawings into an animation that was projected on the large wall at the gallery, and that scrolled through slightly animated images to create a viewing experience similar to scrolling war-related stories on social media. My collaborator Nina C. Young created a soundtrack out of samples of a Ukrainian hymn and her field recordings, These added another layer to the animation. Having a large space allowed me to work on large paper scrolls that I covered the walls with. Every day I would add a layer of writing to the scrolls. Eventually these scrolls became large one-eyed flowers that were spread around the gallery to complement a wall collage that represented my uneasy relationship with Russia, the country where I grew up, as well as my relationship with my mother, whom I lost to cancer when I was a teenager. 

NDEREOM: I am naturally drawn to flowers and they are a subject in your creative practice. I see in your work a mix of what could be flowers from the Americas as well as from Europe. What is the impetus of bringing these sexual creatures into what you do artistically? How do flowers from two distant parts of the planet coexist in your praxis at a conceptual but also at an emotional level?

YL: I am from both continents. I spent more than 30 years in the US, yet my formative years were spent in Soviet Union. My father and I went camping a lot when I was a kid and we also traveled around the Soviet Union every summer. The flowers in the show stem from my memories of seeing vast poppy fields, a common sight in Eastern Europe, and being in awe of their beauty. Flowers always bring me joy. They are so complicated, so beautiful and multidimensional. I strive to bring all these qualities into my work.

NDEREOM: We met in person at the University of Texas at Austin, where you teach, and where I was a Senior lecturer. It was great to have the opportunity to interact with you after seen your work at Artpace. How are you traveling through Texas mentally and spiritually, whatever spiritually might mean for you?

YL: I’ve been in Austin now for 13 years now and yet I still feel like a foreigner here. Culturally it is very different. But there are plusses and minuses wherever you go. Going away to residencies during summers definitely helps to keep me sane.

NDEREOM: I admit that, while I have been to Texas through many different decades during this longer stay I was culture shocked and, at times, I would ponder on feeling more at home in Sarajevo than in Austin. It took me a long while to get my feet on the ground on the Lone Star and I thank my caring neighbors for this. I am wondering what it takes to be a creative, a woman presenting person and yes, a foreigner, in Texas at this time in History with a big H?

YL: I definitely feel like an outsider. The good news is that Austin does have a great creative and hardworking community. I also met wonderful artists from San Antonio as well as Houston and Dallas. My art can be created in any environment. Early on, I had to work in my kitchen in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. What I dislike is driving or spending time in traffic. So I turned my garage and half of my bedroom in Austin into a studio. I wish I had a larger space to create, but it’s definitely an upgrade from my Brooklyn kitchen.

NDEREOM: Pierre Molinier emerges in my mind as I watch your animations, installations and public pieces. There is the female Humpty Dumpty that you put together using, among other items, the legs of a female mannequin wearing fishnet stockings. In your case, what would be the fetish is inhabited by you, from within, rather than being sexualized by a male person, I think. Anything to say about this?

YL: I guess there are many aspects to it. I came to New York from Moscow, Russia without my family, at the age of 17, and everywhere I turned I felt that people projected their stuff onto me. I was this exotic young foreigner. I even remember one guy in Long Island calling his friends over so they could see this exotic Russian. This was in the early 1990s before a large wave of Jewish refugees from Russia arrived in the country. People, especially men, would treat me not as a person but as some exotic Russian doll. I often felt like a magnet for creepy men who flew to me like moths to a light bulb and didn’t care that that I wasn’t attracted to them. It took me to completely strip myself of all female attributes (hair, female identifying clothes, the way I walk) to finally be left alone. And so I play with that in my work. 

NDEREOM: Monsters or monstrous beings are so present in your work. I grew up engaging monsters in my dreams and came to fear some of them, especially at night. How do you deal with these uncanny creatures? I am also wondering about their therapeutic roles for you.

YL: My father used to collect Mongolian masks. I slept in a living room when I was a kid and these masks were the last thing I’d see before going to bed, and the first thing I’d see upon waking up. I was terrified of their scary faces, skulls, bloody mouths. I was also afraid of dark and scary movies, and my brother would tease me about monsters under the bed. However, making my own horror films is fun. The truth is these cannot be fictional horror films if they are about my own life. I don’t see the creatures that I make as scary. They give me comfort. In some ways they are my self-portraits. I guess because of the trauma I’ve experienced as an adolescent I started viewing myself as a monster, and so these are my relatives in some way. They are working things out– just like–me and they are harmless.

NDEREOM: There is humor within your animated landscapes, installations and theater productions. What makes you laugh these days where catastrophe seems to loom in the landscape in the shape of narcissistic creatures with penises trying to dominate our planet?

YL: When I get very stressed everything becomes funny to me. I am not sure why. And so, I find humor in the most painful places. Humor allows me to step outside myself and discover the absurd and ridiculous about my condition.

NDEREOM: You lived in the South Bronx, a place dear to me. I am biased. And to me the South Bronx is a realm like no other place in this country. What are some of your memories of your times here/there?

YL: One of my favorite things to do was to walk in Van Cortland Park. I would go there and just spend hours walking around. I loved it. It was always empty–no people. Later I learned it was because of the high level of crime there, but at the time I didn’t know it and the park felt like my safe space. My mother’s favorite place was the Bronx Botanical Garden. Towards the end of her life we would go there every weekend. I absolutely adore that place. One of the most profound moments happened for me in the Bronx. It was a hot summer day after my mother died (she had a long battle with cancer and the last two years were particularly painful), and I was feeling thirsty walking through a playground where my mom used to sit. I bought a $1 bottle of water and I took a sip. As I took the sip I felt the sun on my face, I heard the children laughter on the playground and in that moment I understood for the first time why my mother was holding on to life for so long. These moments are what make life worth living.

NDEREOM: I will stop here. I know that you have twins, teach, prepare for exhibitions, travel, and care for yourself. Thank you so much for engaging these seemingly random questions. I hope to see you again in Austin or in the Bronx.

YL: Thank you, Nicolas, for this wonderful conversation. Can’t wait to see you in the Bronx!

All images Courtesy of Yuliya Lanina

Yuliya Lanina’s links: Website / Instagram / UT

Yuliya Lanina is an interdisciplinary artist whose work bridges traditional media with new technologies. She creates alternate realities in her works—ones based on sexuality, trauma and identity.

Lanina has exhibited and performed extensively both nationally and internationally, including SXSW Interactive (TX), Seoul Art Museum (Korea), SIGGRAPH Asia (Japan), 798 Beijing Biennial (China), Cleveland Institute of Art (OH), Patrick Heide Gallery (London, UK), Teatro Santa Ana (Mexico), Blanton Museum of Art (TX), Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Russia), Vienna MuseumsQuartier (Austria) and Xposed gallery on New York City’s High Line.

Lanina's professional honors include fellowships and scholarships from Fulbright (Vienna, Austria), Headlands Art Center (CA), Yaddo (NY), Artpace (SA), Yaddo Fellowship (NY), Marble House Project (NY), The Puffin Foundation (NJ), and Honorable citation from New York State Assembly (NYC). Lanina’s most recent animation Gefilte Fish won Best International Short Film at Tamuz Shomron Film Festival (Israel) and an Honorable Mention at the Female Eye Film Festival (Canada).

Lanina is an Assistant Professor of Practice at the Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies at The University of Texas at Austin.

Sarah Rudledge

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: During these conversations I always like to highlight connections and how networks of support within the arts are formed. We met through Sean Lowry, who I met through Irina Danilova, who I met through Franklin Furnace… This is to bring to the forefront that everything and everyone is interconnected and to counter the celebration of individualism, which is pretty much part of the art industry. No question so far. The conversation is formally open and you can enter the dialogue in any way you wish.

Sarah Rudledge: Thank you, Nicolás. It’s a pleasure to be in conversation with you! I am talking with you from Narrm/Melbourne, Australia on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. Thank you for remembering the good people who connect us and bring us into each other’s orbit. And for shining the light on the interconnectedness of all beings and things, let’s begin!  

NDEREOM: You mention the focus on rituals in your work. Where do you trace this practice to, personally, and how do your rituals unfold in a place such as Australia where, like in the US, the conversation on occupied, unceded, or stolen territory is so relevant and weighs so heavily?

SR: What a wonderful place to begin; thank you, Nicolás. When I think of the importance of ritual to my practice, two experiences from my childhood come dancing and shimmying up before me—being outdoors and dressing up. From a young age, my sense of being outside was about communing with and paying careful attention to the natural world around me. From our ramshackle garden, the lone sheep that lived next door and further afield, over the back fence where the creek ran beneath giant old river red gums—there was so much to call in on and learn from. I found it was important and enlivening to go and converse with everything often. I think of these little repeated pilgrimages—to greet, play and gather knowledge—as my first rituals. I hold this time in my memory like a beautiful, messy map of great spiritual importance from my six-year-old self.

At the same time, I had this magical parallel experience of having clothing made for me by my mother. In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, it was cheaper to make clothes than to buy them, especially with four children. The intimate process of repeatedly trying on a garment before my mum was perhaps my earliest embodied experience of the transformative power of clothing. Undressing before her, being carefully helped into the pinned fabric, then gently turned around under her gaze, waiting for the frown to relax once she’d made a few neat adjustments and finally being released until the next fitting. The sweetness of that suspended maternal moment is perhaps why I find such comfort in handmade or second-hand clothing. I also loved the quiet action of physically and emotionally ‘trying on’ another aspect of who I might be.

Now, I am well into my forties. These two early experiences continue to guide and illuminate my approach to rituals in my art-making, which I see we get to talk about some more in a moment. To the second part of your question, though.

Yes, as a nation, we have yet to reconcile our violent colonial past. This continues in the present, an unhealed wound that runs across every part of daily life. I am a white, first-generation Australian on my father’s side and third-generation on my mother’s side; my heritage is English and Welsh, respectively. That makes me an uninvited visitor who has benefitted from the dispossession of these lands, yet this is the place I call home. Within this context, my rituals tend to unfold slowly. Devising repeated actions and durational performances gives me the time and space to listen, observe, sit with the discomfort and comfort of being here, and remember the interconnectedness of all beings and non-beings. Doing this work—of being curious about how to relate well with the world—on stolen land shakes me up. As it should. Years ago, I thought I would stop making art—which in itself is an action of giving up and turning away from the situation. Now, I see that practising these rituals, which require attentiveness, repeatedly reminds me of exactly where I am and my responsibility to become a better ally for First Nations people.

Tangibly, there’s a lot of positive collective grass-roots action happening here and now in Australia. I love participating in this, and it informs my art practice. I am learning from a couple of Indigenous-led organisations: Clothing the Gaps and Pay the Rent. These are two of many. If you have the chance, I highly recommend the documentary series, The Australian Wars, by filmmaker Rachel Perkins. Gosh, it’s a vital piece of the education I never had. I watched it last year at the Araluen Arts Centre as part of the annual Parrtjima Festival in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, Northern Territory (also a fantastic experience for when you come to Australia!)

Lastly and joyously, I recently began working at a beautiful public library in Melbourne called narrm ngarrgu. It is like a gallery with books! Maree Clarke, a Mutti Mutti/Yorta Yorta and Wemba Wemba/Boon Wurrung artist has worked collaboratively to create a space that shares stories of Country and the impact of colonisation across the library's three floors. It’s incredible. I hope to spend years there learning, listening and welcoming people to narrm ngarrgu.

NDEREOM: With repair in mind, I would like to talk about Kicking the Bucket, or perhaps I should say, I would like for you to discuss this action, which you undertook at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit Australia so hard, emotionally–with the several lockdowns that you went through. What did this action teach you and how are you keeping this learning alive?

SR: Oh my word, the COVID-19 restrictions here in Australia were tough! Particularly in Melbourne, can you believe we spent 262 days in various stages of ‘hard’ lockdown? We hold the unenviable title of ‘The world’s most locked-down city’. I counted myself lucky. I had my husband, a garden and the most gorgeous street cat for company—but still, I was struggling with social isolation and maintaining a sense of purpose. About halfway through the lockdowns, I began the daily ritual of kicking a green plastic bucket across my backyard and repairing it with red tape. The performance became a punctuation point in my day—something I had to attend to. Documenting the performance through the camera became a way to reimagine this time.

It is interesting for me to reflect on what the action of repair taught me. Strangely, and I was not alone here, it took me a long time to want to leave the house after the restrictions were lifted. For one, I wasn’t sure how to have an extended in-person conversation with another human—how to start, where to end, what to say, how to look at one another or touch each other. It felt as though I’d lost the language of my body in conversation. This is where my learning from the repair work helped. I came to know that repair happens in relation—not in isolation—whether that’s in relation with a broken bucket or a human, it doesn’t matter. And so, post-COVID lockdowns, I began slowly repairing all sorts of kinships—venturing out to visit friends, family, trees, rocks, rivers, you name it. On an emotional level, I learnt that to re-pair something is to work to bring the parts back together again. To meet again, familiar but changed. Then, be present with one another and, with the current conditions, find a way to move gently forward without seeking to return to some previously imagined ideal.

As I mentioned earlier, alongside my art practice, I now work in a public library, in a makerspace specifically, where people come to use all sorts of creative technology (3D printers, sewing machines, embroidery machines, soldering irons, etc) to make new creations and repair the things they value. I love the repair work. I love it when someone brings in a well-loved piece of clothing, and we sit together and work out how they might begin the mend. This practice of repair has become deeply embedded in my life and my relationships. It brings me a great sense of joy and tenderness.

NDEREOM: Talking about relationships, I always like to shed light on my mentors, teachers and elders, and there is a great deal of lip service that goes on when many institutions and artists use these currently overused terms just to be trendy. I can’t hear the word ancestor one more time! Now, to put these words into practice is a whole different animal (human or non-human). You presented an action for Linda Mary Montano’s 80th birthday at Franklin Furnace. Linda has been is a dear friend, teacher and mentor of mine of 20 years. Your action for her gathering had to do with planting seeds. With your consent, I would like to refresh this in my mind and keep the herstory of this performance alive. 

SR: Yes, let’s relive this wonderful experience together for Linda. I might start by saying I first encountered Linda Mary Montano’s art practice and performance works in a book when I was a young thing at art school. Discovering her work was like, oh… oh! Life can be art; art can be life! This discovery of what constituted art and life reorientated my practice—the seed was planted. Thank you, Linda! When your invitation to create a performance for Linda’s 80th birthday celebration at Franklin Furnace arrived, I thought, this is very special. What can I give that celebrates Linda’s art and life? A Celebratory Seeding Event was a live-streamed performance for Linda’s birthday gathering. From my backyard in Melbourne, I planted 80 herb, flower and vegetable seeds in brightly coloured pots. The seeds were collected from local community gardens and my vegetable patch. As a birthday gift, the performance celebrated the special communal, life-affirming, future-hopeful action of planting seeds. Over the following weeks, I nurtured the seedlings until they were strong enough to be given away to people in the local community. Tending to the plants, I imagined all the creative ideas and learnings Linda must have seeded in people’s hearts and minds with her practice over the years. And that the pulse of those ideas continued to be shared, cherished and birthed in different ways—what a beautiful dispersal of creative energy.

Thank you for inviting me to perform with the Interior Beauty Salon artists. It is an honour to revisit this action with you, Nicolás.

NDEREOM: Gosh! You have me laughing with your 28 Days in Other People’s Clothing. I am glad that you articulated this work into the world. Many decades ago, I had an idea for a very similar action but never implemented it. You did it and it is great. I would like to hear you speak from an introspectively perspective about this experience? And can we do a collaboration for which we mail each other a box of clothing for 28 days and wear them in Melbourne and the South Bronx respectively? I believe in the flow and expansion of ideas and you got me going this time!

SR: I’m glad this work made you laugh! I made 28 Days in Other People’s Clothing ten years ago, in 2014. It brings me great joy to circle back to it with you now. And, of course, I love your idea to collaborate and expand these ideas—it’s time.

As with much of my practice, this work began with paying attention to the happenings in my daily routine. At the time, this was my tram ride in and out of the city, where I got to sit with people and quietly observe. I became so curious about how people dressed for the day. How did they decide who they would be on any given day? How much choice did they have? How did their clothing make them feel? And then, who would I be in that person’s jacket, her hat, those fabulous shoes? What would it be like to give up my own clothing?

To begin, I literally and physically gave up my clothing by installing everything I owned as a suspended soft sculpture outside my studio. I was studying at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne at the time. I put the word out that I was looking for clothing donations—I began the first day wearing my husband’s clothing (argh, we are not the same shoe size) and then moved on to whatever clothing people placed in the garbage outside my studio.

Now, I can look back and laugh. But those 28 days were tough! I very much felt like I was out of my skin, exposed, and constantly trying to make myself again, to locate myself, through these clothes that weren’t mine. Sometimes, the clothes were ill-fitting or at the point of breaking—one day, the soles of my donated shoes came off while I was wearing them! I glued, taped and stitched items back together. While I was grateful for the donations, I felt so humble in these clothes, at times ashamed, and suddenly acutely aware of how fortunate I was to choose what I wore every day. My own clothing offered me comfort, self-expression, safety and social acceptance. I found it difficult to dress appropriately for work meetings or more formal occasions in the donated clothing. I often had to resist providing a disclaimer or excuse for my appearance. While I felt uncomfortable most of the time, I was also wholly determined to learn, through this embodied performance, why clothing was so important to my life. The duration of the performance gave me time to reaffirm and remember how much I cherish the intimacy, agency and fluidity of being able to choose and shape what I wear and how I appear in the world. It was a transformative experience. I hope this hasn’t put you off, Nicolás! I am so excited to take this creative journey together; when can we start?

NDEREOM: I need to find some ground before I do this! I am laughing. For some reason I like to wear other people’s clothing. I used to kind of do this without them knowing. That was a while back when I was 20 or so. I remember wearing my stepfather’s pajamas top. It was blue and white and it looked like something out of the psychedelic era. You and I would have to arrange how to ship things from the Americas to Australia.

I was on my way to Melbourne several times. The pandemic arrived and the trip got canceled. The idea was to bring to Melbourne As Far as the Heart Can See, the exhibition that I curated with Elizabeth Foundation Project Space. I am planting the seed again by talking about it. Almost everything that I envision somehow materializes. I have the feeling that I will be walking through Australia sooner or later. Who are your performance art kin there? I started to learn about the community when we used to hold our regular Zoom meetings.

SR: I’m so glad you’re planting the seed for this beautiful project to come to Australia. Since our initial Zoom meetings and all that’s happened since, I have remained quietly confident that As Far as the Heart Can See will make it to our shores one day—at just the right time, no doubt.

We are lucky to have a vibrant arts ecology here in Melbourne, which has come alive again after the COVID lockdowns, although this has taken some time. As for my performance art kin, I’ve put together a mixed tape of my nearest and dearest and some tentative connections with local artists I’m incredibly inspired by. I’ll begin with my teachers and mentors, who include Kim Donaldson, Sean Lowry (co-curators at Project8 Gallery), Selina Ou, Jude Walton, Aleks Danko, Helen Herbertson, and Barbara Bolt.

Recently, I collaborated with ten extraordinary artists on an exhibition as part of the Collective Polyphony festival organised by artist Nina Sanadze. These artist-kin include Chris Fontana, Corinna Berndt, Josephine Mead, Leila Gerges, Lucy Foster, Marcela Alejandra Gómez-Escudero, Nina Sanadze, Sofi Basseghi, Tara Gilbee and Tina Stefanou. Two additional collectives I’d like to mention are the LAST Collective with artists Beth Arnold, Melanie Irwin, Katie Lee, Clare Rae and Hanna Tai, and ShrewD Collective with Chris Fontana, Tracey Lamb, Amanda Laming, Nina Sanadze and Mimmalisa Trifilò. As well as several independent artists, Archie Barry, Chelsea Coon, Steven Rhall and Siying Zhou. I love the strength and bravery of their respective practices. There are many more!

Lastly, my dear friend Luke Hockley. An incredible thinker, mover and maker. We have known each other for over twenty years and continue sharing our creative journeys, performances and curiousness for life.

I hope to share some of these connections with you, Nicolás, when you come to Australia.

NDEREOM: How are you? How are you? How are you?

SR: Nicolás, I’m so very well! Thank you for asking. It is a unique and clarifying time of new beginnings for me. There have been some hard yards these last few years, and those learnings are giving me great strength and an appreciation for the here and now. And what do you know? Joy has danced on over and stepped back into my life! I don’t take her for granted. Life is good and precious.

NDEREOM: Thank you for putting a smile on my aging face on an unusually cold and dark day in Austin, Texas. I needed this.

SR: You’re welcome, Nicolás. It is my pleasure to bring some warmth to your day. Your questions were so thoughtful, such little treasures for me to respond to. Thank you for this gift and the opportunity to be in conversation with you.

All images Courtesy of Sarah Rudledge

Sarah Rudledge’s links: Website / Instagram

Sarah Rudledge is a visual artist based in Narrm/Melbourne. In her practice she explores daily rituals, tactics and actions for artistically reimagining lived experience. Conceived and enacted in places where she lives and spends time, her practice is invariably informed by the cultural, geographical, and social conditions of particular locations. Using a variety of site-orientated and lens-based methods, she speculates upon ways that daily routines and events can be utilised as forms of restoration, resistance and care.

Rudledge was awarded her Master of Fine Arts, with first class honours, from the University of Melbourne (UoM), Faculty of Fine Arts and Musicin 2021. Prior to this her studies included the Master of Contemporary Art(UoM,2015) and the Graduate Certificate in Visual Art, (UoM, 2013). Rudledge has participated in numerous exhibitions, and collective performances as well as initiating her own live performance events. In 2020 she was awarded the Peter Redlich Memorial Art Prize and in 2015 she was the recipient of the Fiona Myer Travelling Scholarship.

Pablo Helguera

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Pablo, we met at The Bronx Museum in 2001! We were both participating in the AIM Program (Artists in the Marketplace). At present, I could not care less about the marketplace, but I do care a great deal about witnessing art like your compelling performance, Cuarto de Pegar / Collage Parlor, at Hispanic Society in Harlem/Washington Heights.

Cuarto de Pegar / Collage Parlor, was part of your research fellowship with Hispanic Society, where we were in the same cohort organized by arts visionary Alex Campos. Can you talk about Cuarto de Pegar / Collage Parlor for those who were not there?

 Pablo Helguera: Nicolás, I have vivid memories of a performance  you did at The Bronx Museum shortly after we met, where you appeared in a bathing suit, surrounded in a tropical environment and  offering  something that looked like Hawaiian Punch but that, if I recall correctly, was intended to be the drink of the fountain of youth. I always related to the way you merged the structure of the religious ritual with the protocol of the postwar, post-minimalist, Fluxus- style performance.

As to my fellowship at the Hispanic Society: I had always been intrigued by this museum and its history, but had never seen the institution engaged with contemporary art with the exception of the famous Francis Alÿs piece (Fabiola) that was presented there under the auspices of DIA. Alex Campos is someone I /we have worked with for many years, and I was excited to come and explore the Hispanic Society’s collection.

As you know, I worked in museums (mostly in a senior programming capacity) for nearly 30 years, a time during which  I did more than my fair share of interpretive projects and artists residencies (managed by me); that is aside from the artist residencies I have done as artist for other museums. Perhaps for that reason, I am not so interested anymore in the traditional dynamic of coming as artist to “interpret” a collection, but I am rather interested in interpreting the identity of the institution as a whole, its soul, sort to speak. You could say, if we discuss this in spiritual terms, that I am interested in capturing the “aura” of the institution, or better put, its unconscious. And in that regard, what has simultaneously fascinated and haunted me about it is the building itself and its history. The whole environment reminded me of my grandfather, Ignacio Helguera, who was himself a big Hispanophile and shared a fascination about Spain that I think is comparable to the one of Archer Huntington. And weirdly enough, my grandfather emigrated to New York in the early 1900s and lived in the Upper West Side with an uncle; he lived in New York for 20 years before going back to Mexico. It is possible he might have been at the Hispanic Society. Cuarto de Pegar is, in a way, a piece about my family’s relationship with Spain, using the building as a site for invoking those connections.

NDEREOM: At the core of Cuarto de Pegar / Collage parlor is Colonia Roma in Mexico City, the place where you were born and one that, in your case, goes back to family lineages. I first connected with Colonia Roma in the 1990s, through two dear friends who had an old house near Hospital General: Enrique Estrada and Maurice Harrah. I am hoping to find an image of the place as I last experienced it in 2017, right before Enrique died and after Maurice’s death. By the way, my uncle from the Dominican Republic trained as a gynecologist at Hospital General. And now the Colonia Roma has been dubbed by Vogue the Williamsburg of Mexico City. Awful comparison in my opinion, since Colonia Roma has its very own soul, and it does not look like Brooklyn at all, except for the gentrification that it is undergoing. But back to our conversation, houses are living entities, just like people. Can you share about the life of your actual family’s home at Colonia Roma as it pertains to the personal or in relationship to what transpired through Cuarto de Pegar / Collage Parlor?

PH: When he returned to Mexico City in 1924, my grandfather had learned a method to cast bathtubs and started a business selling bathroom supplies, which prospered, especially after the war. He was a self-made man, and one of his life obsessions was to buy the house of Orizaba 21 in Colonia Roma (which, by the way, was next to a hospital, the IMSS, which still stands there to this day). My father used to tell me that my grandfather sometimes would sit in the porch of his own house in disbelief, feeling so lucky that he had been able to buy that place. You are absolutely right that houses sometimes feel like people; that was true of Orizaba. It was a very large house, one that eventually did not make much sense for my grandparents to live in because their four sons were grown up. When I was born both of my grandparents had passed away and my parents had moved in the house, initially to take care of my grandmother. My first life memories (when I was about 3 or 4 years old) are of the many, seemingly infinite rooms of that house (we lost the house due to a turn for the worse in family finances and had to move out when I was 4). As artists, as you know, those visual memories of childhood are incredibly important. Most important was the fact that my father created some kind of art room for my siblings which they called “El cuarto de pegar”. He had placed  reproductions of famous paintings in the room mainly as decoration, or perhaps I suppose, for inspiration: Velázquez, Rembrandt, Titian, Goya, and so forth. I suspect that my own relationship with collage-making is rooted in that room. I also have to say (no offense to the Hispanic Society) that parts of  the building, which have seen better times, also reminds me of how I remembered my grandfather’s house, which at some point was considered a great mansion but by the time we left it, it already was a fading historic building. I am stimulated by the buildings that are saturated with their own memories.

NDEREOM: The house I was related to at Colonia Roma was almost at the corner of Coahuila and Mérida Streets, and had an interior courtyard full of plants that hummingbirds would visit. Can you believe that? The house was also full of interesting objects and books, some of which we still care for in the South Bronx. You grew up with an art room in Mexico while I grew up with an altar room in the Dominican Republic. My family’s art making revolved around Catholic and Afro-Caribbean spiritualities (like altar-making and rituals) more than with formal art trainings, although there are seamstresses, writers and poets within my relatives. When I turned seven or eight, I started to study theater with the most radical thinkers in Santiago, the Dominican city where my family lives. But you had a collage room. What were some of your first incursions in the arts, there, in that space, and how do they speak to your performance-based work?

PH: In contrast to yours, my family was vehemently atheist, although my parents did marry through the church since it was the 1950s anyway, and the older generation were still religious.  Nonetheless, there was a  true, deep religion in my family: music. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart,  Brahms: that was our pantheon. I grew up listening to piano, orchestral and chamber music. My sisters are professional musicians; I in fact am one of the only ones who went in a different (art) direction. So in that regard, you can see why performance is important to me. And then there were the writers, poets, and storytellers of my mother’s family. My life has thus been an ever-unfolding attempt to bring together those various threads.

NDEREOM: Your performance at Hispanic Society took place at the magnificent Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida’s room: Visions of Spain. In your piece you talked about your Spanish elders and their migration to Mexico. However, you ended up migrating to the US, like your grandfather, thus expanding your ancestors’ journey through the hemisphere and into the complexities of identities like Latinidad and Latinxidad (my neologism). Where is home for you? I am also curious as to what has replaced your family’s house in the DF in Mexico and the emotions that the space (as in the meters of Earth where the house once stood) continues to elicit for you.

PH: You ask a very simple, important, and yet difficult question for me. In simple terms, the house of Orizaba was torn down; in its place now there is a parking lot. It is painful and somehow depressing for me to go back there, where only a portion of the iron gate of the house remains. My family emigrated to the US in 1989, primarily because my sisters were already here and when I came to study my parents came along. As immigrants, especially for my parents, objects, family heirlooms, became incredibly important: books, paintings, silverware, the stuff we could bring from Mexico. But physically in terms of buildings, nothing remains. Over the years, and perhaps precisely because I worked in museums so long, I have grown suspicious of the purported magical powers of objects. I don’t believe they replace people; I don’t believe in magic, I don’t believe in spiritual powers. I believe in feelings and in ideas and their survival through the memory of generations. All this to say that I no longer think of home as an address, a physical location. I believe home is our culture, our memory and our language, and that the self is a dwelling — Las Moradas, if you want to think of Santa Teresa. But to put it in the words of a Mexican poet, Pita Amor, “yo soy mi casa.”

NDEREOM: Pita Amor! Thank you for introducing me to this incredible person. I plan study her work and legacy. I am a fetishist by nature. Perhaps it my upbringing in Afro-Caribbean religions and the power imbued in objects and personal belongings that is so central, in my opinion, to this kind of spiritualities, from hair stands to nail clippings and to clothing.

To conclude, I would like to return to the arts. Cuarto de Pegar / Collage Parlor, from what I experienced, combines elements of theater, research and singing with the visual arts, and I understand that this is because of your own artistic training. Is this something that you see yourself continuing to explore with future work? Where do you see Cuarto de Pegar / Collage Parlor going after your research residency at Hispanic Society, and in terms of audiences? I thank you, Pablo, for talking with me. Gracias.

PH: I have recently come to terms that a vein of my work has to be autobiographical, and I can’t escape it— like Félix González Torres, perhaps. Sometimes it is explicit, other times it is hidden. I don’t think it is important for viewers to know my life story (nor do I necessarily want them to know it), and in fact I think if artworks are relevant it is not because the stories we tell about ourselves are interesting or relevant, but because (hopefully) they relate to important aspects of human experience. I try to assemble those pieces with the elements I have at my disposal— images, text, music— always hoping that they can transcend the initial autobiographical impulse. I was grateful to be able to attempt just that, that is, to play in the very mysterious and captivating environment of the Hispanic Society, and maybe in a small way (and here I might sound contradictory, but so what) help invoke its ghosts.

Gracias a tí, Nicolás.

All slides courtesy of Pablo Helguera except for the four photographs of the house at Coahuila and Mérida Streets by Nicolás

Pablo Helguera’s links: Website / Instagram / Publications / Beautiful Eccentrics

Pablo Helguera (Mexico City, 1971) is a New York based artist working with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art and performance. Helguera’s work incorporates pedagogy, sociology and theater and literary strategies. His project, The School of Panamerican Unrest, a nomadic think-tank that physically crossed the continent by car from Anchorage, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, making 40 stops in between and covering almost 20,000 miles, it is considered one of the most extensive public art projects on record as well as a pioneering work of socially engaged art.

Helguera has worked since 1991 in a variety of contemporary art museums, most recently as head of public programs at the Education department of the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1998-2005). From 2007 until his appointment at the New School, he was the Director of Adult and Academic programs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has organized more than 1000 public events in conjunction with nearly 100 exhibitions. In 2010 he was appointed pedagogical curator of the 8th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which took place in September, 2011.

Helguera is a Guggenheim Fellow and has received the Creative Capital, Art Matters, Franklin Furnace and Blade of Grass fellowships, as well as the First International Award of Participatory Art from the Region Emilia Romagna (Bologna). He holds a PhD from Kingston University, London, and an honorary PhD from the Kansas Art Institute.

Pablo Helguera has exhibited and performed individually in many museums and biennials around the world. He is the author of several books including Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011), The Parable Conference (2014) and An Atlas of Commonplaces (2015)

Kiyo Gutiérrez

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles: Kiyo, it was initially through EMERGENYC and Marlène Ramírez-Cancio how we met, when I presented at the program in 2020. I then became familiar with your ideas when I was a panelist for Franklin Furnace. Your River Healers caught my attention. How was this action born? 

 Kiyo Gutiérrez: First I wanna say I’m honored to be part of your Interior Beauty Salon, Nicolás, gracias for the invitation. I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. Next to this city, flows one of the most polluted rivers in Latin America, the Santiago River. Guadalajara citizens cannot touch the river, for the water sickens you, kills you. As a result, we have grown accustomed to a distant relationship with the body of water that sustains us. Out of a desire to relate with this river, to communicate with its waters and to embrace them, I started a site-specific performance project with urban rivers. Inspired by the ideas of hydrofeminism elaborated by Astrida Neimanis, Urban rivers aims to cultivate better ways of living with rivers through different embodied rituals focused on water beings and local multispecies stories around the river. Neimanis argues that “our watery imaginaries directly impact how we treat water, how we think it should serve us, and what we think we can make of it”[1]. In this sense, these performance-rituals, as I like to call them, are an attempt to offer alternatives to our dominant water imaginaries and to build a closer relationship between rivers and citizens.  

NDEREO: Our collective veins and arteries are dying. Let me say this the correct way. We are draining and poisoning our collective veins and arteries. We, and I dare to say we, are staging an ecocide of unparalleled magnitude. Even with the land grabbing and displacement that is occurring at waterfronts around our planet, rivers seem to be seen as lesser compared to oceanfront property and therefore pushed to the back of our imaginaries. No river = No oceans. Would you tell me about the river in the place that call you home?  

 KG: The Santiago River was magnificent. Picture this river flowing over giant cliffs with lots of endemic flora and fauna. There was a majestic waterfall spot once known as the Niagara of Mexico with clear fresh water and plenty of visitors. And now the industrial and sewer stench persists while yellowish foam floats all over. The river may indeed be dying, as you mention, and with it, the communities that live on the river shorelines. Many of its members suffer from respiratory diseases and cancer caused by the river's toxins. The most horrific example of this poisoning, as you rightfully name it, happened in 2008, when Miguel Angel Rocha, an eight-year-old child fell into the river and died from arsenic poisoning. Approximately ten thousand factories dump their toxic waste into this body of water with no consequences. Of course, there is resistance to this ecocide, the families that live near the river have organized to raise awareness about this problem, and to call upon the creation of proposals for a hydrological regeneration and communitarian appropriation of the Santiago basin (organizations like Un Salto de vida). But sadly, these multinational corporations (like the Swiss brand Nestle, the American chemicals company Huntsman and IBM, among many) remain untouched. Impunity, corruption, repression, and power play a big role here. 

NDEREO: Who are the River Healers, metaphorically speaking, and what do they do?  

KG: The River Healers have no fixed identity, they can be entities, energies, goddesses, extinct water species, spirits of dried rivers, you name it. They honor the three matrilineal clans of the Lenape, the first people who lived along the shores of the now called Harlem River. They have the ability to communicate with water through their magical hair, which is dyed with red cabbage, a natural PH indication substance that changes colour when in contact with water. The dye starts out purple indicating a neutral PH. When it comes in contact with non-neutral water, the dye reacts from green when it is alkaline, to red, indicating acidic water. The Healers are also metaphorically returning the Rainbow Smelt to the water, an important cold-water fish that has disappeared from New York rivers completely, due to warming temperatures. If you look closer, you will notice that the extinct fish is depicted in the tips of the Healers' purple hair.  

NDEREO: How was your experience performing on the Wards Island Bridge in New York City? What did the waters reveal?  

KG: I wrote a letter to the Harlem River shortly after the performance. I think in a way it answers your question: 

 Dear Harlem River, 

We come from far, we do not know you, but it is said that water connects, so in a way you are already in us, and we in you. We’ve read about you, admired your shiny rippled surface through a map on a screen, wondering how strong your currents are, imagining the direction of the wind that caresses your skin. 

And now, today, we are here at your shore.  

Your size amazes us.  

Rivers are buried in concrete where we come from. We call them “avenues”.  

We are fascinated to see you like this. A water snake dancing between immense buildings and railroads. But even so, your story is not that different from the stories of our rivers.  

You have also been industrialized, toxic waste spilled into your body, treated like a sewer. You have been redirected, redesigned.  

There are people that believe that you are not even a river.  

We disagree, Harlem. 

But these are all facts that have been observed and written by humans.  

We would like to know more about you, through you.  

That is why we are here today.  

To dip our hair into your watery otherworldly memory. 

You pulled our braids and opened our body, Harlem River. 

Our roots entered your torrents.  

We flow as a river. We are eel, dolphin, algae. We travel through the gills of the extinct rainbow smelt fish. 

Despite this steel bridge that apparently separates us, we weave our threads with your waters. 

We know that you do not serve us, nor do we serve you, for we are ultimately inseparable, always implicated.  

NDEREO: Beautiful. The body is central in your work and in your actions dealing with feminisms and the ecology. Una Habitación Propia, is an example of this. You built a breast-like structure to invite pollinators to come in and find refuge. What is the political and conceptual lineage that connects River Healers to your creative trajectory? 

KG:   The different rituals that engage with each river in this project reflect on what Stacy Alaimo calls our trans-corporeality “the contact zone between human and more-than-human nature”, so I wanted to work within that space as a fertile site of creation, blurring and expanding those boundaries[2]. What gestures and images could help us remember and acknowledge that the water in our bodies is shared water? How can we restore our communication with rivers and their watery creatures? When talking about hydrofeminism, Neimani’s posits that thinking with water and embracing the watery creatures that we also are (and often forget) have the potential to uncover possibilities that are hidden by the colonial legacy and to conjure an ethics of responsibility and mutual indebtedness.  

Regarding water, Lenape Scholar Joanne Barker points out that she approaches water, as many other indigenous women, as a relative, she explains that in indigenous knowledge water has a memory and a consciousness and has the power to heal and transform other forms of life. 

For example, the rarámuri, an indigenous community in Northern Mexico, dances in order to summon the rain, water is seen as a way of bonding with the community and the territory. 

I am also inspired by what Aymara thinker Silvia Rivera-Cusicanqui proposes around decolonizing practices[3]. She highlights the act of acquiring knowledge through the body, by listening, observing, and activating from uncertainty, from fragments and with ideas in the making. In a way, all these inspiring ways of thinking were poured into this aqueous performance-based project.  

NDEREO: I could write volumes about Franklin Furnace. They have been here for me for 20 years. They have supported some of the work that I have done when other organizations where focused on trends and what would make their funders tick. How was your first experience with the Temple of the Avant-Garde in New York City? 

KG: Franklin Furnace was amazing. They treated me with such respect and care. It was an honor to present my work with the Harlem River and to be part of the Franklin Furnace Archive, along with many artists I deeply admire. Being a performer that focuses on political and environmental issues comes with its challenges, like censorship and having trouble finding the means to materialize your work. In this sense, this is a unique and special organization. So, here goes to performers all over the world: APPLY! It’s real and it’s happening!  

NDEREO: I could also write volumes about EMERGENYC and the work that Marlène Ramírez-Cancio and George Emilio Sánchez have been doing. Tell me about your experience with this program, one which I do not think has a comparable counterpart at the moment when so much of the art making, even performance art, is about branding and making stuff for the market. 

KG: Let me just say that being part of EMERGENYC cracked open my heart!! (in a good way, of course). I felt heard and nurtured, and above all, I was no longer alone. I was part of a community, and we were all using our creative forces to look at the world differently. I was introduced to experimental creative exercises that nurtured my practice in an innovative way. I really appreciated the program’s freedom to create in a safe space and their focus on an art that transforms and that advocates for justice. To this day, I keep going back to those conversations and loving community.  

[1] Astrida Neimanis. (2016). Embodying Water: Feminist Phenomenology for Posthuman Worlds. In Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (pp. 27–64). London: Bloomsbury Academic. 

[2]  Stacey Alaimo. (2010), Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

[3] Silvia Rivera-Cusicanqui. A Ch’ixi World is Possible: Essays from a Present in Crisis. Lines, 2023.

All images courtesy of Kilo Gutiérrez

Kiyo Gutiérrez'’s links: Website / Instagram / Vimeo

Kiyo Gutiérrez is a Mexican historian and performance artist currently studying in L.A. (MFA in Art at University of Southern California). She started doing performance art as a reaction against the brutal Mexican reality, which is a violent one full of femicides, disappearances, and a constant and insatiable looting towards nature. Kiyo draws on multiple mediums including video, photography, dance, poetry, textile, sculpture and sound. Ecofeminist, provocative, earthy, political, her performance pieces question established order and power, and explore the ties between female oppression and the destructive exploitation of Planet Earth.

Kiyo performs often in public spaces and has participated in International Performance Festivals and exhibitions in Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Spain and the United States. She also participated in Debates, an editorial project for Colección Cisneros, was a recipient of the Franklin Furnace Fund, a Fellow at the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics of Georgetown University, received the Fulbright Scholarship and was recently nominated for the Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award.

Juan Hernandez

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Juan, it is a pleasure to meet you through this conversation. My introduction to your life and work was initiated by Mai Tran and Ed Woodham. Ed recently hosted a solo exhibition of your art at his SHOWROOM in Manhattan. I saw your portraits and I thought about commissioning one of them but, instead, I figured that I wanted to hear your voice. What are you resting with at this very moment? In other words, where are you finding comfort and solace in the now?

 Juan Hernandez: Comfort and solace? There is no comfort and solace in my world. From the age of 16 it’s been a constant struggle. A struggle against the court system to acquire my freedom. A struggle with the prison administration to acquire an education. A struggle with the art market to see past my mistake. A struggle with my environment. A struggle with time. As I said, a constant struggle. And I wouldn't have it no other way because comfort and solace mean that I'm okay with my current situation(s) and an automatic motivation-killer which leads to no creativity. My answer may come off a bit aggressive, but this adaptation of mentality within my environment has given me the strength to break barriers placed in front of me which others may give up on. Of course, none of my achievements would be possible without the help of some wonderful individuals who brought the sledge hammers to demolish these barriers alongside me and free my creativity.

NDEREOM: I have seen your portraits and read about them. However, would you talk about your creative path for those for whom this is new? How did this all start with you?

 JH: I vividly remember that steel door first closing behind me, leaving me prisoner in a maximum-security cell with nothing but a sheet, mattress and a roll of toilet paper thinking, "Damn, is this going to be my life for the next 45 years?" I had no savings, no assets and was financially dependent on a single mother of two. My creative path began that very moment as a financial necessity and I found art as the tool to get me out of poverty. As time went by though, I started seeing my art as less of a payout and more of an extension of myself, a creation that bares no burden or penalty inside these walls and can easily express my freedom and voice on the outside. With that being, said each of my creations takes its own unique manifestation depending on the subject. For example, when a great opportunity presents itself like Ed Woodham's SHOWROOM, Ed, Mai and myself all collaborated together on how we could make it work due to my unique incarceration, which limits the things we can do. Usually, an artist statement sets the foundation of a project followed by a tally of materials I can use. This prison doesn't sell any art materials whatsoever so I have to be real selective on what I use now. Then comes the fun part where the day room area or cell is transformed into an art studio and I lose myself in my expression of freedom, no longer feeling incarcerated.

NDEREOM: Some of those who you have depicted in your portraits include Angela Davis – who I had the opportunity to hear/see at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas –, and Maya Angelou, who I greatly admire. Aside from the commissions that you receive, how do you decide who is going to inhabit your artwork and what have you learned from those you paint, as you bring them forward into the world through colors?

 JH: My decision on who inhibits my artwork usually depends on who I'm reading about at the moment or the way a picture of a person or place might trigger a moment of feeling the freedom I so desire. And with that an urgent need sometimes comes over me to paint the portrait or landscape without it having a history of importance other that providing me a sense of happiness. As for what I've learned about those individuals I decide to paint... I've learned that we all have a calling, a purpose in life for us to achieve and a legacy to leave behind, but it is our choice to either walk the path or sit around doing nothing. I implore everyone to take that first step, if not for themselves, then for those who may benefit from your journey.

NDEREOM: You were imprisoned at the age of 16, technically speaking when you were still a child. Who were the mentors and elder figures who looked after you and in whom you found wisdom as you moved into adulthood? Can you elaborate on them?

JH: I sometimes let my artwork help to display an answer, to whom it is I aim to achieve similar goals to. One person I would like to mention is the late great Dr.Burroughs who co-founded the DuSable Museum in Chicago. This wonderful human being would show up once a week religiously at Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison, so artists could have a couple hours out of their cells and become creators in an empty classroom which was transformed into a communal art studio. She wasn't there to teach us how to draw or paint, because according to her that gift was already inside of us waiting to be opened. What she did do was expand our minds as creators and one way was by asking us deep questions like, "What will your legacy be?" I'd never been asked that before in my life and I had no clue on how to answer it other than to shrug my shoulders. I remember her smiling at me while placing a comforting hand on my arm and replying, "Give it some thought." I wish she could see my progress and the growth I've undertaken since we last saw one another. I wonder if I'll ever be able to answer her question...”What will your legacy be?"

NDEREOM: I exhibited at the DuSable Museum and I thank you for that piece of herstory. I thank this visionary for opening doors for many of us. I did not meet Margaret Burroughs and she has impacted my path as well.

What are your spiritual practices besides art? To me all art initially had a sacred purpose and this has been lost as the field is mainly seen and managed as an industry –as career– rather than as a path or a calling?

 JH: Prayer. I believe prayer is a line of communication with the ultimate creator (however that is represented in one’s life) which listens and helps us to achieve our purpose in this wonderful experience we call life.

 NDEREOM: Concepts like payer are now cool in the Art Industry. I remember artists like Linda Mary Montano praying with me and how praying was a big taboo in the Arts (with capital A), when some of us were bringing it into gallery and museum spaces, even if from a secular perspective. But the Art industry tends to coopt almost everything and trivialize it for money purposes. Now healing and self-care are trendy words amongst artists and curators.

Talking about the art market (which to me is a euphemism for the Art industry), how has been your experience navigating the prison industrial complex as a creative?

 JH: As I mentioned earlier, a struggle. Despite what the prison administration might post on all its official paperwork, rehabilitating someone is its last priority and anyone achieving anything outside their control is deemed a troublemaker and nuisance. How else can you explain the absurdity on how someone in here receives good-time for washing dishes in the inmate kitchen and I receive harassment for being in art galleries. I've had incidents where wet paintings are left face down on the floor by correctional officers during random cell searches. I've had painting damaged by the prison’s mail room. I've had all my art materials confiscated and destroyed (over a thousand dollars’ worth of art materials that took years to acquire) when transferred to another prison which labeled it contraband. I've had Mai permanently restricted from video visits for simply asking if it was possible to record one of my artist statements through it. Recently I was even threatened with a disciplinary ticket for being an incarcerated artist without their permission! With all the troubles Dixon Correctional Center has going on, like a severe drug epidemic where guys are continuously overdosing, they deemed that my creativity was more important to investigate and try to punish!

 NDEREOM: How do you connect with love, affection and community in the place where you are now physically?

 JH: I connect through my creativity, through any lines of communication available to me and by giving my time. This time may be given as a phone call, letter, painting or a project. Last year I was able to connect with my alma mater Benito Juarez High School and the After School Matters program through a residency with CPS Lives. This year that same residency has expanded with high school students throughout the city of Chicago and with the help of Sophia Padgett Pérez, who is the artistic director of the mentioned nonprofit organization, I'm able to reach my community’s youth with a project I named "Movimiento." The first project was showcased in Heaven Gallery and this next one will possibly be showcased at the Design Museum in their atrium gallery in downtown Chicago. I've been fortunate enough to not let my physical barriers get in the way of making a difference in our youth’s community and bringing some positivity into their lives. As for love and affection, I have been blessed with a partner who offers both in abundance and she is my lifeline to these emotions. We utilize every means of communication available to us and stick to our motto of unconditional love.

 NDEREOM: I read about Jarvis Jay Masters and I teach his work in my classes. The image that stayed with me is the one of a bird that an incarcerated person in the same complex as Jarvis was going to hurt, making Jarvis ask him not do so because, that bird has my […his…] wings. This points to the concept of interbeing and interdependence as articulated by Thích Nhất Hạnh. I am wondering about the metaphorical wings in the portraits that you are painting, and how they help your art fly out from your space and into the wider world. Have you been in touch with those housing your art?

JH: In the past I'd never even received a photograph of my artwork to keep as a reference, but now that I have an Instagram page it has made it much easier for individuals to reach out to me. It’s now a breeze for someone to DM me a screenshot of a commissioned painting I did for them which I can also post and share with my followers who can view my progression as an artist. A couple years ago I did a commissioned painting of an owner’s dog titled Good Doggie and the art collector wrote me a letter out the blue. In it she explained how much she treasured it because her dog had recently passed away from cancer. She didn't know that I received that letter right after I landed in solitary confinement. It was the only piece of property I had in that cell and I read it about ten times throughout the day. That night I realized how much value and love my work creates in the lives of the art collectors and how it manifests itself back to me in my times of need like a comforting letter. Many other art collectors have sent me messages through DM, snail mail, books and some have even helped out by writing letters of support to present to the judge. It is a great honor to use my creative gifts and give it freedom from this prison finding its own space in someone’s home.

NDEREOM: Where do you find beauty in a daily basis?

JH: I find beauty every morning when I look in the mirror (laughing out loud). For those that know me on a personal level they'll tell you I love to laugh. In prison one has to adopt a certain sense of humor to survive mentally in an environment where negativity reigns supreme. Being able to get a good laugh at things when they go horribly wrong helps me avoid sulking in the negativity or diving into a deep depression. After a good laugh or even a short chuckle, depending on the situation, I can see the beauty in this cruel world’s sense of humor and then start figuring out my next move that will lead towards positivity.

 NDEREOM: What is your own understanding of an artist, which I now call a creative?

JH: My understanding of an artist being also known as a creative...Would be any individual that can demonstrate and release their feelings, thoughts and passion into their craft.

NDEREOM: I thank for talking with me. I tried sending you a message through one of the communication companies that profits financially from managing correspondence with the incarcerated and it was so extremely difficult. I tried for hours and gave up. And I can only imagine what it takes for those where you are to get their voices out. Please say out loud anything that you would like those reading this conversation to hear, or simply say what needs to be released in you.

 JH: I want to release the great amount of gratitude and appreciation that I feel towards everyone who has helped me while in prison. I've achieved more than most who share the same enclosure as me due to one great factor in difference...my support system. My family, partner, friends, advocates, art collectors, art curators, professors, journalists, Instagram followers and numerous organizations including Midwest Books To Prisoners and art galleries have all come to my aid, whether they know it or not, with their metaphoric sledge hammers in hand and demolished barriers placed in front of me by a system of oppression. One can have all the talent in the world, but if they don't have anyone who cares about them then that talent usually isn't nurtured and is eventually forgotten. You've all nurtured my creativity and voice never making me feel alone or abandoned so I strive every day to show everyone how their support can achieve amazing results. A final thank you to you Nicolás who helped me dig deep within myself and find the answers to questions I never gave much thought to. You have a wonderful platform and it is an honor to have been a part of it.

NDEREOM: May we continue to get blessed with the creative work that you do and may your incarceration situation be resolved as soon as possible. Much love, Juan, you inspire me very much. I close this conversation with tears in my eyes and promise to laugh later today in your honor.

All images courtesy of Juan Hernandez

Juan Hernandez’s links: Art in Odd Places / Instagram / Linktree

Juan Hernandez is an incarcerated artist born and raised in Chicago. His artwork has been exhibited at Angelica Kauffman Gallery, dragonFLY Gallery, and Art in Odd Places, amongst others. He has been profiled in Latino Rebels and has received support from The Puffin Foundation and the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures. He is currently an artist-in-residence at CPS Lives, where he is working on the project “Movimiento” in collaboration with After School Matters and students from his alma mater, Benito Juarez High School. To follow him online click HERE

Data Chigholashvili

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: dear Data, we met through Susan Katz, former Program Director at CEC ArtsLink, an organization that has been doing the job of connecting creatives from regions like Central Asia and Eastern Europe with their counterparts in the United States. This work is so much needed at a time where most of the focus at home in the United States is on the art market. CEC ArtsLink openness is admirable. Would you tell me about you in connection to all or some of this?

Data Chigholashvili: Hello Nicolás, first of all, thank you for inviting me to do the Q&I with the Interior Beauty Salon. I am grateful to Susan for introducing us! Indeed, she has been doing crucial work connecting people in arts and culture in different parts of the world through various programs. International collaboration has been a significant aspect of my practice, and working with CEC ArtsLink is a part of that. Perhaps I’ll tell you about some of these, as otherwise we might end up with a very long text right in the beginning.

I have worked at an artist-run organization GeoAIR, where we collaborated with CEC, and then with their team participated in forming the Art Prospect network and program at the beginning of 2017. Thematically dealing with public space and social engagement, broadly speaking, it has included collaborations between organizations and individuals in post-Soviet countries and the US, and it has been a very, very important initiative if you ask me. You mentioned connecting creatives from that part of the world and the US, which is what you have participated in as well. But there is also another crucial side, which includes connections, exchanges, and collaborations among the network member countries. All of the countries are of course very different, art scenes are locally unique, and even the understanding of social engagement is very diverse and its implementation is differently challenging in each case. But there are also a lot of similarities or intersections from the shared history in the 20th century, as well as before that in some cases, which of course should not be mistaken in generalization. I always found it intriguing to see and discuss the different paths and experiences of these countries since getting independence in the 1990s. For a few years, GeoAIR had a regional residency program, which was great to connect with and learn about the art scenes in Georgia’s direct neighborhood. There were other programs that I’ve participated in that included partnerships in Eastern and Central Europe, which was mostly in the framework of EU projects. However, there was very little connection with post-Soviet countries in Central Asia, and Art Prospect made it possible on the network level between most of the countries. I think for many of us this took the international work in the post-Soviet context to a totally different level.

Later, the State Silk Museum in Georgia also joined the network, and we implemented several interesting projects in the framework of Art Prospect. To name a few, the festival Memory Threads: Museum and Neighborhood explored the complex historical and contemporary connections in the museum’s surroundings. There were a lot of residencies as well. As someone who has worked on many residency programs for artists and curators, I could see certain differences between those coming from Western art scenes and those from Art Prospect member countries. Both of them important and interesting, just very different dynamics and approaches that you encounter when hosting a residency project – a unique experience in itself. I think being in a residency or even running a program is a fascinating experience. Even though it is a lot of work, it’s also so fulfilling because you get to meet so many people, work with them daily over a certain duration of time, share and learn so much, and I have been lucky to have found a lot of great friends too!

NDEREOM: I ended up traveling with CEC ArtsLink to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and I loved the experience. I made friends, met curators and artists, and immersed myself in life in the region. You are from Georgia  and now living in Brooklyn. What are the energies that might be informing your thinking in this new context? I am asking because my trip to Central Asia really rewired my brain in ways I welcomed.

DC: I was happy to hear you had such an amazing residency experience. Every time I am in a residency or a long-term program in another place, I find it very inspiring, equally in a big city with a vibrant art scene such as New York City or Berlin, or a relatively smaller city such as Melitopol in Ukraine. Because of my educational background in anthropology, and perhaps my personality as well, I get very curious to explore new places, and then see how it can connect with my work there and in general, what inspiration can I get, what can I give back, etc. Context is very important to me, and that’s probably the voice of an anthropologist in me. But generally, anthropology and art, at least my take on the practice between them, is very much connected to life and daily experiences.

Now I live in New York, it’s not a residency or a project with a certain duration, but I moved here, and continue my work in the local art scene, which is much bigger and more diverse than what I am used to – starting here, sort of re-emerging in the new art scene, for me is a challenge that provides a lot of inspiration and possibilities. It’s an exciting moment! The importance of context is of course still there, and self-reflection is also crucial to me – I often build on different experiences in time and space, which sometimes is even purposefully visible in my work.

 I believe that in art personal aspect is crucial, often a starting point at least, and there are a few topics I am currently exploring here – as usual they are interconnected for me. For example, I am interested to see the works of migrant artists, people who moved here for very different reasons, and who often have to start anew while dealing with a lot of other issues of relocation. Also, there are the topics of identity, gender, and sexuality, which intersect with the previous point, and generally with my interests in queering perspective. I think intersectionality is crucial here, as usually there’s more than one topic at play. I am also interested in how international collaboration, and diversity from different contexts can contribute to the complexity of such work, which is something I feel could benefit a lot of shows I’ve seen. This is of course a very general sketch to tell you about my line of thinking regarding what you asked. I have been going to a lot of exhibitions and events, and having discussions, it has been very refreshing and educational! In April and May, I am having a curatorial residency with Residency Unlimited and I would like to work on some of these topics. Also, earlier you mentioned that in the US the focus is on the art market, which is of course visible and influences a lot. Back in Georgia, in the previous years, the art scene has been developing predominantly in this direction, and that has consequences on creative work. But here I also encounter a lot of activities that are not merely commercial but directed toward knowledge sharing, criticism, and creativity, which I think is vital.

NDEREOM: Given your thorough and extensive creative praxis, there is so much we can talk about. What if we were to start with the subject of identity or identities? There is a great deal of emphasis on this in the arts in the US. What are the conversations about this topic in the place you come from?

 DC: Are you sure we should start with this topic? I already feel like I need to keep my answers shorter. It is generally a very charged term, and it can be very volatile as well, depending on what aspect of identity we are talking about and where. In post-Soviet contexts, which can be quite conservative and nationalistic, I have seen discussions around this topic turn into very heated arguments to the point that it did not make sense in the end. I might just go on and on about the subject of identity and identities, but I’ll try to be succinct and mention some points about it in the arts in Georgia.

Right now, I remember the projects of Khinkali Juice – a collaboration of Sophia Tabatadze and Nadia Tsulukidze. They dealt with very important and urgent topics such as gender, traditions, religion, nationalism, Western aspirations, etc., and included humor too. Even the very name “Khinkali Juice” suggests that, but I think one must be familiar with Georgia’s context to fully grasp this. The topics they dealt with are not less urgent today, if not more to be honest, but the way they did it responded to the time very well. There have been other artists or collectives that dealt differently with the topics of identity, and again, the reaction could have been very different. In previous years, LGBTQI+ identity topics emerged more actively in the arts in Georgia. Sadly, that can get a very bad reaction in a heteronormative and conservative environment, where certain myths are used as tools of propaganda, unfortunately, affecting diversity the most, something that we have seen worsening in recent years. Of course, it depends on many things, but the risks of volatility are always there with this topic. Generally, it’s safer if the project is not very direct in its commentary and/or is in a secluded form. Being creative helps there, but ideally, it should be a choice, not a survival mechanism. This simply shows that among the diversity of identities that exist in one place, some prevail over others. However, if you say that many people will act surprised, and come up with a lot of “buts.”

NDEREOM: It is difficult for me to explain how I can feel in connection in places so far away from my own social locations, or perhaps not, like Bosnia and Herzegovina, when I feel so strange in some parts of the United States. I have felt more at home in countries 15 hours away by airplane from home in New York City than I have felt in some states in our country. You have curated projects dealing with what it might entail to be a foreigner. What can you say about this?

DC: I think I also know that feeling! If we look at identity not as a fixed notion, but as that in flux, with a complexity of interconnections in time and space, the idea of “home” is fascinating too. Tbilisi is my hometown, I was born and grew up there, and it’s a very inspiring place, but quite a demanding one at the same time. At GeoAIR, after many years of working on urban topics, we worked on a publication about the city and called it “Tbilisi – It’s Complicated” (2019) to reflect the complicated relationship one develops with this city, where at times, I have felt as a foreigner too.

Urban environment has been one of the main topics in my research and art practice, and I was also studying the identity of Tbilisi – a very old city known for its blossoming diversity throughout centuries, or at least we have heard so. At GeoAIR we were actively working on urban topics and at some point, together with my colleague and friend Nini Palavandishvili, we decided to look at urban diversity through migration and foodways. First, we collaborated with ICOMOS Georgia and the local community in the revitalized Betlemi Quarter in Old Tbilisi for their annual festival. During the “Traveling Foodways. Betlemi Quarter Stories” (2013) project, we wanted to see the dynamics of multiethnicity in the old part of the city famous for this social aspect throughout centuries. The idea was to meet with the representatives of different ethnic groups living there for generations, cook together and have discussions with them, and we also invited young professionals from anthropology and the arts to get involved. Afterward, fanzines were prepared, and during the festival, participants shared their stories, recipes, and food with guests.

Then we decided to expand this approach and explore the city’s identity in relation to the recent migration at that time. A lot of people were coming to Georgia for various reasons, from all around the world, temporarily or permanently, to study, work, or find better living conditions, etc. But we found out that there was not much exchange between “hosts” and “newcomers,” and in such context stereotypes can easily prevail. This is how Cooking Imaginations: Tbilisi Migrant Stories (2014) started. We collaborated with a lot of people from art and anthropology. Tamara Bokuchava also joined our main team, and all three of us had the experience of living abroad, of being a foreigner, and I think that was important as a background as well. Food is a crucial part of who we are, and it is also a great way of bringing people together, but beware, it can lead to heated discussions as well. The project had a lot of components and aspects to it – research, TV appearances on cooking shows, public cooking, publications, residencies, workshops with schoolchildren, etc. In the end, we put all the different materials in a specially designed “food box” that became the final publication. This project showed different meanings behind the word foreigner, the challenges that come with it, and how beneficial openness and exchange can be – it was done on a personal level, thanks to the openness and bravery of our participants who were willing to share. It also showed that the identity of a place includes everyone sharing it.

NDEREOM: In some of your writing you mention the importance of spaces that nurture queer voices, for example. I would like to hear more about this, if okay with you.

DC: Yes, let’s talk about that as well! I guess you are referring to my article “An [Imaginary] Museum of Surviving Bodies.” In 2021, Indigo magazine in Georgia was working on a special queer issue and they asked me to write about queer topics in Georgia’s arts and culture. I wanted to review certain directions in queer art, as it were, some of the artists, projects, and tendencies related to it – I was seeing the need of combining certain information that had accumulated. During the writing process, I realized it was becoming like a search for a certain kind of museum, an imaginary museum in Georgia’s case that ideally would specialize in queer history, culture, and art. Also, I wanted to show that with this perspective “surviving bodies” referred to those works, objects, or artifacts that represent queer people and stories, and they are surviving objects because in the dominant heteronormative environment, they tend to be misrepresented, or vanished. I have been to museums that focus on queer topics and found these visits empowering and educational. It’s very important because we can see queer history, queer art, and experience it in a safe place while feeling represented. But not everyone has the possibility to travel and visit these places. Some museums in the West started rethinking their histories and objects through queering perspectives, talk about it more, there are many examples in NYC, and perhaps in a few other bigger and more liberal cities around the world, and that’s also great! There are many other details and subtleties in the article which was published in Georgian, and I made an English version and can share it if anyone is interested.

The article itself was connected to an exhibition called Surviving Bodies that I curated in 2019 as part of URBANARE’s series called “Remainders.” It was a side project to the Silk Museum’s program on the International Museum Day and the Night at the Museum that year. I conceived it as an imaginary exhibit from the future concerning nondichotomous bodies and safe spaces. It featured photo objects by Katharina Stadler and sculptures by Tamar Botchorishvili, that were exhibited outside the museum, inside the structure of the “Silk Pavilion” by Leyla Musayeva. “Surviving Bodies” was linked with an object in the Silk Museum’s exhibition hall, and the visitors were invited to go in the museum and see it as well. It is a box that features double cocoons – spun by two or perhaps more silkworms together – that end up having various shapes and there’s a special word in Georgian for it. However, I discovered that the old label referred to them as “ugly cocoons” – I saw this as a scary metaphor from the previous century, and wanted to rethink that within the exhibition. We made a postcard with the image of that object and added “not so” before the old label. But since the Salon’s approach is vegan-vegetarian, we will not be including the image of silk cocoons here. I elaborated on this and a lot more in the article I wrote later. Also, this is an example of what I meant when I said that in my work, I usually connect different experiences.

NDEREOM: We can’t end this conversation without talking more about the Silk Museum and the mulberry trees. The ecosexual in me is seeking to learn more about this!

DC: That’s a great topic to end with. The State Silk Museum in Tbilisi is a fascinating place! It was built towards the end of the 19th century as the museum, the library, and the main building of the Caucasian Sericulture Station – a large research complex established by the Russian Empire in Tbilisi as a regional institute in the Caucasus. It went through a lot of changes since then, as did Georgia itself. I will not go into the details of its history, which is quite complex, but you can read more about it on the museum’s website. In 2006, it became a state museum, and parallel to its main museum work, in the previous years, it became this unique example of a historic museum that is also one of the active contemporary art places. The museum’s current director, Nino Kuprava, is an artist and a curator as well, and she initiated and conceptualized this openness for contemporary art, which proved to be very successful, and I am glad that I was a part of that for a few years as the Curator of International Programs there.

Currently, the museum’s building is going through a complete rehabilitation process, and it has been closed for some time. However, even when the museum’s objects were wrapped and boxed, I created a series of projects called Without Museum Objects (2021) as I wanted to rethink the uniqueness of this exhibition space itself – even the exhibition furniture is said to be designed according to the sketches of the building’s architect Aleksander Szymkiewicz. There are many fascinating things about this place and one of them, perhaps one of my personal favorites was the so-called “Mulberry Room” – yes, a room dedicated to the mulberry tree and its research, as domesticated silkworms are picky eaters and will only eat leaves of mulberry trees.

 I cannot stop thinking about mulberry trees, as I keep seeing them everywhere, even in NYC. I have childhood memories of these trees and their delicious fruits, and then they showed up in my work as well. I feel like I will be making a project about them here as well, honestly, I already started researching something about it. I did a series of works on mulberries. Actually, as part of Art Prospect, in 2021 we hosted the residency project of Carolanne Patterson, an artist based in New Haven, CT. She did an amazing installation – a meditation space, a healing circle called “Cocoon Room” that was temporarily installed in the center of the main exhibition hall, among empty vitrines and wrapped museum objects. I curated it and meditated in there as well, and later wrote a text Without Museum Objects: Meditation on Mulberry Trees – it was a healing experience!

Afterward, when I started working independently, I presented my research on the museum’s photos of mulberry trees at an event called They Are There, Sometimes. It was a collaborative event with artist Nino Kvrivishvili, following the invitation by Nina Akhvlediani and Olaf Nicolai to participate in The Whole Life. Archives & Imaginaries congress at HKW (2022, Berlin, Germany). I talked about mulberry trees and Nino discussed textiles and art, in a way we talked about the starting point and final results of sericulture, and drew from the archives of the Silk Museum. The museum has a very rich photo collection as well, and I have been observing a subgroup concerning mulberry trees, where I noticed there were usually people photographed with trees. My research in visual anthropology helped me to identify different directions there and through these images talk about people, nature, dominance, and many other topics that sericulture can reveal if we look beyond just silk fabrics. I will not go into more details, but you can find the recording of the event in this link. In 2023, I wrote another text called Mulberry Archive. It also explores these photographs, and in a way, it is an ode to the “Mulberry Room.” There I also talk about the complex history of the museum, without which it’s hard to understand that place and its objects. I think mulberry trees are staying with me for some time.

NDEREOM: One question I despise is: What are you working on? This question is so common in the art industry.Instead, I would like to ask you: what makes you get up in the morning and take the first step for the day? What makes you want to move your body forward into the world and interact with it?

DC: I think I already partially answered the question you don’t like. Your other question is great, and maybe not so easy to answer right away, especially in these trying times. I think what gets me up in the morning is the realization that it’s another day, and I try not to take that for granted. Of course, there are better and worse days, but I want to discover small and big wonders on my way, share kindness, and in the spirit of The Interior Beauty Salon – heal on personal and collective levels. I still find a lot of that in art.

 NDEREOM: I thank you for giving me the opportunity to ask questions and to learn from you. I hope that we have the opportunity take a walk through New York City and to continuing this dialogue in person.

DC: I am grateful for your time, and the possibility of doing this Q&I. It’s always great speaking with you, and I look forward to walking and talking with you in NYC. I am sure, we’ll see a mulberry tree or two on the way.

All images courtesy of Data Chigholashvili

Data Chigholashvili’s links: Website / Instagram / Linkedin / Publication

Data (David) Chigholashvili works at the intersection of social anthropology and contemporary art. Their research, curatorial practice, and art projects explore topics around visual and urban anthropology, ethnography, socially engaged art, natural and built environments, public space, migration, foodways, memory, queering, archives, and/or museums. Data’s projects are strongly related to the specificities of contexts and often include collaborative, educational, and/or participatory aspects.

Data obtained the Degree of Master of Science in Social Anthropology from The University of Edinburgh (2012), and The Degree of Bachelor of Humanities in History, Politics and Culture from The University of Georgia (2009).

 As of February 2024, Data has worked in arts and culture independently, also as the Curator of International Programs at the State Silk Museum, and was in the team of an artist-run organization and residency GeoAIR. They have participated in many residency and fellowship programs, presented at different conferences and events internationally, as well as written for various platforms and edited publications.

Selected projects and publications:

Curatorial projects – Pop-Up: Textiles (2022); Without Museum Objects project series including the exhibition Leafeatersand installation Cocoon Room (2021); The New Dictionary of Old Ideas (2020); exhibition series Remainders including Surviving Bodies (2019) and It’s unedited but I reconstructed (2018); Cooking Imaginations: Tbilisi Migrant Stories (2014).

 Texts and publications – Mulberry Archive (The State Silk Museum, 2023); Without Museum Objects: Meditation on Mulberry Trees (The State Silk Museum, 2021); An [Imaginary] Museum of Surviving Bodies (Indigo magazine, 2021); co-authored contribution on Socially Engaged Art in Georgia (CEC ArtsLink, 2019); co-edited publications Tbilisi – It’s Complicated (Onomatopee, 2019) and city [un]archived (Onomatopee, 2015).

Andrea Sofía Matos

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Andrea Sofía, we met through Christine Licata, a culture visionary in the South Bronx and beyond. She suggested you as the person with whom to engage in this conversation about social prescribing and healing in our borough. I see that you work as an artist, art administrator, curator and advisor. Before we get into your roles, what would you like to say about yourself, the person/the being?

Andrea Sofia Matos: Nicolás, it’s a pleasure to be included in this wonderful series! I am a proud puertorriqueña, born and raised on the island who loves amarillos (sweet plantains), the beach and the mountains. Recently my mother reminded me that when I was little, whenever someone would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would tell them I wanted to be an artist, but not the ones in Hollywood, I wanted to be the ones who painted. So, I think art has always been an essential part of who I am even if I didn’t know which direction I wanted to go towards within this large arts ecosystem.

NDEREOM: What is social prescribing for those of us who might not be familiar with this concept, and how do you seek to set this initiative in motion in the South Bronx?

ASM: Before speaking about social prescribing, I always like to remind people that this term is a fancy new way of naming the community-based healing work that’s been happening for centuries, especially in indigenous and communities of color throughout the world. I love to give context, so here is a bit on this, social determinants of health are the non-medical factors such as social, economic, and environmental components, that significantly influence the health and well-being of individuals and communities. These determinants encompass more than just personal behaviors and genetic factors; they focus on an individual's context and how this context influences broader societal conditions, forces, and systems. Key social determinants examples are safe housing, transportation and neighborhoods; racism, discrimination and violence; education, job opportunities and income; access to nutritious foods and physical activity opportunities; pollution (air and water), and language, literacy and the arts. The United States Department of Health and Human Services defines social determinants of health as, the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality of life outcomes and risks. Therefore, social prescribing is one of the solutions to actively combat the social determinants of health. It’s a method aimed at connecting patients with a variety of non-clinical community services to enhance their overall health and well-being. It’s a holistic approach to healthcare that connects people to activities, groups and services in their community to meet their practical, social and emotional needs. Typically provided through communal activities, examples include volunteering, art making, gardening, nature walks, cooking, and movement. In my case, I am focusing on social prescribing through the arts (visual, performing, culinary, literary and horticulture). Because there’s substantial scientific data that proves that by giving people “prescriptions” to participate and engage in the arts they’re able to enhance their physical and mental well-being.

The Bronx has always been rich in cultural and artistic production, from salsa to hip-hop, the visual arts and much more. Yet it’s a space that's been battling multiple challenges, positioning it as one of the most historically underserved areas in New York City. With approximately 30% of residents living in poverty, a 12% unemployment rate, and high rates of eviction, unemployment, and child welfare involvement, the South Bronx neighborhoods, in particular, grapple with substantial health disparities like high rates of pre-term births, diabetes, HIV infection, and premature death. Therefore, having this program of social prescribing of the arts is essential to revitalizing the Bronx community, by bringing joy and hope back into people's lives.

NDEREOM: I see that you are working at Urban Health Plan’s main site, El Nuevo San Juan Health Center on Southern Boulevard, an iconic place in our neighborhood clearly linked to its histories/herstories/theirstories of activisms.  How would you say are these legacies informing your work and what you seek to do?

ASM: The impact of Urban Health Plan in the Bronx has served as the guiding light for this project. I owe my current position to what Dr. Richard Izquierdo, the founder of Urban Health Plan built 50 years ago, who consistently dedicated himself to addressing the medical needs of his community. It is his enduring legacy that continues through Paloma Izquierdo-Hernandez, his daughter and the current President and CEO. Under her leadership, the organization has maintained a commitment to building blocks, care, and dedication to the community, earning their trust and respect. It was her idea that made way for the implementation of a social prescribing program, which encapsulates the community work that has always been at the core of Urban Health Plan’s mission.

We are then able to incorporate the dynamic cultural and artistic histories of the Bronx to better serve and implement this social prescribing program of the arts. A lot of it is rejecting the “Bronx is Burning” stereotype and instead spotlighting the incredible work that has been and is happening across the Bronx always. Supporting and collaborating with fantastic cultural institutions like the Bronx Museum, Bronx Arts Space, iD Studio Theatre, Literary Freedom Project, The Point CDC, Casita Maria, The Bronx Music Heritage Center, Longwood Art Gallery, Pregones Theatre (PRTT), and many others.

The vision of this program with Urban Health Plan is to create an inclusive space where arts are for everybody, ensuring that individuals from all backgrounds can participate and reap the benefits of the arts for the enhancement of their overall health and well-being. We want the Bronx to be healthy, full of joy and life, and the arts are essential to this process. What better way to make the arts accessible than to make it a requirement of people’s healthcare.

NDEREOM: I agree! You were born and raised in Puerto Rico. My experience as a creative and resident of New York has been greatly shaped by my connections with a long list of Nuyorican, New York Rican and Puerto Rican activists, artists and organizers living outside the island, and I am extremely grateful to them. How has it been for you here? Is there anything that you may have had to learn in the U.S./New York in regard to your own culture(s) and identity/identities?

ASM: Moving from Puerto Rico to the USA didn’t come without its challenges, it was a bit of a culture shock at first because of the differences in lifestyle and community. I am most grateful for the worldly perspective I have gained ever since moving. Some things, within the confines of an island, feel unattainable or impossible, and making this leap into the unknown has been a huge privilege and an enriching experience. I have learned many things about my culture and identity, leaving home I think always provides some much-needed space for reflection of what you had, and what you want for the future.  For me, it’s been about realizing how deeply I need others, a community to turn to when I’m homesick, seeking a safe space and some calentón (warmth).  

I've also noticed how people born here in the Bronx and those from Puerto Rico share a lot of the same life experiences. It's clear that there's still a lot of work to be done to ensure that the arts represent both Nuyoricans and those born in Puerto Rico. But, as cliché as it sounds, if we come together, we can really make a difference. The strength of our unity and a commitment to representation can bring lasting change in the artistic and cultural landscape for both communities in the greater arts world.

NDEREOM: I could speak volumes about the vital support that I have received from Nuyoricans, New York Ricans, and Puerto Ricans, as well as from Bronxites from all backgrounds. In my opinion, there is no place like the South Bronx, my home. With all of the challenges, exploitation and oppression that most of us there face –to a lesser or greater extent. every time that I leave the place and come back, it is like falling in love again. The faces, the interactions, the synergies, the authenticity, the no-masks or wanting to impress others… What brought you to the Bronx, a borough that is rapidly changing in so many ways, or perhaps not.

ASM: My involvement in the arts is what brought me to the Bronx. Before I had even arrived in New York City, a dear mentor, friend and collaborator Amy Rosenblum-Martin, curator and art historian, had invited me to participate as the curatorial assistant for an exhibition that she was co-curating with Ron Kavanaugh at the Bronx Art Museum titled Swagger & Tenderness: The South Bronx Portraits of John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres. This exhibition (and the Bronx) was my introduction to New York City, and I quickly realized why so many people, like yourself, think there's no place like it and gravitate towards it. It’s such a great community to be a part of, I’m super grateful for Amy, Ron and everyone who immediately made me feel welcome– it the one place I’ve travelled to in the USA that I have felt closest to home.  

NDEREOM: I am smiling as I write these questions. I can hear the voices of some my activist friends: “Stay away”, “Do not move to the Bronx”. I get that too. For so long we have been able to be ourselves and be protected from the user-friendliness that has rendered other boroughs practically an extension of suburbia with all its blandness. On the other hand, we still have to put up with paying high prices for food, as well as with city neglect. How do you see social prescribing not only speaking to these issues but also shaking the dominant systems that want to keep us down and tell us that we do not matter?

ASM: Similar to what I said before, social prescribing really is us going back into those ancestral roots in community and communal living, it’s about recognizing that we have the power to heal one another in a variety of ways, but we can’t do it alone. We are gregarious beings, and we need each other. I believe we’re slowly coming into that spirit of unity and solidarity once more; people crave it –especially after nearly losing their minds out of loneliness through the COVID-19 lockdown. Therefore, social prescribing is at its core, it is a tool that brings people together in community, gives them access and empowers them which I believe is the best way to shake up systems of oppression and control.

NDEREOM: Oppressive system tend to want to keep people apart. When we come together, ask for help, offer help, and realize that we are not alone in the struggle, these systems start to crumble. Tell me about your creative work. I see that photography is part of this, and I am curious about the series with your smallest cousin. It is inspiring to see more artists bringing forward their day-to-day and their home experiences into the arts. I come from a generation where some art professors would tell women that they were wasting their time in art school, and where I saw women actively seeking to avoid any elements of the domestic in their work for fear of being stereotyped. 

ASM: I always struggle to call myself an artist because it’s not something that I do regularly. I definitely think being a curator and an administrator is close to my “calling” however, whenever I have done creative work, mainly photography and video, it has always centered around who I am, what my context is and the people with whom I have grown with, whether that is my family or my friends. One of the best professors I’ve ever had, Tony Chirinos, told us in one of our first classes that we should photograph what we know and what was most familiar to us. In his mind, this was the best way that we could begin to understand and intentionally produce what he called “drawing with light” (referencing the etymology of the word photography) and I have always appreciated that lesson. It’s hard for me to make art of a subject matter that is disconnected from who I am, whether that be my immediate surroundings, thoughts, interests or problems. You’ll see that in Lucia Means Light, PCOS, Casa / Home and The Unemployment Project, all of which are connected to who I am or experiences I’ve had in one way or another.

When speaking about the pressures women and female-identifying artists find within the different pockets of the art industry, still being subjected to restrictions and criticism regarding their art, bodies, and lives is quite shameful. No one should dictate what an artist chooses to communicate through their art. What truly matters is how artists convey their reality, dreams, thoughts, or sociopolitical and cultural views not in conforming to predetermined norms.

I encountered many professors who tried to dictate what their students should consider important. However, I believe there is something noble about an artist, irrespective of gender or gender identity, to focus on the domestic and scenes of everyday life. There's something magical that happens when an artist delves into the personal, enabling them to convey something universal. It is one of the reasons I find art so captivating.

NDEREOM: You talk about the diaspora and the diasporic, the Caribbean and Latin America as your interests as a curator and writer. I see this as well in your photographs for Home and in its Untiled video. My friend Alanna Lockward said something like, All Dominican art is by nature diasporic. I would expand on that and say that, all Caribbean art is by nature diasporic. Many of those who left our homelands can see our islands/homes/region from a different perspective, and have developed new ways of being Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Caribbeñes/as/os in the new places of residence. How is this for you?

ASM: You know, I never realized the significance of the diaspora until I became a part of it. I've come to understand that we truly need each other, and that despite our differing realities, we are all connected as part of the same cultural and national community. Just as the people in one's home country are important, alongside their struggles and achievements, for the diaspora –the challenges and triumphs of the diaspora also impact those in the country of origin.

NDEREOM: Where do you find warmth and light in our city? For me is about colors. I go down into a hole when those strident Caribbean colors go missing for too long. I need my guava pinks and verdes cotorra or a regular basis. They are medicine to my soul.

ASM: I hate sounding like a cliché once again, but I really find warmth in spaces where my community is experiencing joy whenever I go to see my Puerto Rican or Caribbean friends at the park, their apartment, or bumping into them at an exhibition, it really fills me with so much love. But within the city itself I find that there are pockets of warmth everywhere you go I love walking through Harlem or the Bronx and catching the smells and sounds that are familiar to Puerto Rico or the Caribbean, sitting at a bench in Chinatown and people-watching, but I also find lots of joy in going into the natural spaces this city has to offer such as Prospect Park or Governors Island.

NDEREOM: Thank you for being here with us. Gracias.

ASM: Mil gracias por esta oportunidad! I’m extremely grateful for this opportunity! 

All images courtesy of Andrea Sofía Matos

Andrea Sofía Matos’s links: Website / Instagram / UHP Video

Andrea Sofia Matos is a recent graduate student in Visual Arts Administration program at New York University (2024). She received her BA in Art History and Photography from Florida International University (2021). Born and raised in Bayamón, Puerto Rico she is a curator and arts administrator with a concentration on contemporary art from the Caribbean, and their diasporas.

Currently she’s the Arts & Wellness Coordinator at Urban Health Plan, where she is leading, developing and implementing a social prescribing program housed within Urban Health Plan’s health centers in South Bronx, Corona Queens, and Harlem. The Arts Desk operates with the mission that the arts contribute significantly to the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of individuals, whether through witnessing artistic expressions or actively engaging in the creative process.

Her latest curatorial projects include BotanicÁrte and exhibition that celebrates artists as healers at Taller Boricua, Harlem which opened on March 8, 2024 and a group exhibition at Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Brooklyn which opened on April 13, 2024. Recently she’s been awarded the Public Humanities Fellowship from the Latinx Project at NYU; curated IN-ANIMADA a solo exhibition at Galería SPACE in Guaynabo, PR by artist William Norris Pagán and was the curatorial assistant of the exhibition Swagger & Tenderness: The South Bronx Portraits of John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres at the Bronx Museum of Art. She has also worked and collaborated with multiple organizations such as Puerto Rico Art News, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, LnS Gallery, The Margulies Collection, The Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA), Locust Projects, and more.

Anna Recasens

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Anna, I was about to write in Castellano! We met in Catalonia almost 20 years ago through Ramon Parramon and Idensitat, the organization that he founded in Barcelona. Our history goes back to Calaf, a place that I hold dear in my heart. No question from me, and maybe this is a good time to invite you to introduce yourself.

Anna Recasens: Thank you, Nicolás, for inviting me to be part of The Interior Beauty Salon. First of all, let me mention that before we met in person in Calaf, while working in an Idensitat’s program, I was using my free time to walk around the village, talking with people, enquiring about plants and customs...and many neighbors were asking me, do you know Nicolás? They would then continue telling me about how they met you, about your work, and your life in Calaf. In some sort of way, I feel that our friendship was forged through the experience of the many people who saw our friendship even before we met.

Regarding me, I started many years ago (decades) working in painting and site-specific installations but, with time, I have been evolving towards a more performative and cross-disciplinary work, placing myself in the middle–using parts of my own life–or sharing and interviewing with other people. I also work blending and contrasting public with private spaces, and walking as a way to recognize places and their stories. I’m interested in researching the many layers and the various perspectives opening within a creative process, paying attention to small details in everyday life, to the anonymous or ephemeral actions which become at the same time truth and fiction in the shaping of a narrative. I am intrigued by emotional responses to a sense of place, and I am keen to explore these responses as means of generating a landscape restoring common meanings and imaginaries.

Each one of my projects is independent but yet linked through different themes. For example, Hidden Landscapes was an exploration of imaginary spaces that children create in the parks to play. Milepost1422 recreated a journey through the memories and mementos of someone who did that journey 15 years before. In Weaving Time I gathered people to crochet or weave yarn with me and to tell their life stories. In Zoo-Graphies I drew an emotional map of a little village in Estonia, exploring the place following the intimate and symbolic paths and places of some of the neighbors.

The Filing Cabinet (2007-2017), was a tool that I used as an itinerant “stage” for collective work. An old filing cabinet, customized with wheels that rolled, provided a shared space within different cultural events, while taking different formats: library, museum, jardinière, kitchen, information kiosk, and workshop space. Its collection of books and permanent digital archives included themes such as art, ecology, botany, memory, and reflections on the rural and the urban worlds, the commons, community, etc. Also, The Filing Cabinet, was the first of a series of minimal footprint devices named EMUC (mobile spaces for common use) which I designed repurposing items/boxes, having undergone a structural alteration to add compartments, handles, expansions, wheels, external and/or collapsible parts. The changes were dictated by the uses and the occasion: a jardinière, portable umbrella, exhibition display or a table surface.

LSM (Laboratory Social Metropolità) (2012-2017), is a work room, a laboratory of ideas, and a  meeting space, bringing open educational activities, as well as a micro-residencies program, a local exchange network, actions dealing with  urban ecology, and an experimental and collaborative garden, among others. LSM is a hybrid space for creative action and research, for relationship-building between artistic and social, local and extra-local activities. This was an artistic project-in-residence at the Center for Artistic Production L'Estruch in Sabadell that sought to establish a link between the community, the Center, and its users, becoming a connection node between the arts, grassroots activism, contemporary thinking, and social commitment.

NDEREOM: We heard about socially-engaged art years after we pondered on the work that we have been doing for decades. I did not even know that there was a term for some of the experiences that we were bringing forward into life, and out in urban as well as rural spaces in places like Europe and the Americas. I think that Idensitat referred to this as arte en el espacio público, but now everything must have a name, a label to be able to get funding and receive curatorial approval.

AR: For more than two decades Idensitat has been championing artistic practice and research that have impacted the public sphere through creative proposals connecting the spatial, temporal and social dimensions of a specific place or context. Idensitat works with cross-disciplinary and collaborative dynamics, experimenting in a place to transform artistic practices, and experimenting with artistic practices to transform a place, and this goes way back, highlighting the active role which art plays within the social context. It also highlights the capacity of art to disseminate cultural content in a wider context.

NDEREOM: Long live Idensitat, an organization that has been so generous with me and so many creatives. With the freedom of Idensitat in mind, which is quite unusual in the arts, curators and funders, I feel, can sometimes significantly detour our visions as creatives, as trends come and go. You have been working on the margins for decades, focused on herbs, cooking, walking, and studying urban and rural cultural spaces. How have you used that freedom? How has it been to work outside the institutional and curatorial gaze?

 AR: As an artist, I try to adopt a humble position, working from everyday life, sharing knowledge and tools, and provoking creative situations in order to connect with others as much as possible and to grow together from our own vulnerabilities. Aware of an artistic scene that very much rewards and, to some extent, perpetuates the idea of the "excellent artist," whatever that means, this position of following non-standard paths and not pursuing the trends is not "popular." I believe in the arts as a means for change, for critique, without the need for approval, or without having to deliver domesticated nonsense to please circles that remain closed to most of the general public. I feel good about maintaining a respectable distance, a vantage point to keep freedom.

As an artist and cultural activist, I work in everyday environments. I approach different places and situations by walking around, sharing experiences, seeking information from the ground up, and seeking emotional contact with the different layers of meaning that make up both the landscape (urban or rural) and the active fabric of imaginaries comprising them, without the contaminating filters directing the gaze towards official interests. Immersion, affection, and bonding as a form of art provide me with tools, collaborative networks, and deeper knowledge to create narratives as paths for common transformation. The arts’ potential to engage and bring people together to hold goals in common, unleashes the possibilities of using the imagination for social change and common benefits.

Exploration and discovery are fundamental to my work. I am, through art, an explorer, a cartographer, a storyteller, a dreamer, an inventor, and many other things, and I look at and listen profoundly to the world with wonder. Working with everyday life can be seen by many as a disadvantage, as a lack of perspective, of not looking at the big picture, but I believe that, on the contrary, approaching the arts from life itself, from everyday situations, may contribute to a far bigger sphere of mutual understanding.

NDEREOM: Can you tell me about your investigations on urban spaces where people go to engage in erotic acts?

AR: Urban Intimacy (2005-2008), is a research project and field work configuring a map of intimate and sexual spaces in Barcelona, resulting in a photographic and videographic archive on the subject. It also includes texts. City-spaces are usually defined: commercial zones, office zones, zones for leisure, zones for consumption, and zones for tourist-related activities. Sex in public space turns the city inside out. The city itself is redefined, reformatted and "hacked" by its users, to claim privacy and to shift microclimates. These zones of accepted sexual activity raise temporary borders. Couples make room for mating and intimacy on park benches, in hidden alleys, at “lovers' lanes,” and at other places. In the city´s “hot zones,” sexual workers make a commercial space for themselves to catch the attention of passersby for a quick encounter. Some take pleasure in being seen, voyeurs gather as the audience to watch the action. Queer and straight cruising creates open shared places for sexuality, where singles find company for a night and establish places and routines that effectively close some areas to the general public by means of movements reserved for those who know.

Mapping these activities, which continuously re-shape the social topography of the city (for example, the use of a chair in the street while waiting for clients, the use of bushes as private rooms, the car becoming a home in the “lovers' lane”), reveals a tendency to use a public item to allude to that which is understood as private. The “public” face of the city is appropriated, and its spaces and its fixtures are used or modified to provide temporary accommodation, shelter, and/or private comfort for these interactions.

NDEREOM: I would like to circle back to Calaf and your incursions into botany and herbalism. Rather than ask a question, I will leave this space open for you to talk about these subjects.

AR: Some years ago, I started to walk around, describing the perimeters of places, and recognizing in our most immediate landscape the limits of the urban and the rural. This effort interrupted paths, shed light on forgotten spaces, roads in disrepair, and atrophied areas within the city. While wandering, I found the memory of the green realm; of the stories that can only be found by digging into memories.

Topografía Sensible is the title of a group of works of different dimensions and durations, which main objective is to give value to the ecological and to recognize the layers of meaning in the imprecise limits of urban centers. Topografía Sensible started in 2004 in Glasgow. In 2009 this was a guest project in Idensitat’s edition, resulting in two years of research and a book published in 2011: Passeig pel Rodal de Calaf. Subsequently, experiences have been added in Tarragona, Valencia, Menorca, Barcelona, Jerez de la Frontera, Las Palmas, Calama, and Rome where, through urban dérives and site-specific activities I experienced everyday life in these places. 

I’m interested in exploring a "sense of place."  Topografía Sensible with both individual and collaborative activities, includes events such as herb collection and foraging, and the compilation of cooking recipes and domestic knowledge. It also includes cooking, and life journals as critical tools to recover local memory about places and to generate attention to ecological justice. The results are varied: posters, texts, publications, videos, maps, itineraries, and drawings.  The result is a chaotic collection in which images, sounds, and stories are gathered. It also includes personal desire paths that intersect at some point, signaling secret codes beyond avenues, beltways, and buildings. These are the micro-cities within the city.

NDEREOM: You, Laia Solé, and I have been working since 2019 On Art and Friendship. My ears perked up the other day when I started to see some hints that this was the new thing in the arts. We have corresponded for four years through WhatsApp, sending each other photos, audio files and text messages and formatting all of the materials generated as videos. We presented at The 8th Floor, and at Ely Center of Contemporary Art with Transart Institute, and we also showed this work with IDENSITAT in Barcelona. How has this been for you?

AR: I remember that after several years of looking for an opportunity to be, to do something, or to work together in the same place, we started to use the tools we had at hand to maintain a more close and vivid experience of our friendship beyond distances and time. WhatsApp looked like a good idea for the possibility of immediate messaging with audio and video tools. For us, it was not only the wish to be together or share a project, but the need to leave behind evidence of what for us was most precious: our friendship.  The pandemic started and we continue corresponding, referring to our personal landmarks, charting emotional contours and the significance of the trails that each of us was leaving/taking. It channeled the diversity of patterns, behaviors, and identities that we developed through wandering.

We have been materializing parts of this conversation and research by means of video, photographs, texts, and presentations, describing shared personal travelogues as memory artefacts, but also as a medium through which we can evolve together in unexpected directions. A space that originated from a certain wanderlust spirit is now rooted in a profound understanding. This ongoing conversation about how we live and walk is, above all, an act of friendship that shortens geographical distances.

NDEREOM: You moved from Sabadell to Jerez de la Frontera. How have this shift been for you as a creative? 

AR: This has not been my first change of city, as I was living for some years in Scotland, but in some way this change has been more dramatic, as I sold the family house and severed the ties with my birth town, which is definitely located on the other side of the country. The last seven years have been a bit of a rollercoaster. Relocating provoked changes in my way of working, a different pace of life, the need for other tools, and a newfound level of precarity, as I was kind of starting again in a place with a very different art scene, with fewer job opportunities, a reduced network, and the need to travel more frequently to maintain activity. But honestly, I deeply believe that this has been a very positive change. Whatever I may have lost regarding connections and possibilities, I gained in tranquility, affection, contact with nature, and social interactions. While some people still think I am mad for abandoning the metropolis to go south, I can’t be happier with my new-found space, in which I live more according to the rhythm of the Earth. My feeling is to have found, through a simpler way of living, a renovated creative and active space in which I can grow and share, in which small details are of importance, and in which I can recover forgotten experiences. I walk in my surroundings, first through no person's land showing signs of dereliction, to find further away forgotten sensations—the freshness of the grass, my hands in the soil, the length of the landscape. I can close my eyes and go back to my childhood. As a traveler, I explore and evolve from one place to another, collecting evidence.

NDEREOM: I might be asking questions in a random way and I think that there is an unconscious purpose for me to do so, and to offer you the possibility to stay with a topic just long enough, but not for too long. I would like to hear about your documentation of street messages, and in particular those dealing with love.

AR: At some point around 2000, and parallel to changes due to motherhood, my work evolved towards field work with the use of photo and video cameras and sound recordings. These projects are based on research, the recollection of stories, and with participation in situations in which people share and create new stories.  While doing the Urban Intimacy project (2005–2008), which was part of the Post-it City program, I made a small project in my hometown, MyfirstKISS.  With MyfirstKISS I departed from the idea of understanding intimate situations in public spaces and the appropriations of urban spaces to temporarily modify, accommodate, shelter, or hide this type of interaction. I mapped intimate stories regarding places where people shared their first kiss. Using interviews, walks, and photography, making a map of this allowed me to understand the city's various layers from the perspective of love and affection (or even disaffection). This generated an archive of photographs of people kissing, or a collection of prints of kisses, and the writing of love messages in the streets. From then on, I have been looking at the city through the recollection of expressions of emotion, love messages, which define temporary zones more or less recognized or accepted in the social maps. Some of my works dealing with this include Arquitectura Sensible (2008-2018), Love Walls (ongoing), and Death and the City (ongoing). These temporary zones existing on the walls, in urban furniture in parks, in squares, along paths and alleys, as well as in transportation stations are used as intimate spaces, or as open-air billboards for love and personal messages. They lend meaning to the streets, sharing love, sharing love’s lost stories and reclaiming public space. They have in common a transient, temporary, and informal use of the space; favoring interaction, and humanizing the city.

By collecting these love messages and expressions of affection I explore the communicative process with which these messages become an architectural element in the construction of common spaces in the urban context, and an element with which to build relationships with passersby. It is also about recognizing the signs that build a common environment—scenes of longings, desires, and achievements—favoring the dissolution of urban anonymity and establishing a constant test to the notion of community.

I believe there is a need for understanding and living the city from the perspective of collective co-creation, enabling relationships and associations, and unfolding narratives to open different and necessary debates on topics such as love in global times, affection, and privacy and politics.

The collection of love messages (including images from various countries and some that people have been sending to me from their journeys or local contexts) is the base for processes such as presentations, workshops, and performances. Currently, I am working on a parallel collection of roadside memory messages: votive shrines, monuments paying homage to mourning and giving thanks, to devotions and spiritual needs.

NDEREOM: I know that you are teaching, doing your own work and caring for your home, so, while we can talk volumes –which nos encanta hacer– I understand that you might need to go shopping for vegetables, or meet with the walking group in town… and I will let you go with a big thank you for esta conversación. Moltes gràcies.

AR: All of the above... I am finishing some writing, I have a dish of cannelloni in the oven, and in a while, I am going out to walk around the city, which today is especially luminous. Spring is coming!

Thanks to you, Nicolás. See you soon.

Anna Recasens (Sabadell, 1961) is a visual artist, independent researcher, and cultural activist. She combines personal and collective artistic projects with work pertaining to education, cultural management, and dissemination, as well as engaging in artistic research on subjects regarding collective imaginaries of everyday life, the boundaries between urban and rural, public and private, from a critical perspective, and action towards the commons. She uses field walks as both a participatory tool to promote social creativity and as a personal tool to reveal site-specific hidden layers of meaning. She deploys a variety of art formats to develop her visual storytelling and writing.

She teaches workshops, publishes articles in different media, and participates in exhibitions, conferences, and discussion tables. She created and directed the Laboratori Social Metropolità, based at the NauEstruch in Sabadell (2012 2017). This was a space for reflection on contemporary culture, environmental justice, and a meeting place for exchanging knowledge between the arts and social practices. She is a member of Idensitat’s team (www.idensitat.net), Plataforma Vertices’ team (www.plataformavertices.net), and Mirapordonde Collective.

All images courtesy of Anna Recasens / Portrait of Anna Recasens: Gin Benzie Recasens

Anna Recasens links: Website / Instagram / The One Minutes / Studio Visit / Tierra Incógnita / LSM

Anna Recasens (Sabadell, 1961) is a visual artist, independent researcher, and cultural activist. She combines personal and collective artistic projects with work pertaining to education, cultural management, and dissemination, as well as engaging in artistic research on subjects regarding collective imaginaries of everyday life, the boundaries between urban and rural, public and private, from a critical perspective, and action towards the commons. She uses field walks as both a participatory tool to promote social creativity and as a personal tool to reveal site-specific hidden layers of meaning. She deploys a variety of art formats to develop her visual storytelling and writing.

She teaches workshops, publishes articles in different media, and participates in exhibitions, conferences, and discussion tables. She created and directed Laboratori Social Metropolità, based at the NauEstruch in Sabadell (2012 2017). This was a space for reflection on contemporary culture, environmental justice, and a meeting place for exchanging knowledge between the arts and social practices. She is a member of Idensitat’s team (www.idensitat.net), Plataforma Vertices’ team,, and Mirapordonde Collective.

Elizabeth Chapin

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: I came across your exhibition Treespell at Women & Their Work, and while walking in Austin, Texas, with Lauz Bechelli. When I stepped into the gallery, I was immediately drawn to the materials and the images in your work. Can you tell me about the beings who inhabit your installation(s)?

Elizabeth Chapin: There are 8 tree beings that make up the forest, growing portraits of beloved trees.  There is a growing/birthing figure of Artemis, god of wildness and birth.  The forest is guarded/not guarded by 2 nymphs emerging from the pond.  And there is the stag. 

For every tree, while I painted, I took photos of my progress and then animated that process.  The physical paintings were removed from the room and in their place, I created ghost replicas, like blank unruly screens or lumpy bodies, where the animations land, growing and ungrowing. 

Artemis is modeled on a friend of my daughter who I have known since she was 6.  So, like the trees, I photographed my progress of painting her as she is today, then I obliterated that painting and repainted her as her 6 year old self, while keeping the same silhouette of her 24 year old self.  Then I obliterated that, over and over, creating shapes of her at every age and also documenting the awkward, unresolved in between paintings.  Again, the physical painting was cast aside, and a ghost silhouette made on which the animation is projected. Girls and paintings growing and ungrowing. 

The nymphs are myself and my daughter. I painted zippered theatrical gauze skinsuits, like selkie skins. The eyes are, like the Artemis idea, painted from my newborn photos all the way up to now. And my daughter’s eyes are forming and blinking. The eyes are somewhat obscured behind green blown glass, which is how I visualized them in a dream, but also refers to their transformation, or the fact that they are still inhabiting a different world. 

Their fish “bonnets” are from an old halloween costume pattern I used for my children, and I added invisible zippered pockets for the eye video screens to slip into. These bonnets, covered in scales, coral, and barnacles, are like egg shell tops, the cracked remains of the tails from which the nymphs emerge. The tails are covered in 1000 paintings of frog habitats. Each painting is sewn onto a wired and zippered canvas tail, lined with deep red mohair, which reads as meat or guts. 

 The stag is a large canvas stuffed sculpture, bouncing on a steel twirly stand. On his blank canvas body, I projected videos of my dogs’ fur as they breathe and delight in the sun. His body is covered in coral velvet wound pockets from whence emerge whittled, gilt and feathered arrows, courtesy of our resident god.  His glowing testicles are made from an old paint rag, wire brushed so that we can see the glow. The tail and ears are made from stitching hundreds of different kinds of yarn and thread together. The antlers are cedar branches. And his eyes mutate on screens tucked into hidden zippered pockets. 

 NDEREOM: I am wondering about the role of dreams and the unconscious in your creative praxis I am asking because of the layers that you generate while combining the physicality of fabric with the ethereality of video projections and screens. There is something in the installation that calls to be experienced from different states of awareness.

EC: The entire forest is meant to represent our collective unconscious shadow, as forests do.  The nymphs, referential of fairy tale “prickly fish,” are slightly “devilish, unapproachable, slippery” creatures of the unconscious realm. (Marie-Louise Von Franz). Some interpreters insist that the stag is always representative of Artemis’s consciousness.  I like this merging of hunter and hunted. But I also like the stag as the merging of our humanity’s consciousness, particularly male consciousness. He becomes a Saint. Sebastian in that way or even a Christ or Antichrist.  Also, the entire idea emerged from 2 dreams. One where a beloved pond in Vermont (model for puddle tables) became a giant, dreaming green eye, content to stay put. And her staying put-ness was inviting me to listen more deeply. The other was a dream of a woman emerging from a zippered fish tail. 

NDEREOM: I come from a Lebanese family in the Caribbean and I grew up surrounded by fabrics. Many of my relative had textile stores where I could get lost, daydream and enter a sculptural space within the day-to-day. What would you say has informed your installations?

EC: I love this response. I, too, grew up surrounded by fabric and obsessed with fabric stores.  If my mom took me to a fashion store, I would sit on a bench by the door, refusing to go further, claiming I was short of breath. But in a fabric store, the bolts, upright like trees, were the raw materials of dreams. You could be anyone, you could become anyone. I learned to sew so that I could start in on this, making my own dance dresses, and later curtains and a wedding dress. I used to make soft fabric hand grenades, velvet shotgun shells, hybrid rat/dolls and food sculptures for my children. I sewed magnetized sardines leaping off of portraits and magnetized portraits of the dead on top of portraits of the living. So, I guess it was sneaking up on me. And then one day it just decided to take over. 

NDEREOM: I am not particularly attracted to most art objects. I tend to gravitate toward mundane things and stuff that gets shaped out of an urgent need to give voice to something that has to be born. While looking at your work, I sensed an unavoidable call for a narrative to emerge. Would you be willing to talk about this?

EC: It did feel unavoidable. I drew this ghost forest and this girl presiding over it (probably me) and the narrative kept expanding. And I think that is how it works for me, why I am drawn to myths and Bible stories and fairy tales. They are these ancient archetypes that get to be rewritten over and over and over, with room in them, like in poems, to interpret or dissolve so you can find yourself there and you can find the world there, but you cannot find the answer. Because there isn't one.  I started seeing the myth of Artemis as a fable of humanity, our long history of approaching the divine, approaching the wilds, and mistaking them for tools of empowerment, and I would like to turn that into a prayer. Something like “god of these wilds and god of my wild self, how do I remember that I do not approach you, because I am already within you.” And this started being a medicinal approach for my process as well. How can both the process and the result be sanctuary? How can I be in the tree while I paint her and how can the viewer also feel themselves inside of this energy?

NDEREOM: Where do the elements of your installations live when not in a gallery and what is your relationship to them beyond the exhibition space?

EC: They live all over our house. The playful aspect of paintings as environments is that the pieces can separate and come back together in all kinds of ways. Like paintings as modular couches. Or paintings that can literally hold hands with each other and with you. So, one of my creatures (who is one of the 3 graces in a “shower selfie”) is now living in one of the bathtubs in my house. The plants from a previous Eden are on mantels, an electrified iris is a night light in the bathroom, cowboys languishing in larkspur spill into the room, a birch adds a layer to a wall mural of trees, curtains from a moon temple divide rooms, and Eve wakes me up in the morning with the sun hitting her gilded edges. They surround me and each other. 

NDEREOM: Have you thought about the possibility of your pieces finding home in an unexpected pace like a church, a temple, a hospital…?  What would happen, in your opinion, if some of your pieces were to enter a realm other than art, like ritual, for example?

EC: A lot. I feel like they are altars, in a way, and I would love to see them in apses, arranged throughout a church like stations of prayer.  I had not thought of hospitals until you mentioned it, but that idea is beautiful.  Treespell could be a beautiful sanctuary for the sick and dying.  It could bring the wilds of the world to someone who doesn’t have the strength to go out to it.

NDEREOM: Tell me about the mermaids. I have a fascination with these creatures. It is a long story, but I did a performance based on my encounter with a mermaid-like creature. Beings living below rivers are part of my spiritual upbringing.

EC: They are mermaid/nymph/selkie/prickly fish/sirens. They are hybrid creatures, partly in the world of water or the unconscious and partly in the forest and the dirt. They are me and my daughter separate but entwined. I have been thinking a lot about the idea of microchimerism, the fact that not only do my and my mother’s cells become a part of her, but her cells also become a part of me. And I have also been thinking about monsters or beasts. How beasts live on the edges of maps and worlds. Lauren Elkin says “we can understand a culture by what it calls monstrous;  the monster stands for everything a society attempts to cast out. Monsters dwell at borders; you might even say the border creates the monster.”  So, the nymphs and the stag are my border dwellers, as I try to blur the idea of borders. 

NDEREOM: There is a lineage of artists who have worked with dolls: Elia Alba, Linda Mary Montano, and Louise Bourgeois. I am particularly into dolls and find them fascinating. What has been your experience with this?

EC: I played with dolls as a child and, for me, they are a portal – a way to build worlds. And sometimes children building worlds can be life-saving (Pan’s Labyrinth). As Carrie Mae Weems says, In seriousness there is little room for play but in play there is tremendous room for seriousness.  Dolls can be friends, mirroring what you need, they can conjure spells or absorb evils.  My large stuffed figures are very doll-like. I intentionally made the stag's legs fasten like a rag doll with giant horn buttons. It occurred to me recently that I was an indoor child and dolls were my medicine. And as an adult, living in the middle of the woods in Vermont in the summers (thanks to my father-in-law) the forest is my medicine. Treespell are these two worlds merging, and I think the videos, which are collapsing time, boundaries, and age, suggest this. 

NDEREOM: The book of eyes in your show! The collection of eyes that are used in some of your fabric sculptures. I am being cryptic. I am not even articulating a question. Can you talk about this? The eyes of Jesus, those of DT (not to mention his name), and images of the eyes of many others move seamlessly–one into the other– in your videos and as one flips the pages of your book. I will let you describe this in detail.

EC: The Stag has over 400 frames of men’s eyes. I made a list of famous men beloved and reviled, and men I know intimately. I started with DT and then painted Putin on top of him and Rilke on top of him, Whitman, Gandhi, my son, etc, etc. I became fascinated with the spaces where the painting was both Putin and Rilke, the moment where it was more Rilke and then fully Rilke.  It felt mystically like it was aligning with my desire to create this interconnected mycelial forest, the painting process echoing nonduality.

NDEREOM: What is your connection to Women & Their Work and how would you say your current installation there speaks with the histories of the space.

EC: I moved to Austin from NYC in 1999 and was on WTW’s board for a while. I have been a supporter and fan ever since. Their championing of women artists and the support they provide is crucial and rare. When I was thanking them in my speech at the opening, I likened what they do to being angel killers, in the Woolfian sense. Virginia Woolf said that in order to be an artist, a woman has to kill “the angel in the house.” And that angel is the voice inside your head that encourages modesty, helpfulness and charm, while questioning confidence, commitment to career, forthrightness, and the support of other women. WTW are professional angel killers.

NDEREOM: I thank you for this opportunity to hear from you and I hope to visit your exhibition at least once more.

EC:  These are the best questions.  Thank you for really being with the work. 

All images and animations courtesy of Elizabeth Chapin

Elizabeth Chapins links: Website / Instagram / Women and Their Work

Elizabeth Chapin is a contemporary artist whose paintings explore the intimacy of bodies (human, arboreal and vegetal) – bodies as expansive environments – intra-connected,  both containing and leaking within each other. This intimacy dissolves the illusion of gaze– of artist/subject and subject/viewer. Chapin sees archetype and myth as a way of holding our seemingly distinct experiences and bodies in the thicker flow of everything.  Social media, the religion of identity, a modern mythology, perpetuates and broadcasts “self”, offering playful creativity,  but also exile, distorting what it means to be connected, while maintaining systems of separateness.  Chapin responds to these ideas with restless paintings that become bodies, tumble off the wall, fold into themselves, into you and into each other, paintings co-becoming.

Born in Mississippi, Chapin received her BFA at the University of Virginia and also studied at The Parson School of Design in Paris. Her work has been exhibited across the United States including New York City; Houston, TX; Austin, TX; New Orleans, LA; Nashville, TN; and Jackson, MS, among others. In 2020, she was awarded a residency in Florence, Italy, through Feminist Art Collective Toronto.  In 2022, she was offered a 3 year mentorship under the acclaimed artists Shahzia Sikander and Holly Hughes. In 2023, Chapin was invited to participate in the biennial Sculpture Month Houston.  Her solo exhibition Treespell opens January 27, 2024 at Women and Their Work in Austin, TX, where she lives and works.

Women & Their Work is a nonprofit visual and performing arts organization located in Central Austin that serves as a catalyst for new ideas in contemporary art created by women living and working in Texas and beyond. For over 46 years, Women & Their Work has brought groundbreaking art to Austin, with exhibitions, performances, and educational workshops. Women & Their Work seeks to ensure that our community is equitably and inclusively represented in art; that we foster the artistic growth of women by nurturing their development within the context of their communities and with work that responds to the moment; and share the art of our time with our audience. https://womenandtheirwork.org

Greer Sikes

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles: We met in 2023 in New York City at Exploring the Earth as Lover: Ecosex and the City, the Ecosex Symposium organized by Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, two beloved teachers and friends. You and I were both clinicians at their Ecosex Sidewalk Clinic at Performance Space. Later, the same year, we coincided in Austin, Texas, at The Vortex. Beth and Annie had brought us together one more time and here we are!

Greer Sikes:  Yes, indeed, here we are!  Getting to meet my idol, Annie, as well as Beth Stephens plus you and all the artists whose work centers both personal pleasure and community joy was truly a dream come true this past summer.  I first came across Annie’s work in graduate school five years ago while researching my thesis, and it feels both very kismet and very wholing to have our creative work and communities now intersecting.  I also got the chance to meet Dr. Veronica Vera and Veronica Hart: icons in the pleasure art world!

NDEREO: I am very much enjoying the communities that Beth and Annie have been co-creating. They are extremely generous. I am curious about your work with scars. Can we focus on this subject, and can you expand on it?

GS: Absolutely!  I love scars!  I have more inches of scars on my body than I have inches in height!  I once counted them all; there are well over 200 individual scars, but I forgot the official number.  Scars are what hold me together. They are also the fossil of my life experience–my hieroglyphics for future grave diggers.

I believe the only place I can truly create from authentically as an artist is my own phenomenology: which is my life experience. Growing up, I used self-harm as my primary coping mechanism for getting through my childhood. I was also obsessed with becoming a smaller version of myself, because I believed my loneliness in childhood was due to my morbid obesity (and much of it was–the 1990’s and 2000’s were not kind to chubby people; fat acceptance was a social trend that beame popularized in the 2010’s, after I had already graduated college. I even had a college professor tell me I’d be successful–if I lost weight).  By the age of 15 the scars on my arm stopped healing due to the depth and repetition of the fossils I was carving, and I continued this practice into my college years.

When I was in undergrad I studied Gaelic and my instructors were full blown Celts. Our TA, Mairead, still practiced a very common Irish (and beyond) tradition of scaring your body to signify major life events. She raised her sleeve one day in class to show us three deep cuts on her arm.  She didn’t tell us what they were for, but in that moment, we shared a secret connection.  I felt both understood, and like I belonged to something I’d never been a part of (funnily enough, I am thoroughly Celtic myself).

Prior to that experience in 2009, and because I believed my problem to be my size, I eventually ended up putting my body through the most severe slice of my life: removing a part of my stomach. I had attempted to lose weight “the natural way” my whole life, but ultimately gastric sleeve surgery and the removal of part of my internal organs was what helped me get the boulder over that hill.  Two years later, I added more scars to my body with two more surgeries to remove the excess skin hanging from my now “normal sized” frame. I even had a breast lift which permanently altered the shape and size of my areolas–a decision my doctor made without my consultation.

But I didn’t mind at the time.  Because I just wanted to fit in. I assumed this male doctor who changed my breasts permanently without my consultation, just wanted me to fit in too. And fitting in meant getting rid of or covering up all the parts of ourselves not perfect or pretty enough for others. I spent my whole life trying to cut away the parts of myself I believed made me unlovable.  Until the morning I began to practice self-love while sitting in my bed, gently kissing my own flesh; I was showing affection to the scarry parts of my body. Years later artists like Bob Flanagan would teach me that the embrace of our pain is a work of art in its own right. Who's to tell me these flesh fossils aren’t the most beautiful thing in MY existence?

This is the moment I began to see scars as a work of life’s art.  Something not to be hidden so that we can be loved, but something to be shared courageously so that we have the capacity to offer more love.  Part of my work with phenomenology has helped me to understand that the source of what we care about: is what directly affects us. Not because we are selfish or lack compassion for others' experiences–simply because it is near impossible to have empathy for something you have no experience with. I believe most performance art is an attempt to draw our collective darkness underneath a spotlight: to share experiences that our society tries to hide.  And I believe if we began to treat our scars just as reverently as we did paintings hanging on gallery walls, perhaps we might begin to see and treat one another that way as well: reverently.

I suppose that is the long version of the origin of my fascination with scars.  It comes from my inner desire to tell the stories the world has told us to silence; to love what has been told is unlovable.  I want to experience the pleasure that is always found on the other side of pain: the self-love I trade for my shame. And I want others to be less afraid to roll their sleeves up and show other people their scars. Because why would we continue to hide the thing that’s keeping us held together?  Sharing our stories is like sharing our food: it’s nourishing.

NDEREO: One common thread in our practices is food. I got to see Splosh at The Vortex, the incredible performance space in Austin. Your performance for this venue during the Green Theater Symposium brought me back to Paul MacCarthy, Karen Finley and to some of the actions I did way back. And there is something particular in how you deal with food. What are some of the stories informing this aspect of your creative practice?

GS: Food has a dear place in my phenomenology. I believe food was my best friend as a child growing up. I used addictive behaviors as coping mechanisms for the majority of my upbringing, and was myself raised by addicts, so it took a while to recognize how unhealthy my relationship with food was.  By the age of six or seven, food stopped nourishing me, and had started to become my method of preferred dissociation.  I used to wait for everyone to go to bed at night just so that I could sneak into the kitchen and raid the pantry and fridge: the highlight of my day for a decade and a half of my life, which led to the development of what is called Compulsive Overeating Disorder (eating excessively for no [perceived] reason or beyond the point of comfort because you are unable to stop).

The removal of my stomach forced me to change my relationship with food.  Whereas before food was my comfort, my friend, now it could put me into extreme pain and risky health situations if I ate one bite too many (known as “Dumping Syndrome”). My surgery forced me to face my food addiction, but to also consider food beyond sustenance.  Food wasn’t just my drug of choice.  Food was pleasure. Food was a way to connect with others. Food was pretty and exciting to look at!  Food was even more fun to PLAY with!!

Part of the ethos behind my work is giving myself and others the permission to “play with shame.”  I began to take all the shame I felt about myself and my body and channel it into food.  Because of my dramatic weight loss (going from 400 lbs to about 170 lbs), I was now considered a “pretty woman” by society (and for the record I identify as genderfree; gender is as much a performance as any other trope in society, for me). I can’t tell you what a head-screw it is to go from being treated like you are less than human for two decades, to suddenly being treated like a real person who people acknowledge and desire. But I will tell you how angry and aware it made me about how we treat people according to the completely made up illusion of “pretty”. I wanted to subvert this harmful trope by subverting my interactions with food and my body.  The first time I used food in performance, I believe I was pouring honey on myself while wearing a slip and singing the timeless classic “I Enjoy Being A Girl”, until eventually the honey begins to choke and gag me and I start spitting it back up while belting. It really is disgusting how much sweetness is expected to be forced down women’s throats in these patriarchal playgrounds we call our societies. My intentional subversion is meant to make the audience both see and think in ways they’ve not been asked to before. 

And just like our emotions, food is deliciously visceral. 

It’s also just fun to play with.  Curiosity is a juicy activity.

Right now I am directly incorporating food into my work with a piece called Splosh! which challenges our consumerist relationship to food, plastic and human-created waste. In it I begin exploring the sensuality of the food that I am consuming, as well as the plastic packaging it’s all trapped in. What starts as a silly, sensuous and playful interaction devolves into a , confrontational representation of our wastefulness and misuse of our natural and man-made [sic]resources in a capitalist, consumerist reality. I’ll be taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year after premiering it at The Green New Theatre Symposium at The Vortex in 2023.  While I’ve performed in Edinburgh before, this will be my first original piece I’m taking–and I’m stoked!

NDEREO: The Salon nurtures works that are vegan and vegetarian-based. Have you contemplated the possibility of doing Splosh! performances centered on plant-based items? I would be curious as to how this would express visually and conceptually.

GS: I don’t intentionally avoid vegan materials in my work, it’s simply that my food choices are a reflection of the society which I am commenting on/living in. I certainly can imagine myself creating a live garden for human animals to roam and eat in while plastic tables, chairs and utensils are set up all around them. Waiters would be trying to take orders on their electronic devices while stepping over scavenging and lounging humanimals enjoying the fruits of their lackadaisical labor. Or perhaps a buffet where people are chained to posts and served a trough of leafy greens by their animal masters? Or perhaps a city-wide scavenger hunt for vegan delights where you can only participate if you don’t increase your carbon footprint…

I can imagine incorporating veganism within my style of tricksterism in a variety of ways, now that you mention it. I adore the idea of putting our humanness in conflict with itself. How else do we learn?

NDEREO: What is Splosh! for carrot’s sake? Tell me more about the name, concept and theirstory? How did this come about?

GS: Sincerely, I cannot remember when Splosh found me–but when it did: *cue wedding bells*.  Sploshing is simply playing with your food–or using food and other wet/messy substances in ways they are not meant to be used, typically by mashing the substance on/with your body (or rolling around in it! My favorite!). The kink community has something called “Wet and Messy” play which is often confused for splosh, but typically uses more slime-like substances. Splosh is most often always done with food, and is more focused on the sensuality of the encounter and intimacy with the substance, than the shockingness of the activity. 

I know that my interest in using food came from my phenomenology: for me, food has been an emotional support, a taboo, part of what made me ashamed of myself, a sensual and often erotic experience, a forced confrontation, a way to nourish and love people, a way to connect. For me, that one scene from a Christmas Story where the Mom tells Randy to show her “how the little piggies eat” always centers me. 

Playing with something in a way I am not meant to play with it (according to social codes) is probably my primary attraction to Sploshing. Forcing people to confront and challenge their own beliefs, assumptions, judgments, taboos and fears around a substance we all encounter on a daily basis and that connects all our lives, feels like a way to encourage curiosity and conversation on topics we’ve been told to think and feel a certain way about our whole lives. 

Perhaps what society really needs is just one giant food fight that wakes us up to what we’ve done to ourselves with our limited beliefs about how life is meant to be. How we are meant to exist. I mean, if something feels good, isn’t it supposed to? Denial just feels like another control mechanism of patriarchy, and every day that we don’t challenge pre-existing beliefs is a day we are in agreement with our oppressors (aka the big bad pleasure censors of society!).

NDEREO: During your presentation at Art as a Tool for Co-creating Networks of Joy, Nurturance and Belonging (Art as Experience), one of the classes that I teach at the University of Texas at Austin I could see your emphasis on the body. What have prompted you to give attention to this subject?

GS:  I suppose my history. My body is the vessel through which I experience the world, and my vessel has experienced quite a lot. Because my authenticity as an artist is my phenomenology, and so much of my identity and curiosity is relational to understanding how bodies are given and denied access to experience or connection in societies, the experiences lived within my body and told by my scars are the most informed place from which I can create work. 

It is paramount that our stories are told by their authors.  So much cruelty has been done to each other and our planet by fabricating and perpetuating stories on behalf of others. Religion and Nationalism are the most dangerous perpetrators of this, and teach people to deny themselves in order to belong. I believe giving people permission to return to the authentic experiences of their body, sans shame or judgment, is what will empower our societies to stop reliving the stories of patriarchal whiteness (which is the foundational narrative of being an “American”).

I give a lot of attention to the body in my work, because it is the foundation of my story.

NDEREO: Back to wounds, how do you see their different manifestation in the emotional, spiritual, physical ancestral planes?

GS: I don’t know enough about generational trauma and ancestral trauma stored in our DNA to speak to those sciences, but I do know that sometimes when I touch a tree, I begin to cry. It is as if my body, by connecting to the roots, the veins of thousands of living entities–feels held.

When I meditate in my grove (part of my practice as a Druid), I feel a weight in my body that is different than usual. I catch glimpses of people who feel real but that I’ve never met sometimes in my practice, or occasionally when I orgasm. I don’t know what any of it means and I don’t assign any meaning to it beyond what I experience in the moment. I only know what I feel.

And I know it all feels real. And I think if our vessels are the products of recycled and recomposed DNA, then perhaps they too share some of the experiences our ancestors traveled through.  Perhaps, like the roots of trees that have stood for generations, these IRL vessels carry the freight of our ancestors' pain and pleasure in our veins.

NDEREO: Who would you say has inspired your work on wounds? I know that Caroline Myss has articulated the word woundology, and Eckhart Tolle talks about the pain body.

GS: I am actually not very familiar with Caroline Myss so thank you for the new research material!  Eckhart Tolle certainly came up in my time, but more so in regards to my practice of staying present.

I think it’s extremely difficult to stay present when the body is in a lot of pain–whether that pain be physical or psychological.  I say psychological and not emotional, because emotional pain is about a feeling you experience in the body in response to an event. Whatever the emotional experience is, is good, because it is the body telling you what you need and where you need healing. There is no such thing as a bad feeling.

Psychological pain, however, is the pain of being trapped in a belief about yourself or the world around you that is not actually true for you.  And if you can not escape the belief–if you can not remove the lenses forcing you to experience the world in a way that is not true for you, how can you possibly escape that pain?  I believe the wounding we really need to heal is psychological.

Rebecca Schneider’s writings about the body as performance subject also greatly influenced my work with wounds and gave me permission to use my own body, and my own wounding, as a source for my work. I believe Cindy Sherman and Carolee Schneemann also inspired me to use myself/my body as the subject. From them I learned the agency an artist creates in being both creator and subject of their own work (this is the same agency of telling your own story versus having it told for you). 

The work I have done to heal my psychological wounding in relation to my physical wounds has been extremely informative and inspirational for me as an artist. I make much of the work I make because I believe honoring our physical wounds and subverting them from something shameful into something beautiful, will allow us to depower and remove the shame-based lenses coloring our reality; seeing the world through psychological wounding is what is disconnecting us from both ourselves and each other.  I believe learning to love every visceral experience in life and to honor what it means for each of us individually is the antidote to our psychic desire to condemn (aka control) what makes us uncomfortable. 

NDEREO: What is Flesh Joy Gallery and where do you see this taking you?

GS: Flesh Joy Gallery actually began as the Self Love Project back in 2014, with me recording videos of myself making out with my own scarry flesh.  Initially I desired to create a room filled with television screens of people loving their bodies, somewhat like a video gallery. Over time I performed versions of the Self Love Project, primarily as group rituals and one-on-one conversations at places like Burning Man or my university’s lobby, until I conceived of Flesh Museum as part of my thesis project in 2017. This was the first time I created a physical gallery of close-up, clinical but also somewhat artistic images of my scars along with the information about how the artist (myself) made them on a plaque next to each picture. I was positing my body, and specifically my scars, as art itself. I was telling my story with only factual contextualization and no frilly costumes or floofy lighting. I realized galleries, which are strange liminal spaces in and of themselves, are also created with the desire for each person to have their own experience of each image. It is a disservice to any work of art to construct the experience of its viewing in a way that changes the artist's intention. How we perceive is just as significant as what we perceive.

My Flesh Museum both asks you to elevate the consideration of my body to the same level of discernment with which you may experience a work in a museum, while providing as little external influence on your ingestion of the material as possible. I wish I could remember the name of the essay I read that spawned my concept of the Museum, but I know it had to do with how information is shared and accessed; it made me realize my body is my information, and the way in which I share it changes the opportunity I have to be seen as my authentic self, or through the lenses of another’s phenomenology.

That said–there are no voids or vacuums in lived experience.  It is never possible to take away all the judgments or associations of someone up to a certain point in their life. And so while the Museum offered me the chance to share my scar stories in ways I previously had not been able to, there had to be an element of authentic human connection present. The body speaking the story had to also be witnessed in the space in order for total agency to be reclaimed.

This led me to conceive of Flesh Joy Gallery, first by remembering one of my favorite performance pieces in existence:  Meat Joy by Carolee Schneeman. In this piece from the ’70s, Carolee and her friends roll around on the ground amidst piles of raw meat wearing nothing but fur undergarments. It is meant to viscerally communicate the joy of physical experience in a human body, and that is what my scar gallery is ultimately meant to do too: to return joy to spaces which have been shuttered by shame. To reclaim the beauty of all bodies and the scars that make them! 

My next evolution of the project will be Flesh Joy Gallery. The gallery is a living archive/gallery on IG that is accessible to anyone with internet access and a phone (yes, this accessibility issue will be fixed). There is also a pop up live show aspect, where the online becomes IRL and the bodies of participants in the gallery are encountered in physical space together, nude, and rolling around and over one another, expressing their scarry Flesh Joy (my homage to Meat Joy).

However I work according to flow and resistance. This past year there was a lot of resistance around my desire to produce a live show.  I learned how difficult it is for a large group of people to collaborate in physical space considering the individualistic lives technology now has us living, which is honestly a heartbreaking realization as a live artist.  However, the happy accident of being unable to corral people into physical space led to the discovery that the Flesh Joy Gallery is not meant for just me and my local community: it’s meant for everybody!  And how do you do “everybody” in the 21st century?  Social Media, baby.

I am now working with a couple of local artists to build our Instagram community and living archive. We just recently launched the Flesh Joy Gallery online (@fleshjoygallery), where anyone can submit photos of their scars along with the story behind each one. We desire to build a supportive and delicious online space where bodies are given the appreciation they deserve, and thus so are people’s stories. We hope it is a space where people feel free to be, authentically–an irony of which is not lost on me by using Instagram as a platform. 

When the time is right and enough people are able to come together to participate in a live Flesh Joy Gallery, we will have our revelry and invite members of the community to experience a gallery of scars which leads them into a space where fleshy bodies are writhing around in endorphinatic ecstasy: reminding you that you too have permission to enjoy the vessel you were given. 

First, you have to take off those lenses that don’t belong to you.   

NDEREO: Thank you very much for this conversation. I hope to see you in Austin in the Spring. Perhaps this can be the opportunity for a collaboration, so get your knives, spoons and forks ready!

GS:  I certainly hope so!  I’ve got quite a few idea kettle ready to whistle.  Especially around the idea of using food to bring more pleasure and connection to our community (and ourselves). You know what they say: you can never have too many cooks in a kitchen!

All images and animations courtesy of Greer Sikes

Greer Sikes’s links: YouTube / Facebook / Instagram / Flesh Joy Galley IG

Greer Sikes is a matrianarchal, queer performance + pleasure artist using a hybrid of live and visual mediums, as well as interactive installations and happenings, to depower shame systems and empower the discovery of the authentic self through pleasure. After escaping a conservative upbringing in the Bible Belt and losing over 200lbs, Greer is using their phenomenology of having been treated as two different people in the same body to challenge the way we perceive. Greer's work often uses cathartic play, immersive investigations, and absurd theatrical subversions of reality to break the human animal free from the conformist cage we call society.  As a pleasure artist, zir often uses their original style of performative tricksterism to center shame and then play with it--empowering people to dissolve old identity narratives and begin telling stories that feel authentic, and juicy. Greer believes curiosity is indeed the juiciest part of life, and often employs quite a bit of food pleasure and Sploshing in zir life art!

Greer is currently based in Austin, TX and has performed and presented work in Austin, San Francisco, London, New York City, Chicago and beyond.  Ze has a BFA from NYU, an MFA from California Institute of Integral Studies & MA from the University of Chichester, UK.  Ze hosts Scratch Chapel (Austin’s only scratch night) for emerging performance artists and is developing a mutual aid based resource sharing database for independent artists, alongside a few other matrianarchist pleasure projects. In 2024, Ze is collaborating on Flesh Joy, an online scar gallery and live show, developing er0tic philosophy zines and other pleasure art crafts, touring Splosh! to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and beginning development on a revisionist piece of classic feminist performance art works for The Vortex Theatre, to premiere in 2025.  

Zir also have two cats named after their art idols, Annie (Sprinkle) & Carolee (Schneeman) which are their most valuable possessions.  Zir feels like you should know they won their first slam competition with a poem titled “I Want to F*ck Your Fat”.  Zir thinks your pain is the most beautiful thing about you.

Megan Hildebrandt

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Megan, I have had the pleasure to experience your work on an ongoing basis, mostly through your regular Instagram postings. One aspect of this that speaks to me is its connection to life, to the everyday, to the sacrality of the mundane at home: the piles of clothes to fold, the food being prepared in the kitchen, and the bed being used as a trampoline by Ernest! The space is yours.

Megan Hildebrandt: I am so honored to be given this platform to reflect on the work I make. The pace of life, when one has young children and a career, seems to be very fast. Moments like this allow me to pause and make space for reflection. I am truly grateful.

NDEREOM: Thank you for your kind words. I feel the same way about talking with you. When I engage your drawings and the concepts informing them, I immediately think of Mary Kelly and the Post-Partum Document. However, in your case there is something that transcends the conceptuality of the 1970s and infuse your drawings and animations with emotions and with a viscerality that speaks deeply of home. What would you say about your process?

MH: Thanks for that so much! When I make art, I am always flying by the seat of my pants. Whether working on a small drawing that I make after work at the kitchen table, or a hand-drawn animation that takes weeks that I come back to again and again – I always have a sense of “rush” when I am making. The creative zone I have always relied on appears readily– it’s like my mind and body say, “Ok, you have two hours before your next responsibility. There is no time for self-doubt. GO!” This is, I think, why I rely on ink for most of my drawings–ink is my best friend. Mistakes become something else, lines that initially did not fit alter the entire direction of the work. When I had my first child, she would pose for me for hours (if I gave her a book or tv!). Now with two, that is very rare. I am often snapping photos or videos of the both of them at the park, on a walk, or in our home. I then have a treasure trove of imagery to work from.

NDEREOM: Your children June and Ernest are central to the narrative that you shared with people like me, through drawings and animations. How do you go about issues of privacy? What are some of the family agreements that you might have in place as to how much art reveals about the day-to-day? I think that you do that so gently and yet I would like to hear directly from you.

MH: I am lucky that my husband, Peter Abrami, is also an artist. He deeply understands, applauds and protects my practice by giving me time and space to make (it goes both ways). The moments I choose to depict are ones that I believe are so specific, they become universal. For example, June and I watching cat videos on youtube while wearing beauty masks, or Ernest and June having a lunch picnic in our backyard that becomes a food fight. Children bring a lovely wildness to one’s life that I want to capture. I am most concerned that other parents – in particular, mothers – find themselves and their own families in the work. That they feel seen is of utmost importance to me.

NDEREOM: I recall babysitting for a dear friend. That was in the 1990s and so much has changed. People like me and my friend could buy weekly groceries in Manhattan with 25 bucks. I can only imagine what navigating parenthood must take in 2023 when food, rent, and clothing are out of the reach of most people in the United States. What are some of the home pleasures that you would share with parents who might be struggling and who might not have the resources that some of us do, either as single entities or as responsible for others?

MH: I think that parenting throughout the COVID-19 pandemic really did shift my perspective and make me a lot more grateful for what we as a family have. I think my husband’s big garden full of tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, basil, spinach and eggplants is very loved space in our home. It is a place of refuge for all four of us – Peter as he tends to his plants, the kids who act as his garden assistants (sometimes garden pests), and myself – I am usually out there sketching what I see.

NDEREOM: Weekends are the time when many of us can truly be ourselves. Some of us decide to disengage the systems and live for two or three days out of the constrains of office, teaching, and administrative work, to dream freely with our loved ones and outside the constrains of clockland. What is the meaning of the weekend for you as a creative and as a parent?

MH: Right now in my life, weekends mean mountains of laundry, making popcorn, taking family walks, and bringing my kids to the park. Sometimes we get lucky and get to attend an art opening. I do gather images all the time on the weekend – thank goodness for my iPhone. I will tell you I am always relieved when Monday comes, because the kids go back to school.

NDEREOM: What are your sources of inspiration for generating the work that you do? How do you carve out time to do it, and what role does this creative work play at home?

MH: Watching my children play, lounge, sleep, and eat. They are constantly inspiring me with their conversations too. I love the light sources in my current home, watching the dog sleep, our garden, the one inside plant I have managed to keep alive, watching the kids on their scooters from my porch. I also really enjoy trying to depict fatherhood in my works, so appreciate when Peter pauses so I can draw him with the kids. 

NDEREOM: Thank you for bringing Peter to this conversation and for letting his presence permeate this dialogue. I can almost see him as we talk. How does the art that you do with your family bring your children forward into the world and invite them step out into life?

MH: What a great question! A lot of that remains to be seen. But I have witnessed some clues- June (10) has a deep understanding that artists are everywhere, that she is one, and she has attended art shows and been dragged to our art classrooms if her own school is closed since she was born. I believe being the oldest child of two artist parents has given her a glorious view of the world– she assumes that art is in everyone’s lives. Ernest (4) has just been in his second art show, and it was a delight listening to him invite his teachers and classmates to his opening. I think for him, it is a great way to practice socializing and growing his interpersonal skillset.

NDEREOM: I recently thought how one of the biggest tragedies that can happen to a being is to be disconnected from creativity, whether the person is a cook, a plumber, a crow, a teacher, or a dolphin. I cannot imagine myself living without this resource. How was your own creative self nurtured as a child and what continues to feed it now as an adult?

MH: I am really lucky because both of my parents encouraged creativity in different way. My dad is an architect, and he would sometimes bring me to his office – what a wonderful place that was, full of chemical smells, huge sheets of paper with very mechanical-looking homes and buildings drawn on them. He would bring those drawings home at night and work on them after dinner. I loved to watch him work. My mom has another amazing creative trait – excellent interpersonal skills, and a deep curiosity about the lives of other people. I cannot over-emphasize how much this has impacted me artistically, professionally and personally.

NDEREOM: I could talk with you for hours, and this feels good and complete to me, unless you have questions or would like to add anything else. Thank you so much for this dialogue. I will continue to enjoy your drawings and animations as they appear on my radar.

MH: This was a treat –so cathartic! Thank you for thinking of me.

All images and animations courtesy of Megan L Hildebrand

Megan Hildebrandt’s links: Website / UT at Austin Website / Instagram / Podcast

To watch animations click HERE

Megan Hildebrandt is a cancer survivor and recently had her second child. These life events have greatly impacted her creative practice. Confronting her own mortality at age 25 and then experiencing the fragility and strength of birth, she has become obsessed with tracking time – documenting the small, routine moments of life that loop and repeat. Hildebrandt wants to give the viewer intimate, personal moments that capture the both fleeting and endless seconds of being alive. Her work explores autobiography, the passage of time, illness narrative and recovery from trauma via figurative and abstract drawings and paintings. Hildebrandt attempts to recover time lost to cancer treatment, and to track the development of a new self and her young children. Her work serves as touchstones to mark a life both interrupted and reinvigorated.

Megan Hildebrandt received her BFA from the Stamps School of Art & Design in 2006, and her MFA in Studio Art from the University of South Florida in 2012. Hildebrandt has exhibited nationally and internationally, including: The Painting Center, New American Paintings, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Craft, Arlington Arts Center, Detroit Contemporary, HEREarts Center, Latitude 53, Johns Hopkins Medical Center, the LIVESTRONG Foundation, Hyde Park Art Center, The Torpedo Factory, and Collar Works. 

In 2018, Hildebrandt received an ​Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts ​for the Aesthetics of Health Course she developed for Interlochen Arts Academy. In 2022 Hildebrandt co-authored an article about adapting the Aesthetics of Health curriculum effectively for higher education during the pandemic in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics. This course is now taught each spring at the University of Texas at Austin. 

An artist, educator, and arts-in-health advocate, Hildebrandt currently lives and works in Austin, Texas, where she is Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Art and Art History at ​The University of Texas.

Elia Alba

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo: Elia, I feel that this conversation is long due, at least in written form. I am saying this because we have discussed some of these points before, but never put them down on paper. Can we concentrate on your work on dolls? What set this in motion?

Elia Alba:  It started when I was pregnant with my son in the late 1990s.  In preparing his room for his arrival, I wanted to decorate it with images of diverse children.  Rather than painting them on the wall, I created about sixty small rag dolls, with different skin tones, colored hair and clothing that were hung so they would appear holding hands and they wrapped around his room on the wall to create a border.  It was important to me for my son to view difference in his toys and environment.

My doll-making was further propelled by the advent of the Bratz dolls in 2001.  They came out when I was in my late 30s and I was completely fascinated.  I started collecting them and currently have over 100.  The “girls with a passion for fashion” was their motto, and they were a diverse group which was shockingly new at the time, but ideologically not too far from what I was thinking when I created those dolls for my son’s room. 

As a child of the ’60s and ’70s, I grew up with Barbie dolls that didn’t reflect who I was. Of course, at such a young age I never thought about it in those terms, but as I think back it certainly made me question my own sense of beauty and how I viewed myself.  When Bratz came around, they completely disrupted the industry at the time when Barbie was the norm. For me, they spoke to what kids actually wanted, not what their parents felt like they should want.  Bratz dolls were different, they came out and reflected an urban identity that had not been seen before, an identity that has influenced music and fashion to this day.  While the Bratz have evolved into a more iconic type of phenomena, that initial fascination and impact has stayed with me.  

It wasn’t until 2010 that I made my first doll. The early ones were nude and to some degree grotesque, a push back, if you will, against certain beauty standards that are inherent in dolls, including the Bratz.  As I moved further into doll-making, I wanted to create dolls that imbue a deeper understanding of diasporic identities. Dolls have been a significant part of material culture for centuries, dating back to ancient civilizations. They are often seen as more than just toys, as they can hold cultural and historical significance, and can represent different eras and sociopolitical movements. Within this framework, I wanted to create dolls that highlight hidden histories and mythologies of diasporic people.  The current dolls do not reference a specific group of people but rather are an amalgamation of identities and histories. They are meant to be recognizable yet, at the same time, undefinable, to create a sense of wonder and curiosity.

NDERE: The focus of the Q&Is that are part of Be my Guest is healing, so I will be moving swiftly in this direction. Similarly, I am personally interested in creative processes that leave behind very little or no footprint at all, ecologically speaking. However, one part of me is fascinated by objects and artifacts which retain the energy of the process. Your dolls seem to fall in this realm. Is this correct? If so, can you talk about this?

EA: Dolls can definitely hold a special kind of energy through our imagination and emotions. When we play with dolls, we bring them to life with our thoughts and feelings, giving them their own unique energy.  In the case of my dolls, they are all made with my likeness.  I think it’s my footprint I leave behind with them – how I see myself and the stories I want to share.  I see parts of myself in each of those dolls.  It comes from my Caribbean upbringing, especially from the Dominican Republic, where there is still shame in being too dark or too ethnic presenting.  Those dolls highlight the beauty and knowledge of the ancestors and I choose, through the doll, to be the conduit for that information and understanding.

NDERE: I come from the Caribbean where things like hair strands and nail clippings are not items one comfortably share. Before the whole social media thing, some people there were also cautious about sharing personal photographs. All of these items can carry the energy of the person. In your work you use images of friends and people in your immediate communities. Why so? And how might this speak about trust, relationships, and the like?

EA: When I started creating dolls, I made a choice not to use any one’s face but my own.  One thing is to photograph a person, and another is to make them into a doll. There is a part of me that believes that dolls represent individuals and not sure I want, as you say “carry the energy of that person.” And the flip side to that is the responsibility and care that one has to assume for that other person’s energy. 

NDERE: In one of my visits to the Cementerio de la 30 de Marzo in Santiago, Dominican Republic, I recall going from grave to grave to see offerings, and I was surprised by what I found. In one of the niches, a family member of the departed had cut out a photo of the person and dressed this as a doll. Now that I revisit this memory, it reminds me of your aesthetics. You were raised both in the Caribbean and in New York City. How would you say these back and forth journeys might have influenced what you do?

EA: When I think of my work overall, it is that liminal space that I am most interested in. In the natural world, the concept of in-betweenness is often associated with transitional spaces, such as the area between land and sea or the space between light and shadow. But really for me, these are places of transformation and renewal, where new forms and ideas can emerge. In human relationships, the concept of in-betweenness can be seen in the space between individuals or groups with different beliefs, values, or identities. This space can be a site of conflict and tension, but it can also be a place of exchange and dialogue, where new understandings and connections can be formed.  In a cultural context, the concept of in-betweenness is often associated with hybridity and the blending of different cultural forms and traditions. The Caribbean is one big liminal space!  The photograph series Pixies (2009) and Danu (2012), precursors for the dolls, as well as the dolls themselves are about that in-betweenness, that fluidity and complexity of the world around us, emphasizing the ways in which different things are interconnected and constantly in a state of transformation.  “These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself.” [1]

NDERE: In another one of my incursions into the cities of the dead in the Dominican Republic, I was guided to a grave, whose proprietor was still alive. The woman in question had assembled a considerable collection of dolls (as far as I can remember, all of them white-skinned ones) in her mausoleum. This comment can take us in many directions. But let’s focus on the subject of dolls as it pertains to colonization and decolonization of mind-body-spirit. I am listening to you.

EA: Dolls have been often used as a tool of colonialism to impose Western values and culture on black and indigenous bodies. For example, European colonizers would bring dolls to Native American communities as a way to assimilate children into Western culture and discourage their traditional ways of life. Further, mass-produced toys of all kinds had begun to enter American homes around the turn of the century, and many of them exploited racist tropes and dolls were no exception. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that non-white dolls began to appear, but it was very gradual. However, there has been a movement in the last 20 years or so to create dolls that represent diverse cultures and identities, as a way to empower marginalized communities, promote cultural pride. and challenge the dominant narrative imposed by colonialism. It is within this space that I create the dolls. Also, the dolls that consider forgotten histories and mythologies that form part of who we are as diasporic people, even if we are not consciously aware. Making dolls of any kind that go against the dominant narrative is a decolonizing project.

NDERE: I had a very dear friend who was in an intensive care unit at a Manhattan hospital for several months. A neighbor made a doll that resembled her, then hid it under my friend’s mattress at the hospital. When my friend recovered, her neighbor collected the doll from under the mattress and threw this into a cemetery in Washington Heights. I bet you do not get to talk about these things in the Art world (my use of cap for Art). But at the Interior Beauty Salon, almost anything goes! Can you share about the making of your dolls, which I know you do by hand, and what emerges for you energetically?

EA: The dolls are made through a photo transfer process on fabric. The doll parts, legs, arms, torso and head, are sewn with a machine, but the body parts are then assembled by hand. Clothing and adornments can be done by machine or by hand. I recently began using roving wool and felting the dolls’ hair.  What’s fascinating about the process of felting is that it is an ancient craft that dates back as far as 6th Century BCE.  Some of the oldest pieces of felt have been found in tombs and burial grounds in Siberia, Scandinavia, and Germany.  It involves using wool fibers to create dense matted fabric by applying heat, moisture, or pressure. 

How a doll is “born” or conceptualized depends on what I am reading.  For example, the myth of the Moongazer appears in different variations throughout the Caribbean. In all the stories, the Moongazer is a very tall man with very long legs, who habitually gazes at the full moon. He can be found standing straddling a road or on the edges of a cliff staring at the moon, and he also can cause death to those that cross his path. However, in Guyanese folklore, he mostly roams the shorelines staring at the moon as he walks and many believe that the Moongazer tale was birthed to keep island children away from the shorelines. The Moongazers I created are female and have a welcoming look about them unlike their male counterpart. They have white hair and white pearlized bodies with painted lips. When I was creating these dolls, I was considering the Guyanese tale of the Moongazer as a female protector, as she watched over the children against the shorelines, which in colonial times, what is menacing is not just the waters but the unwanted men who arrived on the shores of the island. 

NDERE: Dolls and gender are inextricably connected. I am personally into dolls, for many of the reasons that I have been stating. I find them fascinating and also an entry point into deep discussions. I have one of your dolls at my home, which is in my dining room, and that I might be moving to the Salon’s Shrine. How would you say this whole gender thing might play in terms of audiences for your work? I can be a wacky guy, so you would not have any issues with me and dolls, but that might not be the case with other people identified as men and with maleness. This is more of an invitation for you to go on about this subject.

EA: The dolls are meant to be genderless. At first glance, the dolls appear precious, yet their bearded faces and fluid bodies imply something else. Also, they have pubic hair, a small bush, so you don’t know if they are “packing” or not. Since my earlier works, I have always been concerned with fluidity, especially when thinking about my own identity, culturally and racially. I have always thought of gender as part of that conversation. In the work If I were a… (2003), body suits of my distorted figure, that you wore and performed in, was addressing gender fluidity, as was the video performance La Jaba (2003), again another video performance in which you collaborated with me. The gender manifests itself through the clothes, hair etc. However, in some cases it’s not clearly apparent. The genderless dolls allow the viewer to see what they want to see. I never point it out.

NDERE: Friend and mentor Linda Mary Montano has made dolls depicting Madonnas. I am fortunate to have one of them at The Shrine. This one is the Madonna of the Shoe. Have your spiritualities informed your doll-making?

EA: Yes, but not through ideas of Christianity but through mythologies, oral histories and other forms of spirituality. For example, The Nommodolls reference the mythologies of the Dogon, a tribe in Mali. According to their oral history, the Nommo were a race of people that lived on a planet that orbited the star Sirius A.  They visited the earth 1000s of years ago and were described as being amphibious and genderless, similar creatures appear in Babylonian, Acadian and Sumerian myths.  The first Nommo transformed itself into 4 twins, with one rebelling and later killed by the sky god Amma to restore order to the earth.  The legend goes that the Nommo furnished the Dogon's with the knowledge about the solar system, which is not visible to the naked eye.

NDERE: I invite you to close this Q&I in any way that you see fit. Wait! can we have one of your dolls deliver the goodbye message? I thank you for being part of this conversation.

EA: How wonderful that you say this.  I feel they have a secret life of their own, hence why dolls are made in pairs or groups, they cannot exist alone.  Their message to you “Thank you for making space for us to exist in the world.”

[1] Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 2004), page 2.

All photos courtesy of Elia Alba

Elia Alba / links : Website / Instagram / Facebook / The Supper Club

Elia Alba was born in Brooklyn to parents who immigrated from the Dominican Republic in the 1950s.  She is a multidisciplinary artist, whose practice is concerned with the social and political complexity of race, identity and the collective community. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College in 1994 and completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2001. She has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad. Those include the Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Science Museum, London; Smithsonian Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, National Museum of Art, Reina Sofía, Madrid. Awards include the Studio Museum in Harlem Artist-in Residence Program 1999; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant 2002; Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant 2002 and 2008; Anonymous Was A Woman Award 2019; Latinx Artist Fellowship 2021. Collections include the Smithsonian Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, Lowe Art Museum. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art Forum, ArtNews, Forbes, to name a few. She was part of the curatorial team for El Museo del Barrio’s critically acclaimed exhibition, Estamos Bien: La Trienal 20/21. Her book, Elia Alba, The Supper Club (Hirmer 2019) brings together artists, scholars and performers of diasporic cultures, through photography, food and dialogue to examine race and culture in the United States.  She lives and works in the Bronx.

Billy X Curmano

Full Moon Exhumed Zoom: Billy X Curmano – 40th Anniversary of “Performance for the Dead” was presented on September 29, 2003 with Franklin Furnace's LOFT, and a video of this event can be accessed by clicking HERE

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Billy, we connected today over the telephone about some of the elements of your upcoming celebration with Franklin Furnace’s Loft. Is there anything that you would like to say regarding this historic gathering? After all it has been 40 years since your Performance for the Dead took place.

Billy X. Curmano: When I look back, emotions well up. There always seems to be saber rattling and talks of war. Back then, nuclear war was on the table. I remember a high-ranking US official – really just another talking head on TV – saying all you need are shovels and some dirt to protect yourself from nuclear fallout.

“Climate… War…slow down. Maybe we’re better off underground”

We haven’t learned much. Wars are going on around the globe. Russia threatens nuclear war once more. Greed has guided special interests to ignore the dangers of climate change. I have always wondered how great societies and cultures failed. Now, I realize – as smart as we think we are – we may well be heading that same way. I sometimes think of Otis Redding’s lyrics, “It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die. I don’t know what’s up there, beyond the sky.” I guess that’s what makes death exciting – Maybe it’s an adventure. No one knows for sure.

NDEREOM: One of my biggest fears, and that of many, has been to be buried alive. There is for example the safety coffin that was developed in the 18th and 19th centuries to make sure that this would not happen. Were there any fears for you during the performance and how did you work with them?

BXC: There were definitely fears. I was probably fascinated by reading Edgar Alan Poe’s Premature Burial as a child. I love to read, so I usually do a great deal of research on projects. I wanted to be buried alive, but I also wanted to be exhumed alive. Of course, I had never been buried, so I wasn’t sure what mishaps could occur. I built some safety devices into the project. The burial vault had about 3’ x 3 1/2’ x 6 ‘of useable area. Once buried, I could come out of the coffin, break it down and perform for the dead in that very tight space. Like a darkroom, it was absolutely free of light. I had a sketch book and did some drawings in the darkness. I thought they would somehow be guided from the spirit world, but alas they appear to be mainly just scribbles. I have never shown them.

September in MN can get cold especially underground. The floor, walls and ceiling of the vault were insulated to protect me from hypothermia. It was especially important because I was fasting. By the time I was exhumed, I had been fasting for seven days and would have been very susceptible to the cold. Rain was always a threat, so a deeper hole was dug below the burial vault to drain water away. A small trap door was cut in the vault ceiling. It was hinged to open inwardly. If things went bad, I could unlock it. Theoretically, the weight of the earth would push it open and fall into the crypt. I had an entrenching tool to hopefully dig my way out. Volunteers that worked on the project feared for my safety as well. One architect wanted a fan in the air exchange system. I did not want that. The 60-cycle hum of a fan would have been constant and distracting. It was also suggested I be wired in some way to monitor life signs. I wanted to remove myself from worldly things. I wanted to limit distractions so I could commune more fully with the spirit world. I vetoed those ideas. Several volunteers quit the project when our ideas for my safety were at odds.

NDEREOM: The conversation on death is changing so much and so rapidly. Like with other systems that are getting dismantled, the conversation on impermanence is not the taboo that it was 10 or 20 years ago. How did people around you respond about your idea to stage your own funeral while alive?

BXC: Responses were varied. There were many volunteers and supporters that actually made the project possible. Yet, there were those outside the circle that seemed threatened. A hastily scribbled piece of hate mail arrived at my studio. We hung that in the Postal Exhibition, but it gave me pause. I took it seriously enough to add “security teams” at the gravesite for the entire interment.

The director of the Winona Art Center suggested the former church as an ideal site for the visitation. His assistant agreed. The offer was withdrawn after an impassioned speech from a board member insisted it would ruin the center’s reputation. In another instance, we applied for regional arts funding. It seemed the burial itself – kind of the main “act” – flew over at least one panelist’s head. I still remember her words, “I love the idea of a jazz funeral, the Wake and International Postal Exhibition, but why does he have to be buried? Couldn’t they just bury a doll?”

That rejection crushed me. The project was complex with a lot of costs. I felt dejected as I mulled over the consequences at a nightspot. An acquaintance I barely knew asked what’s the problem? I told him the burial grant was rejected. He asked, “What do you need?” I replied funding. He repeated, “What do you need?” I realized he was a doer not a money man. I ran down the list. When I got to burial vault, he asked for dimensions. He promised to build it. A few weeks later a flatbed truck with a hand built, solid oak burial vault arrived on site. The local monument company donated the Mount Airy Granite tombstone along with its inscription. The coffin, banners, armbands, antennae flags, hearse, etc. were all donated. The grave was dug through a series of grave digging parties. The visitation was moved to a Victorian mansion that had been a bishop’s residence. The Italian Wake was staged in a modest apartment. A jazz historian offered to pay for the band. He worked with the musicians to assure authenticity to the New Orleans tradition. Jazz funerals evolved from the lowest classes of laborers: the Africans, Italians and Irish. Their lives were very hard. So much so, it seemed almost better to mourn the birth and celebrate the passage. The soul traveled on to a final reward. Joe Hill’s song The Preacher and the Slave referred to it as “Pie In the Sky when you Die”.

Competitive burial societies were created with bands, banners and grand marshals. The members paid dues that were used for their end of life celebrations. The funerals were lively and upbeat until the corpse was interred. Then, it turned somber. It didn’t really have to be rehearsed. The attendees came from near and far and were taken up by the excitement. I was already buried and unaware of this at the time, but it is evident in the video. A seriousness fell over the group – perhaps when they realized they had actually buried someone alive.

NDEREOM: I am not getting into the questions that most people will likely ask during the 40th anniversary of your Performance for the Dead at Franklin Furnace. I will leave those questions for that night. In the meantime, I would like to ask about your preparation for the performance. Can you talk about the practices that you undertook to enter the space of death and were they of help?

BXC: I have always thought of my body as an instrument. I use meditation, yoga and physical exercise to keep it tuned. I trained more intensely in preparation for the burial. I studied and added self-hypnosis as another tool. I read and sometimes re-read sacred texts. I had never actually read the Bible cover to cover, so I did that. I went on to the Gita and Koran, Zen parables, Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead. I followed up with more recent writings like Kübler-Ross On Death and Dying. I followed her suggestion to attend the funerals of strangers. It enables you to sense a great loss without the added psychological trauma experienced when a loved one dies. I hoped my burial might even be cathartic for those in attendance.

I think this practice readied me. I began to see Death’s Door as simply another of the doors of perception. I invited those on the other side to come through. I had some visions and even saw a white light. I felt if I went into the light I could pass through, but could I come back? Or was the light just residue from reading about death? I doubt I will ever know for sure – at least in this life.

NDEREOM: I am of the opinion that the veil dividing my dead ones from the living is thin and I tend to have conversations with those who have departed. I usually ask for their protection and seek to honor their memory. Was there any dead person in the circle of presences who guided you or that you thought about during your performance?

BXC: I have communicated with loved ones that have passed. Spirits sometimes enter my dreams, but they are not always benign. Perhaps that’s how dreams become nightmares. I sometimes rely on spirits to guide me. I am careful because I believe some spirits are tricksters that have fun at my expense. I struggled with one recurring spirit for several years. This spirit somehow manipulated me. Somehow it sent me into a deep woods on a full moon night. I felt a cold darkness and thought I may be in danger. An opossum and a night hawk joined me and at that moment I realized everything was alright. My perceived struggle with this spirit guide resolved itself that night.

During the burial, fasting, isolation and absolute darkness made me unsure of reality. There was a point where I touched my eyes to determine whether they were opened or closed. I had visions in the darkness. I wondered if the figures I saw were spirits or if I was hallucinating. I saw a horrifying figure whose face melted before my eyes. Was it a demon from my past? Was it a casualty? Was it conjured up from horror movies? I remembered some violent deaths. Jay, a high school best friend killed in Vietnam and Gary another young man lost in that war. I was most comforted when my father, who was already dead, came to me. Even when he was unsure of my projects, he was always willing to help. He seemed well pleased with this one.

NDEREOM: What is the role of community/communities in your performance(s)? Where I come from, a dead body is not meant to be left alone. There are supposed to be people with the body at all time during the funeral. This has changed with the advent of the funeral industry. So, my question is about kinship at the final hour. How did you involve community/communities in preparation for your performance, and how did you experience it/them as the performance unfolded?

BXC: It seemed the concept itself captured the community. They were very supportive and involved. There were meetings and discussions on how to move forward. As the corpus, I had very little control. I plotted and planned, but in the end the community took control. Things developed organically.

During the Wake, people lifted me from the chair and danced with me. Some kissed and touched me as I remained lifeless. I wore dark glasses to conceal my eyes and kept my face motionless. At times, it was hard to keep from smiling. During the Jazz Funeral, I lost more control. I overheard the hearse operator and pall bearer talk about stopping at a bar I sometimes frequented. I couldn’t offer any opinion. They just suddenly did a U-turn. The whole funeral procession U-turned and followed. They carried the coffin inside, opened it and stood it upright on a table. The bar filled with mourners and they toasted the corpse one last time. Or maybe it was a little more than one – I forget.

The rains did come. The support team had to dig a trench around the grave to move the pooling waters away. The rain was flowing rapidly into the burial vault, but I was able to deflect it into one of the drainage holes. The performance had gained a certain amount of notoriety as articles were carried by the Associated Press and other national/international sources. A news crew came in by helicopter from the Twin Cities and tried to convince or intimidate the support team to dig me up early – so they could make the six o’clock news deadline. The support team stayed strong and exhumed the corpse at the prescribed time. The reporters always seemed disappointed when I insisted I was exhumed rather than “risen”.

NDEREOM: In the past, I have studied about death and dying with the Living/Dying Project, where I continue to learn with Dale Borglum. I also co-host a death and dying circle with Healing Circles Global. I am currently studying with Jerrigrace Lyons at Final Passages to become as a Death Doula, which was probably not a common training that people undertook when your performance happened 40 years ago. Similarly, Linda Mary Montano has been an amazing teacher on the subject. Who were those who helped you walk to the other side and which were their roles?

BXC: The preparations to be buried alive were complex. As the corpse, my role was limited. The grave had to be dug (there were grave digging parties for that), a burial vault and coffin were constructed, there were banners and costumes. My intimate friends helped me prepare.

We included credits and the roles of participants with the In Sympathy Postal Art exhibition catalog. The overall project director was Phyl Lauer. Dr. David Christenson, MD served as a medical advisor. I was worried that the authorities may try to stop the burial, so attorney Stephen Delano became a legal advisor. Two architects, Scott Halweg and James Malonophy, aided in the burial vault design. Scot was also the grand marshal leading the Jazz Funeral procession. His sash was created by Jewel. Two art historians, Dr. Wallace Nils Johnson and Deborah Leuchovius, provided research. The custom-tailored pine coffin was created by Buddy Baker and assisted by Laura Baker and Idella Burmester. The solid oak burial vault was constructed by Bill Roth with the assistance of Boo, Steve-E. Petras, and Jake-A-Mado. The Mount Airy Granite tombstone with inscription was donated by the Winona Monument Company. The large Performance for the Dead banner was created by Rita Keller with smaller banners, armbands and auto pendants done by Laura Hall. Video services were provided by Paul Woodworth of VideoDocument. Still photographers included Steve Firkins, Kimberly Haedtke and Teri Halweg. Patsy Tully recorded the self-guided farmhouse studio tour.

Besides my own efforts in grave digging and general groundwork these volunteers dug in: Carl Lacher, Paul W. Schollmeier, Tony Greensward, Steve Firkins, Clyde Stutesman, Scott Halweg, Huckleberry Gabe, Teri-Halweg Gabe, Vernon Robert Wobschell, Lesley Charlton, Alima, Kimberly Haedtke, Kathleen, Adam, Suzanne and Michael Paul, Carol De Lorenzo and Mitchel Rice. The Wake Hostess and principle researcher was Evelyn Roehl. The Jazz Funeral was hosted by Kathy Christenson and Connie Forest. Jack Lucas served as Jazz Historian with the Gate City Ragtime, Dixieland, Jass and Philharmonic Society: Gary McDowell, Norm Baron, Morrie Schuh, Chuck Bentley, Dr. Dan Barr, Duane Peterson and Jim Murray.

Milo Billman provided comfort and words as a community minister. Keith Tungesvik was the 1961 Cadillac Hearse owner and operator. Mischa Bulger coordinated food and drink.

Kevin Pomeroy, Bill Crozier, Steve Firkins and D.L. Hunt were pall bearers. Carol DeLorenzo coordinated the two-person graveside vigil – day and night for all three days. Of course, the In Sympathy postal artists were supportive. They are listed in the catalog.

NDEREOM: Tell me about the Buried Alive Performance kits that you are generating. I know that Franklin Furnace, and The Interior Beauty Salon, among others, have already ordered a kit for their archives.

BXC: I was in the archives to collect material for the commemoration and realized this should be shared. The kit comes in a signed and numbered black corrugated box with the Performance for the Dead logo. It contains suggestions for your party along with an actual burial stone from the original 1983 Minnesota Gravesite along with its certificate of authenticity. at the time of the performance, I collected a small crate of burial stones. I have carried them with me for 40-years. It’s time to send – at least some – of them off. There is a copy of the unsolicited County Medical Examiner’s Death Certificate. Two of the original postcards and a funerary memory card. The Household Word Project which “May be a cheap trick now, but it’ll be art when I’m dead”. The Meet Your Maker Fashion and Etiquette Guide has suggestions of what to wear and how to act in those final moments. The Search (For the Spiritual in Art) DVD with 3 major works including the burial and lastly the 1983 In Sympathy Postal Art Catalog with lots of credits rounds out the package. It’s a steal at $29.95 plus tax and shipping.

NDEREOM: It is a steal! Billy, a HUGE thank you for talking with me. I will see you soon, virtually, and hopefully in person as well. I thank Harley Spiller for introducing us more than a decade ago.

BXC:  I am very delighted to be in your orbit and thankful that our friend Harley made it so. I look forward to seeing you soon and hope it can be physical as well as virtual.

All photos: Courtesy of Billy X. Curmano

Billy X. Curmano / links : Website / AIOP / Facebook / Spotify

Billy X. Curmano is known for extended performances like a 3-day live burial, 2,367.4-mile Mississippi swim, and 40-day desert fast all with serious environmental and social justice underpinnings tempered by irony and satire. An amused Journalist dubbed him, “The Court Jester of Southeastern Minnesota.”

Zhanar Bereketova

Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles:  We met in Almaty, Kazakhstan, through Anvar Musrepov. We came to see your solo exhibition at Egin Art Space run by Cultura.kz. Your work for this venue centered around your relationship with Lisakovsk as a result of your connection with a pen pal from this place with whom you corresponded from Moscow for years. Can you tell me how did this come to be?  

Zhanar Bereketova: First of all, thank you, Nicolás, for visiting the exhibition, I very much enjoyed our talk that day. I am also honoured to be a part of the Interior Beauty Salon catalogue (I see it as a collection of thoughts and insights, hope that is ok?).

Lisakovsk is a small town in North Kazakhstan, and in a way, it has become a “magic” place for me during the past 19 years. I met Zhandos Bermukhambetov in a chat when I was 14, and we have become close friends, even online boyfriend and girlfriend for a short period of time. We have been sporadically meeting when I have been to Kazakhstan or other countries (UK, Estonia). Yet as he moved to bigger Central cities, I have never been to Lisakovsk. It is also quite far from where my relatives lived. I had sent parcels to Zhandos with various things like a copy of music albums which were hard to find at that time, and some souvenirs. I have even made videos of me showing Moscow, my school, and my friends. So, I had a strong feeling that not only I had a relationship with him, but also with the town. I knew I would visit it one day.

Last year I bought the tickets to Lisakovsk but had to cancel because of illness. This year the war pushed me to migrate to Kazakhstan for a while, so I thought I would not miss the opportunity to come there. As the circumstances changed, I decided I wanted to communicate with the town not as a tourist but as an artist. The performance felt like the perfect medium. Luckily, I told the idea of a potential exhibition to Vladislav Sludskiy, the curator at Cultura.kz, and he passionately supported it. I think it was the first time ever that I knew I would exhibit the work in a certain place before even making it. 

NDEREO: How did you go from writing to your friend, Zhandos Bermukhambetov to engaging with Lisakovsk and its spaces of public use in such personal and intimate ways? Do you see the relationship with your friend and that with Lisakovsk as one, or are they distinct ones? If so, is there a meeting point where the three of you coincide?

ZB: On the one hand, when I went there, I fulfilled my teenage wish. On the other, it was crucial to me as an artist, as it was the first time I made performances on my own. I had a long-term duo project, where we have been performing for a few years, but it stopped. So, Lisakovsk felt like a connecting point between those two states. Paradoxically, this town was already filled with “memories,” whereas Almaty is still a bit emotionally empty. So, the only way I could engage with the place was, as you say, intimate. Communicating with public places was very personal as I created new ways to avoid automatisms. When we repeat the same action over and over, we get used to the routine. Swimming in even different rivers is still just swimming. So, the gestures I made were new to me and to the place. Through the discomfort of doing so, it is the only way to deeply experience the landscape and cityscape — holding your breath in the water, following the stage light, being thrown stones at, etc.

I guess I would lie if I said that Zhandos was out of the picture at all. At the same time, I was focused on my complex feelings, ambitions, and fears. I did not ask him to join me, intuitively I knew I had to come alone to meet the place myself. Fortunately, Zhandos asked his classmate to help me out as I needed an assistant and a cameraman. Timur Seidalinov turned out to be a very pleasant empathic person with a great sense of humour. Again, thanks to Timur for the support. Interestingly, the process of filming felt like I was a teenager in the summer camp. It was surreal. Funny that he remembered my parcels, so I kind of did meet an old friend, but a different one.

It is a curious question whether there is a point where I, Zhandos, and Lisakovsk meet together. Even though he came to the exhibition, the three of us definitely have not “met-met” yet. And I am not sure if this should somehow be solved. Maybe, on the contrary, it should never happen.

NDEREO: As I understood, your family is from Kazakhstan, and your home is in Moscow. In my conversations with artists in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, there is an effort to decolonize, and the politics of the former Soviet Union are seen as a colonizing, and I would say an imperial project  that sought to homogenize languages, cultures and ways of being in Central Asia. How is it for you to travel between Moscow and Kazakhstan, emotionally, culturally and creatively? 

ZB: I am 33, and I was born in Moscow and have lived there until last year. It is my home. I am ethnically Kazakh, and the culture did reach me, thanks to my parents, yet in a cut version. I rather identify myself as Russian with Kazakh roots. I have friends in Kyiv, and I have been there five times. I am deeply shocked by the ongoing war. I was not able to create new work for almost a year. Kazakhstan surely feels safer for me and my husband, we both have military tickets (medical background). I feel torn. My parents, my brother, and my friends are in Moscow, and it is emotionally hard. I am grateful to Kazakhstan, I am learning the language and enjoying the culture very much, yet I miss a lot.

I see the pain because of the historical context and, of course, the ongoing suppression. I think it is important to talk about that and to find constructive ways to live through it and to find solidarity with each other. The war highlighted old issues. Fortunately, there are many Kazakh (and not only, of course) researchers in academia, who initiate conversations and discuss potential tools to work with it. 

NDEREO: Back to Lisakovsk, what shifts have your conversations with the places and spaces in this city may have generated for you at different levels, whether personally or spiritually, to name a few?

ZB: As I have dreamt of going there for almost twenty years, I thought it would be the gestalt closure. But I feel that the relationship and the connections have strengthened. Even though the real city is different from how I thought it would be, it is still an emotionally important space. Lisakovsk calmed me down and supported my art practice in hard times. I spent there four days, and I hardly remember when I had such a fulfilling journey.

The city was at the same time familiar yet a very new space to me. The Human mind tends to dive into polar terms — good/bad, interesting/boring, etc., whereas those are just categories that seem to fail into the bigger picture. I also do not make a big difference between the landscape and cityscape, a human and “nature,” So, because I performed there, I physically lived through what I believe in.

I enjoyed finally coming to Lisakovsk, which is not the city I communicated with, it changed, and my friend moved. It is another place. So, I felt how the “where” is actually unseparated from the “when.” Though time is hard to touch and sounds more ephemeral, it affects a lot. A day counts, an hour may change the city, even if visually everything remains still. I cannot name favorite places there. The fact that there are no friends there anymore and there is no “reason” to be attached to the city makes our relationship more precious.

NDEREO: How do you see your body in regard to the work that you do? How do you see/perceive/understand the places that you interact with at a time when many of us are discussing the personhood of rivers and lakes, for example? Can towns and city be part of these dialogues on personhood perhaps from a different perspective? I remember having conversations with Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, when I lived there as part of a creative experience.

ZB: Body to me is a tool to experience time and space. Body forces to stop thinking and to engage with physicality. In a way, the body does not exist until you feel comfortable–when there is no pain or wretchedness. You feel that you breathe when it is hard to breathe. The body is material, and that unites it with other living/non-living forms. I am not a fan of hierarchies and anthropogenic views. So, to me, the stone and the human body are in equal positions.

As I engaged with Lisakovsk on an intimate level, I believe in many personhoods existing altogether at once. Those do not contradict but rather are on different soil layers. And to me, the city is a part of the bigger landscape, and division into “natural” (forests, rivers, lakes, etc) and “human” (cities) places is artificial. Referring to ideas from Eduardo Kohn's work How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human, I'm finding support for my thoughts. Kohn questions the idea that only humans can think and make choices. He suggests that even things we don't usually think of as having minds can still have their own kind of awareness. This way of thinking shows how everything is connected. It's like the way a forest seems to think in its own way, or how our bodies feel things. Just as Kohn wants us to reconsider thinking humans are the most important, my experiences in Lisakovsk fused with theory and make me want to see that everything is connected, and the line between what's made by people and what's natural isn't so clear.

NDEREO: This is my first time in Central Asia, and I am hoping to return to the area as I see the work that I did there as wanting to deepen, to be watered and tended. I was taken aback by the kindness of the people in the area, and by the energy of so many places there, including Yssyk Kul lake in Tosor, Kyrgyzstan. I was surprised to see my interest in spiritually accepted by artists in Central Asia, and by being invited to talk about it openly. Many of my discussions there revolved around healing, rituals and shamans. Now in the United States these are trendy subjects that are being monetized by the art machine. Is there anything that you would like to say about this, or add to these points?

ZB: It is pleasant to hear that your work resonated in Central Asia. Again, that proves that geography and borders are invented constructs. They do affect us, though.

You know, I think that the subjects of healing, rituals, and shamans (or other “trendy” ones nowadays) are being monetized in circulation, both by artists and by art-related businesses. Unfortunately (or is it “natural”?), many artists sell their “exoticism.” It sells well. If you look at religion, social processes, etc., there seems to be a “good” and the “bad” side of anything in mass-culture. To me, it hardly exists one without another, especially today, when there is media and the internet. So, when something new (exotic) to the Global North appears, it is being monetized at once. To be honest, I do not know whether to fight this or not, it is an individual choice. I think at some point any theme loses the hype, it is a matter of time.

NDEREO: I thank you for talking with me. I am grateful that our dear Anvar took me to see your work and to meet you!

ZB: Thank you, Nicolás, for the talk and insightful interesting questions. It was a pleasure!

All photos: Andrey Khludeyev / Courtesy of Zhanar Bereketova

Zhanar Bereketova / links : Vimeo / Instagram

About Zhanar Bereketova: Artist and graphic design lecturer. Art resident of Open Studios at the Winzavod in Moscow. Graduated from the University of Hertfordshire, with a BA (Graphic Design). Zhanar resides in Almaty since 2022. Since 2017, she has been practicing contemporary art with a focus on sculptural forms (performances, installations, objects). Zhanar embraces site-specificity, studies event as a concept and explores physicality. She has participated in international exhibitions (such as Dasha+Zhanar at INDUSTRA Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic; Unreal Bonfires at One Night Public Gallery in Ljubljana, Slovenia, among others) and festivals (such as Localize Festival in Germany, Ecoperformance Festival in Brazil, among others). Her works have also been exhibited at the Polytechnic Museum and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA). In 2022, she was awarded the Grand Prix in the contemporary art section of the Biennale in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, with the project Dasha+Zhanar (collaboration with Daria Pugachova).

Nicolás’s journey through Central Asia was supported by ArtEast and CEC ArtLinks. CEC ArtsLink supports transnational cultural mobility and collaboration, empowering artists and arts leaders to engage communities in dialogue and creative projects for a more equitable, compassionate and sustainable world. For more information, please visit www.cecartslink.org. Thank you as well to the Lazy  Art Festival to the Foundation for Contemporary Arts for the Emergency Grant which made possible two of Nicolás’s performances in Kyrgyzstan , and to The University of Texas at Austin, Liza Matveeva, ArtEast, Susan Katz, Zhenia Stadnik, Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev, David Hinkle, Olivia Georgia, and Ansar.

Tongues and Ancestral Displacements

Николас

It might not take much labor to understand the tongue, the actual wet organ, as a major channel of bodily pleasure, but also as a weapon. Afterall, language can nurse the deepest love and also detonate wars and cause unimaginable damage at all levels, from the very personal to the collective. This has been evident in the vitriolic speech that dominates politics in the United States, to name a place. A spear, a vine, a tentacle, a whip, a knife–the malleable tongue can relate to any of these items in form and function. Where I was born in the Dominican Republic, a person can threaten with or actually deliver to another person a fierce pela ‘e lengua, a tongue lashing. But my interest in this member of the body’s community, which together with others, plays a key role in the act of oral communication, is that of ancestral displacements and in re-membering. I am tempted to employ the overused word trauma to delve into this writing, and I will opt not to do so, as a means to remain true to what emerges without naming it in psychological terms.

I am currently in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, a country in Central Asia. I am 15-hours away by airplane from my home in the South Bronx, and perhaps a bit longer from Santiago, in the Dominican Republic, where I literally lost a piece my umbilical cord that my mother had sandwich between the cardboard and the sticky see-through sheet of a photo album. Gone. The umbilical cord nowhere to be found still exercises a pull in me toward the island. My mother and her siblings embody the first-generation Lebanese-Dominicans in the family–I am second in this order–yet I was raised pretty close to Lebanese cultures and the immigrant experience. In other words, while being deeply rooted in Dominican everyday life, I was reminded that part of our family had come from somewhere else far distant. In the Dominican streets we were thought as Turkish, and the longing for connection pushed some of my relatives to join a local Syrian-Lebanese social club. Any nuanced cultural differences that may have previously existed and might be present today between Syrians and Lebanese, I guess, were overlooked. In the Caribbean, they/we were one. Many decades later, I would receive a WhatsApp text from my mother to remind me not to forget that I was Arab, to what I responded: “…among other identities.”

More than 60 years ago, my grandfather left Lebanon on a ship that took him, his two brothers and his 15-year-old sister to the Americas. On the neck of the sister hung a gold chain with a crucifix that my great grandmother had placed on her daughter before departing from Miziara. They never saw each other again. My grandfather changed his Arabic name to the Spanish one Miguel, his bother changed his to Pedro, yet my aunt continued to be Anissa and my other uncle retained his named Dumit, after which I was named. Their stories in the Caribbean were full of hardships, and great successes for some of the four. While my uncles and aunt made fortunes in Santo Domingo, my grandfather decided to stay in the countryside, near the border with Haiti, and live with all we needed, but simply. We were not taught our ancestral language and we gathered whatever Arabic we could from listening to relatives talk among themselves in their seemingly strange tongue. As my family gained full acceptance into Dominican society, we lost something in the act of relinquishing one of our languages. On the other hand, I can sense my Lebanese family’s critical urge to belong, to look forward, even at the expense of surrendering part of who they/we were. “How was it for my grandfather, his brothers and sister to not been able to express pain or pleasure to anyone other than themselves?” Visitors from the Middle East would come and bring rose water candies, a taste from home. Our tongues would awaken momentarily and remember–re-member. In the 1970s my mother and a newly arrived Lebanese cousin, Wadiah, would sit on the bed of the hotel where the cousin was first staying and look at each other in the eyes. My mother would only speak a few words in Arabic and Wadiah was not versed in Spanish. Tears would become part of their truncated conversations.

More than half a century later, I find myself in a predominantly Russian speaking country with a tool that my forebearers never imagined would exist, a Google translator. However, their longing /be-longing (as my dear mentor Suzi Tucker would say), has activated in me like a sleeping volcano that was ready to erupt. In this new place I might pass for “white” of some kind. I have been perceived as French, or as an American who speaks broken English, like a participant at Lazy Art Festival–an annual camp for artists in Tosor–would refer to me. I swallow a big gulp of saliva, thinking how, while still a colonial term that I do not seek to embrace, we Haitians and Dominicans are–if we choose to do so–the first Americans in the whole continent (1492). This is before the United Sates usurped “Americanness” for itself. I smile, when the same person who detects my ability to break English with the weapon of my tongue, talks about how she can understand me clearly, but no so much the visitors from Scotland sharing a meal with us in the yurt! I grow a bigger smile and proceed to add more crushed hot pepper seeds to the dish I am enjoying! 

In the streets of Bishkek and outside of the art milieu, I figure how to communicate using my Android and hand gestures. The kindness of the people in Kyrgyzstan is good medicine. Four individuals gather around me to help me deal with the Yandex Go taxi that I have called. During similar occasions, passersby open digital maps on their cell phones to get me out of getting lost. Others point to solutions to my queries. We more than manage, and still the ancestral dislocation accompanies me. I open to the hugs that I receive in the journey through Central Asia. I also sit to delight in the oblong Asian melon that the fruit vendor downstairs in the building where I stay taps for me–to make sure that it is ripe. I look for canned chick peas to bring the ancestral flavor back, to remember. I do not find them in the racks of the nearby supermarket. I welcome the Tosor nylon bag that a clerk hands me as gift, and which folds like a cute strawberry. I fill this container with the loaves of the traditional lepyoshka or tokach that I eat here daily. At times, loneliness punches my heart. Why so, when I so much cherish being alone and becoming a hermit. Then I witness somatically my Lebanese relatives guarding me; looking after me while abroad where I cannot easily communicate orally. Their non-visible presence walking by my side in Kyrgyzstan brings us back together. “How was it for you? I feel your struggle in me now. I am sorry. I thank you for bringing me forward into life at such cost for you, emotionally.” They assure me that I will be ok and well cared for, that this is their way of schooling me in subjects of tongues and languages. To which I ask, “What about Lebanon next?”  

Some for the questions that I am interested in exploring are: How does one channel language and the actual meaning of words beyond literal translation-interpretation? What reveals itself in the act of shaping communication with hands, objects, actions, food, movement and other non-verbal responses? What is the field that opens up when spoken language is rendered obsolete, and instead we are asked to live, feel, and give shape to words from our deepest selves?

My journey through Kyrgyzstan is presented with ArtEast and CEC ArtLinks. CEC ArtsLink supports transnational cultural mobility and collaboration, empowering artists and arts leaders to engage communities in dialogue and creative projects for a more equitable, compassionate and sustainable world. For more information, please visit www.cecartslink.org.

"The ritual performances  that I presented at Lazy  Art Festival were supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant"

Thank as well to The University of Texas at Austin, Liza Matveeva, ArtEast, Susan Katz, Zhenia Stadnik, Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev, David Hinkle, Olivia Georgia, Ansar. And the amazing artists at Lazy Art Festival.

Tongues and Ancestral Displacements ©2023 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful

Devin Osorio

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles: Blanka Amezkua introduced us while I was working at Hispanic Society on a pilgrimage dealing with La Virgen de la Altagracia, the protectress of Dominicans and, to some, of the whole Island. When we met, we discussed mothers as they pertain to our lives. Devin, you mentioned Washington Heights as the place where you were born. 

Devin Osorio: ¡Hola mi amor! Yes, were introduced to each other by Blanka who is someone that I find deeply inspiring in so many ways. The conversation you and I shared when we first met was so interesting because it became deeply intimate and I felt comfortable enough to be vulnerable with you within the first few minutes all whilst talking in a very public space with raucous activity happening behind us ¡jajá! I remember leaving our conversation feeling as though I went to church and had some homework to do. At the end of our conversation, you challenged me to return to the block that I grew up in and provide my mother (R.I.P. María Lucía Checo de Osorio) an offering – a piece of chocolate that you gifted me. I never had the chance to fill you in on that deeply moving and monumental experience. I didn’t realize how terrified I was of my block and encountering the people that I grew up with until that day. The walk from our meeting space on 155-156th Streets and Broadway to 175th Street and St. Nicholas was fairly mundane – but once I turned right onto the block to approach the building I began to hyperventilate and became extremely anxious. I began to feel watched and judged whilst the block was mostly empty. It felt as though people were hiding in their apartments glaring down at me from their windows, all disgusted with the faggot I’d become. Luckily the door of the building was broken and could not lock itself. I quickly walked into the entrance of the building, dropped the chocolate in the corner of the entryway, and walked out as quickly as possible towards the A train three avenues away. I hadn’t felt panic to that degree in such a long time. That visit motivated me to create a collection of paintings that attempted to understand those feelings and where they stem from. It was the first time in my life that I tried to explicitly call out my “monsters” and attempt to sit with them.

NDEREO: I am getting goose bumps. I was in Washington Heights in the early 1990s and that was quite a place in the City’s imaginary. People who lived below 96th Street or in “safe” areas of New York would not visit me. Washington Heights then was what the Bronx continues to be now for many New Yorkers and beyond, a place to fear. To me, it is all about race and the Other.

DO: “The City’s imaginary” – I love that. New York City is such a fantasy according to which perspective one is studying it. Well, the fear that is held currently about the Bronx, and due to gentrification, has been slowly dissipating about the Heights and parts of Harlem as of late, has a lot to do with race and othering but also with class – specifically one’s image of what is New York City and which areas are deemed worthy of being included in its definition. Outsiders view the ratchet, banjee, and ghetto as something to emulate from a distance but not considered worthy enough to get to know up close and personal. The fact that uptown is made up of mostly residential neighborhoods filled with underserved people of color with select pockets of commerce and nightlife has made those neighborhoods unfriendly for tourism/visitation. For a long time, there was an annoying view that uptown had nothing to offer other than buy drugs and/or get shot. 

Whenever I think of this fear of the uptown, I am reminded so much of high school. I went to New Design HS in the LES which was about 45 minutes traveling each way on the train. I remember realizing in and around my Junior year that none of my friends would come up to see me. Any time we shared had to be done “downtown,” in spaces that were a 20-minute walk for them but a 45-minute to 1.5 hr commute on the train for me. I would get aggravated easily jaja, at times boycotting the train and refusing to see them over the weekends if they did not come up. Yet I understood them. I understood the lack of desire to commute a long way to a neighborhood that due to redlining, lack of employment opportunities and financial growth, struggles with assimilation due to the struggles of immigration, and other systemically racist actions was forced to become intimidating and not provide much incentive for visits. I learned to see that there was a delineation between actions that can happen uptown vs. downtown – a matter that has always fascinated me.

As a child, I was not able to take the train alone and my parents had no reason to take me either. I had not gone lower than 125th Street until the age of about 13. Downtown was called “La Cuarentay Dos,” throughout my childhood because my parents worked near Times Square and my aunt Almania loved to shop for bargains in that area. La Cuarentay Dos was a magical place with glimmering lights, cobblestone streets, and cherry blossom trees that only adults and children in movies had access to. It was a place where celebrities and fabulous people spent their days and only the most worthy could share that space with them. La Cuarentay Dos was a fantasy/imagination. This fantasy stemmed from many sources. With most jobs being offered to immigrants being held downtown by large-scale chains and large corporations, it’s made it so that some individuals living in the outskirts must travel for income. They must leave their neighborhoods to succeed – psychologically making their neighborhood a space that one must get out of to thrive. The only way to go from uptown was down.

The perspective that flourishing only occurs with escaping permeated beyond paying the rent but included a sense of safety for queer people. I personally found downtown to be more than just exciting for its newness but a space of protection, allowing me the space for self-actualization within its air of anonymity. Existing within a sea of individuals that did not know me,  granted me the permission I needed to fearlessly be my fully effeminate self. I was not being surveilled downtown in the ways I was uptown. Yes, I could be attacked – I had little control over that – but what this newness gave me was the agency to be whomever I wanted without a past to compare to. I could be the person that was never afraid of being jumped by people I grew up with for being queer, I could be the person who could be romantic with the individuals I desired. No longer did I have to hold my tongue or constrain my gestures in order to avoid abandonment. Within a sea of strangers, I was able to put my troubled past in a box and dig it underground until I decided to resurface it.

I vividly remember that when I began to express my queerness through dress I only felt comfortable doing so if I made my way downtown. Passing 125th Street on the A or 1 train was a moment of unfurrowing. My shell would slowly open and my sense of danger would slowly dissipate. Yet this exciting reality came with a price. I began to resent home and associated Washington Heights and even Dominicanness with fear and heartbreak. For many years I did all I could to disassociate; using any opportunity to escape and take space in anyone else's. I think back to that time and feel deflated because I should have fought for my comfort, I deserved to feel whole in the spaces that I call home. Funny enough, my pride for my neighborhood came much later once in Savannah, Georgia. With all this said, I realize that present-day – gentrified Washington Heights is very different from the one I grew up in. The Heights has become a household name for Dominicanness in NYC and we appear on Broadway and in movies that don’t centralize violence. Although explicitly gay bars in Washington Heights/Dyckman have closed (R.I.P. No Parking and Castro Bar), there is a thriving gay scene in Harlem. Extracting the displacement and the unjust price jumps in rent and survival, these changes are amazing because they provide employment, community, and safety for individuals uptown. It’s a shame though that those who survived the eras of uptown are not able to enjoy its fruit.  People come uptown now, and it’s not only to buy dime bags but typically for hookah and pastelitos in Dyckman as well.

NDEREO: When I talk with my aunt we become nostalgic about the New York that has slipped out of our hands. 14thStreet was the locus with the crowded shops with Jesus’s wall pieces, suitcases and chamber pots for sale. In my opinion, Washington Heights is no more. I rarely go there and prefer to keep the memory of a time when I really felt the Island there. Now, there are more Dominicans in the Bronx than in Upper Manhattan and the cultural cohesiveness that took place in Washington Heights will never happen here in a whole borough. I see that I am not asking questions and I am okay with you responding to these thoughts in any way that feels true to you.

DO: ¡Jajaj! I’m loving the stream of consciousness that you are having with me! Ultimately I agree with you. The Heights that once was is gone and in its place is a commercially branded rendition. With the rise of Dominicanness being made cool in media and Dominican machismo being highlighted as both something to fear (the common concept that Dominican men are cheaters and Dominican women are BBL carrying loud mouths) and something to aspire to (Drake being posed as a Dominican with metros sexual clothing and that Dominicans have an innate street smartness). I feel as though media exposure and cultural relevance have encouraged people who have survived gentrification to swallow some degree of the commercial cool-aid. Although some family-owned businesses stick around such as La Casa Del Mofongo or El Tropical throughout the years, most businesses are gone, rebranded, or new ones have taken their place. No longer are they unimpressionable shops and restaurants with great products but are highly decorated catacombs of Dominican folklore and nostalgia. The carnival masks that were once only seen in select people's homes in the Heights are now seen on a shelf in almost every business alongside a tin mug and countless frames of Caribbean tourism paintings. The low-budget but major cultural impact of Washington Heights that once was is gone and in its place is a media-friendly backdrop that patrons can interact with and easily post online.

Through my disgruntled rant, I am reminded of an experience back in 2018 when I coerced my younger sisters, Arshley (16 y/o at that time) and April (12 y/o at that time), to go on a walk with me. We started our journey on 181st Street and Broadway–made our way down to 158th Street and Audubon, and back up again to Dyckman. Those poor things – I made them walk all of Washington Heights with me. As we did so we caught up on chisme and shared memories that we had individually had in the neighborhood. I was stunned to see so many empty commercial spaces and most of my childhood stomping ground vanishing. As we passed the first Target to open in the neighborhood, I complained about its placement and went on a rant about the negative effects of gentrification and how awful it is to see the past gone. My sisters rolled their eyes at me and in unison said, “I’d rather have it here than have to go all the way to the Bronx or downtown for a fucking Target.” At that moment I realized that it was easy for me as an outsider ( I moved from the Heights at 17 and spent minimal time in the neighborhood because my friends all lived in Brooklyn and I partied near their areas), to complain and want to hold onto a past that may not be beneficial for the locals that were still there and had no plans of leaving. For them, replacing one of the countless 99-cent stores or second-hand clothing stores that no longer serve modern needs with a large chain that benefits their lives was a blessing. Since then I’ve tried to be cognizant of what I fight so hard to hold onto. Is it fair to hold onto a romanticized past that has negative effects on the present? Am I creating an encapsulated monolith by gripping onto a past rather than allowing it to transform and breathe the air of change?

I miss the enclave that Washington Heights used to be – the stark contrast to the other neighborhoods in Manhattan, but I also remember the days in which I fantasized about leaving the neighborhood to become a club kid and allow myself to be an uninhibited, extraordinarily dressed, enigma. As a visual artist that aims to document the Dominican diaspora in Washington Heights, I’m constantly asking myself those questions to ensure that I’m not creating a false relic but instead celebrating my spaces and sensations of comfort and joy.

NDEREO: How has the Washington Heights experience influenced your creative concepts and aesthetics?

DO: In every way possible. I began to explore my lived experiences and my ideations of home during my final year of college. Before then I was creating “aimless” work that tended to settle for low hang inspirational fruit rather than forcing myself to dig deeper into myself and study my psychology. Once I began to do so, I realized the well of inspiration that I had completely ignored because I was too scared to notice my own emotions, my interior. After studying magical realism and learning how to integrate its guidelines and tools into my practice, I became aware of the fact that it’s easier for me to confront heavy emotions and large concepts with images and fables. I began to use my neighborhood, the people I share space with, my cultural background, and myself as caricatures. I can utilize all that I know to discuss themes and attempt to comprehend concepts that I am intrigued and deeply confused by. For example, using the evolution of the inhabitants of the neighborhood to discuss themes of regeneration and cyclicality. My personal traumas become tools that can be used for empathy or reaching euphoria/utopia. My clothing and the ways in which I express myself become physical manifestations of my psychology.

Most of my practice includes Washington Heights in one way or another, either in its physical representation or in depicting myself. I am the heights – it made me. Just like I am my mother, father, and siblings because they also made me.

NDEREO: At the moment, the aesthetics of Vodun are hip in the arts and many artists are embracing it. I am curious as to the level of understanding and responsibility involved in the works that I see. I do not practice Vodun and I grew up with this religion, among others, at home. At seven, I had an altar that I had built in my own bedroom in Santiago. I get uneasy when some of what I see in the arts is about the trappings of Vodun. Tell me about you.

DO: I absolutely agree with you, the aesthetics of Vodun and general spiritualism is becoming very hip in the zeitgeist at the moment. Every young person seems to have one finger touching the moon understanding its thoughts whilst another in the ground catching its vibrations. I say this as neither a positive nor a negative thing. I also wonder if those artists are respecting the practice and hope that they are taking the time to fully understand and intimately know the subject they’re depicting/reenacting. I find it beautiful that Afro-religions are being removed from taboo and being seen as approachable. Accepting our blackness includes accepting the spiritual practices that shaped our ancestors’ psyche.

Similarly, I do not practice Vodun but I did grow up with family and adults that practiced Los Misterios, the Dominican rendition of Vodun. Although growing up I had no clue of their spiritual relevance, I remember small objects such as a small Oshun that my mother kept in our bathroom and an Eleguá that my aunt placed on the floor near the entrance of her apartment. Every child born into my family was first seen by the Santera who gifted them a blessed amulet to wear weeks after their birth before being baptized on their first birthday; both acts functioned as rights of passage. Due to Los Misterios being present in my life alongside crosses and other Catholic symbols, I began to view spiritual practices as acts of culture rather than devotion. Angels and Jesus Christ on the cross became elements of decoration rather than signals of allegiance. I also began to notice that the human experience loves to attach psychology to objects and create altars. Globally most spiritual practices utilize altars in one way or another and commit to a transactional exchange between the devotee, the talisman, and the divine. One could say that part of the human experience is not only to understand that which we cannot through the creation of mythologies and fantasies that we become devoted to but it’s also part of the human experience to collect that which is physical in our surroundings and place them into a caste system of divine value. Offering them as we see fit.

This personification of an object is one that I’ve always loved. As a child, I would create stories for the objects in my life. Wondering how the TV felt if it was not turned on all day or if the bed rested throughout the day when I was not sleeping on it. Practicing animism, more specifically, assigning interactions and tasks to all objects has always led me to question the value that we place on specific ones. Attempting to understand at which point an object changes from being mundane to being totemic. In many ways, this thought process stems from Los Misterios and altar building: the ways in which a saint's personality is represented according to the offerings being left for them by the devotee. Altars function as physical manifestations of the divine whilst the offerings are symbolic of their psychology. I’ve begun to use this formula of altar building as an attempt to represent earthly individuals and more excitingly, concepts. Deciphering which collection of objects best represents machismo, devoutness, and wholeness. Within my work, potted plants are symbolic of controlled existences while plants in the earth represent human inward reflection and connectivity. Vessels are societal constructs and objects that produce light such as candles, incense, and lamps representing spirit.

Personally, I pray every night to God, the Virgin Mary, Anaisa Pye, and Santa Marta la Dominadora. Showing gratitude to the four of them equally for the blessings in my life and placing faith in all four to protect and guide me daily. I am not a Santero nor a devout Catholic/Christian. I do not have an altar in my home that is meant for spiritual practice. Yet I do have images of my favorite divine characters throughout my living spaces and peppered into my artwork.

NDEREO: There are so many Dominican experiences and I rarely get to talk about them with other people. The Dominican York experience is one, and this has many ramifications and nuances. There are the Dominicans who came in the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s… each group bringing their own stories and theirstories of the Island at different times. Then there are the intellectual, gender, economic…exiles. I sense the Dominican York identity is moving to the background. I hear younger Dominicans refer to themselves as Dominican Americans. In my opinion, Haitians and Dominicans are the first “Americans” in the hemisphere. I am saying this with the awareness that “Americanness” is still a colonial term. Would you be willing to illuminate for me the subject of Dominican identities in the diaspora? I am from an older generation and I am looking forward to continue to learn.

DO: Pues baby, we can ALWAYS talk about Dominican experiences together! Yes! The multi-generational gradation of Dominicanness can vary so much. My parents have very different migration stories and it reflects upon their experience in New York City and in the United States.

My mother’s family comes from El Rincón de Cuabanico in San José de Las Matas and they began their shift to the United States in the ‘80s using my uncle's papers. First was my uncle, then his parents. Following them were my uncle's siblings who were sent in pairs from oldest to youngest. My mother and her younger brother Jesús were the last to arrive and moved together when they were in their early 20s. They were teenagers living alone in DR and arrived in the States as independent individuals with their Dominicanness engrained. Listening to the song, Las Pequeñas Cosas by La Chicas del Can accurately describe how my mother experienced her time in the US. With a heather gray sweatshirt and blow-dried bangs, she had a hard time learning English and understanding how to integrate herself into the fast-paced capitalism of NYC. Constantly in between jobs and struggling to make full use of her associate's degree, she treated 175th Street between St. Nicholas and Audubon with the same uninhibited grace as sitting on the edge of the river eating sugar cane with friends and spitting its excess into the stream.

My father was born and raised between Bonao and the Heights. He was brought to New York City at the age of nine on his mother's papers. As a pre-teen, he was returned to the island leaving his mother and younger brother who was born in the city behind. He then returned back in his teenage years. He went to high school in Washington Heights and became fully integrated into the culture. I’ve heard stories of him dressing in grunge clothing and listening to Biggie Smalls and Maná. He encapsulated both the Dominican and US worlds with his half-baked Spanish and English, making due for himself in the city. Throughout my childhood he dreamed of returning to the island and took any opportunity he could to complain about the US while deep down understanding that he would not survive island living for long – he was too cosmopolitan for the lights to turn off randomly for hours on end and for service to be done on convenience rather than demand.

My siblings and I were all born and raised in Washington Heights. Such as most Dominicans Heights children, we were sent to DR every summer break and returned sun burnt and gloomy, dreading the exchange of palm trees for lamp posts. Fairly unrestricted time spent outdoors playing with the local kids to curfews, bundled time outside, and homework. Speaking Spanish in the home to our parents while learning to articulate, enunciate and learn how to carve ourselves into the world in English. We know the Dominican Republic because we’ve been there. We know the music, the food, and the people and yet we do not know its nuances. We do not understand what 365 days in the Caribbean is like. We have traveled more in the MTA Bus than in pasolas. In my opinion that is the Dominican diaspora. Understanding that the separation between where you were born and where the customs you were brought up with belong to gravely distant places. Both are within you, and neither negates the other. Although they may compete, they make up your DNA.

Since moving to Mexico City I’ve been thinking a lot about my “United Statesness” and how much I struggle to accept it although it’s very much present in my dress and the ways in which I speak. The tastes I’ve acquired and the judgments I make. I do believe that generationally one's sense of United Statesness consumes more of the individual the further the generational chain goes. My niece and nephew will be much more from NYC than of DR than say their father or I.

You're pointing out the multitudes of Dominicanness and your lack of speaking upon it is a topic that I’ve always fought with as a homosexual, gender non-binary, fat, first-generation Dominican American. There are not many stories spoken about individuals like us. Dominicans in media are depicted as the mythical Tiguere’s with a thousand abs and rhinestone clothing or Chapiadoras with their blown-out hair and massive ass, not much else. The fact is that those characters are just that, mythical, and don’t capture the nuances of the human experience and the richness of life. It is a shame that it’s not spoken about more and I hope that by living an expressive life I can play a part in starting new conversations of representation.

NDEREO: Where and who are you in your paintings?

DO: Aii no se jaja. In the paintings that I create, although I use my likeness I am not necessarily painting myself. In the act of processing what I look like through my cognition, and somehow capturing my ideations of who I am and how I prefer to reveal myself to the public, I’ve become a stranger that mirrors my psyche. I actually truly dislike painting my likeness because I never get it right. There is a disruption in the process that always misses and never captures me right. In paintings, I’ve used my body to symbolize ephemeral concepts such as balance/utopia or the physical manifestation of divine acts played out in Dominican culture like libations and healing through song. At times my likeness is used as a placeholder to represent individuals from Washington Heights or people from my block.

My end goal is typically to capture a rumination on topics that I don’t fully understand hoping that in the process of painting, I can arrive at a solution – such as writing in a journal in order to discern one's emotional state and how one actually feels and thinks of a situation. Through the dissection of my body, my clothing, my environments, my interactions, and my positions I hope to better understand my role within those ruminations and why I’m having them in the first place. Through the use of my likeness, in so many ways, I am attempting to have the solutions mirror back at me.

In reality, I’ve always been scared to speak for groups of people because I am not the smartest or the most articulate or even eloquent person in that group. There are others better equipped to stand in positions of speaking for others. In using my likeness I am speaking for myself about topics that can be relatable to others. That is why I create autobiographical works. I cannot speak about the lives of others because I don’t know their lives in their entirety, but I do have a better grasp of my own.

Where am I in the works? Stretched out at all of my favorite places in Washington Heights and the few areas I know in Dominican Republic. Most weekends throughout high school I would meet with one of my best friends and walk all over the Heights. We would pick each other up in either of our buildings and walk down to 158th Street and Riverside Drive and make our way to 207th Street  and Sherman Avenue. Throughout those walks, we would smoke black and milds, buy nutcrackers and/or nemos, and eat tacos and pastelitos with friends in the street. We created memories within all of the hidden crevices that our neighborhood had to offer. These walks have been crucial for me because they’ve allowed me to integrate emotion and psychology into location. Creating totems and symbology of the places themselves.

NDEREO: Your paintings seem to be a document of performance, and I mean this in a laudatory way. Your paintings tell stories, they move, they are alive.

DO: I’m honored by that, thank you. I’m always afraid that my paintings might be too static due to their 2-dimensional quality. When I was a child I loved running out to play in the snow. I’ve been overweight all of my life so the lack of sweating and chaffing during the winter months of NYC was bliss for me. My favorite activity was to lay in mounds of snow. I would lay on the ground on my belly and pile snow onto the back of my head until I was fully concealed, creating a sort of snow cave or cocoon. In that mound, the world would become quiet leaving me in isolation. I would shut my eyes and lay in this mound for much longer than I should, frequently returning home frost nipped. Similar to the stillness within those mounds, I think of my work as the images that rest behind my eyelids which can only be seen when I’m concentrating hard on a subject. I imagine myself with my eyelids shut tight, holding my breath, and turning myself into a fist, finding the answers within that crevice – that isolation. I am at times scared that the works can be too static because what I am aiming for is stillness and quiet.

Although the concepts I am explaining can be loud for their emotional weight, I tend to view them as whispers that are just audible and spoken under the breath or as mental dialogue. As someone that is told that I mumble quite often, my work doesn’t aim to be flashy or groundbreaking but is meant to function as a tender one-on-one conversation with someone you trust. There may be tears, volumes may rise from anger or laughter, and even awkward eye contact at times, but the moment you walk away from the conversation I hope that the most important aspects will be communicated.

NDEREO: What does it entail for you to return to the Island?

DO: Returning to the island is a moment of reconnection and most importantly reclamation. Allowing myself to sit in spaces of discomfort openly, as my whole self, and force others to acknowledge and get to know me.

I am currently in the process of organizing a move to Santo Domingo, an action that I never thought I would ever want to make. When I was a child, I disliked my trips to DR because my parents filled me with so much fear for the island. There were countless stories of someone being robbed of their jewelry, being taken by kidnappers, or being shot in the street for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. During my visits as a child, my grandparents would keep my siblings and me locked in the apartment building, only allowed to play in the street while surveilled. Only an aunt who we stayed with seldomly allowed my siblings and me to roam the streets openly and make friends with the neighborhood children. The months spent with my grandparents were filled with ice cream and boredom. Yet, the moment I moved to Mexico City, I knew that my time here would be limited and that whatever I thought I needed was actually in DR. I instantly knew that my time in Mexico was meant for building up the constitution to then go to the island and heal any open wounds I carry. Being on the island as an adult will allow me to chip away at my concealment and grant my family access to experience me so that we can finally connect in ways that we both deserve, force me to reconstruct my views of masculinity, and fortify my trust towards men, establish a new view towards DR that is not centered in fear and exoticism and instead based in reality and my own personal experiences. Moving to Dominican Republic means removing the fog that is standing in the way between my and myself, me and the island, me and others.

NDEREO: I thank you for conversing with me and I am looking forward to continuing to seeing you paint and be.

DO: Thank you!! This was such a pleasure. It was refreshing to reflect upon my work and myself in ways that I haven’t forced myself to do as of yet. It’s such an honor to have you, such an inspiring and wise individual, in my life! I look forward to continuing to see all that you do and all the ways you welcome us to hyperfocus and reflect upon all aspects of existence.

Besotes!

All images courtesy of Devin Osorio

Davin Osorio / links to work and publications: Website / Instagram

Devin Osorio (b. 1993, New York) grew up as a first-generation Dominican American in the northern Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights. Osorio takes inspiration from Dominican culture and folkloric traditions, including a strong emphasis on textile patterns. These cultural influences merge with biographical details from Osorio’s lived experience, yielding paintings that function as secular reliquaries, commemorating a life lived between cultures.

Devin is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Mexico City, Mexico. Using shared and self-reflective symbolism, Osorio honors Dominican culture through shrine-like paintings that incorporate plants, animals, and glyphs to create a visual vernacular of and for the Dominican American community. Osorio’s work has been exhibited in New York, Atlanta, Georgia, Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, and Madrid, at galleries including Calderon Gallery, Wave Hill, The AHL Foundation, REGULARNORMAL, and Charlie James Gallery. Alongside gallery Adhesivo Contemporary, Osoro exhibited a solo showcase in NADA Miami 2022. Osorio was the 2022 Spring Artist in Residence at New Wave in West Palm Beach, FL. Osorio earned a BFA from Savannah College of Art and Design.

iliana emilia García

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles: Iliana, we met at Altos de Chavón/The School of Design as I was about to graduate and you were coming in as a student. Like me, you were trained as designer. In my case, I never practiced in this field, while you continue to move skillfully between the arts and the design fields. Tell me about it.

iliana emilia García: I love both, but I am aware of their differences. For me design is an external output while the arts are internal. Design keeps me informed about my surroundings while the arts are my personal world and protect me from the outside. While in design I work for a specific audience, in the arts I, myself, am the client.

NDEREO: I have to say that Altos de Chavón has been so pivotal to my development at many levels, including how I relate socially. I have to admit that I decided not to visit again and to be at peace with the memories of my time there, most of which were incredible. What is your connection to the school?

ieG: I have visited many times, taught a couple design workshops, etc... I have seen the changes over the years. While it stills holds the magic, it has also evolved into something else that I don’t recognize. I truly believe that our years were the golden years, the first 5 classes.

NDEREO: Another point of connection between us is the Island. We grew up in two very different cities. You, in Cosmopolitan Santo Domingo, and I in the more old-fashioned and provincial Santiago, yet there is a strong link, I feel, that ties us to the Island emotionally, culturally and spiritually. Can you talk about this?

ieG: This could be a very long answer! I think that our ties are beyond these specific places. Although we come from different cities, we are both rooted in history, family dynamics, education, culture, idiosyncrasies, diversity and a way of thinking. For sure, the Island, is our common playground and the geographical inspiration for so many projects and interests that we share, and yet we can also see beyond the labels of nationalism, and tribal societies. Our ideas of Dominicanisms are more a celebration of our diversity than a box in a checklist.

NDEREO: You have been exploring the symbolism that chairs carry. There are the drawings, photographs and installations that you make. Tell me about your first chair, the one you remember from your childhood? Mine is a rocking chair that my godmother Juanita Castro gave me.

ieG:  Rocking chairs would be the that ones I remember. There are so many pictures of my mother with me on her lap en la mecedora–and my grandmother Baita doing her crossword puzzles after lunch. My great grandmother’s rocking chair is the one that I inherited. More than the object itself, it is the memory/image that the sitting triggers. For my installations (except for one or two), photographs and drawings, among others, I only use the handmade typical Dominican chair. It does not only take me back in time, but it carries a history longer than my memory. This kind of chair is a European design, combined with African weaving craft, and made with native woods from the island; the land of the Taínos. For me, the traditional Dominican chair is my history in one seat, as I am a result of the past–the chair is a perfect representation of this.

NDEREO: I say that chairs remind me of the non-human animal in me. They give me the opportunity to become a four-legged creature again, and when I take the time to sit. I also sit to meditate, to pray and to watch the world dance. What are your own interactions with chairs?

ieG:  I have long conversations with them!!:) When I sit (if I sit), I usually have another empty chair next to me. Why? I guess because they are company, they also convey presence and absence at the same time. They have become instruments of my storytelling.

NDEREO: Many years ago, I bought a pair of ornate chairs belonging to a Catholic or Episcopal Church. To me they are more Catholic than Episcopal because of their exuberance. Are there any particular chairs in your home and what do they evoke for you?

ieG: Do you know that I don’t have any particular chair in my house? I do have a favorite spot in the couch, and a chair in the studio that have been with me for years. We still have our children-sized rocking chairs in Dominican Republic that we got when we were 3 or 4 years old. I love those!

NDEREO: During the last three or so years, I have been taking photographs of chairs in the South Bronx. Many of our communities here claim the streets and public spaces by bringing their chairs out. I love that. “The city belongs to me as much as it belongs to you,” seems to be the statement made in a gentle way that is not really confrontational. These chair actions in the South Bronx speak as well of Caribbean cultures, where so much happens outside. I would like to hear about your installations and the histories/herstories/theirstories informing them.

ieG:  I love “claiming” the streets by bringing chairs out! That is so Caribbean! I think that the chairs in my work aim to establish a presence/identity in adopted places that have become ours. I don’t plant flags but I carry with me home/domesticity/intimacy/place with each one of the chairs. The work in general addresses how subjective distance is when we solely measure it with memories and interpretations; how our concepts of "here" or "there" do not belong to a specific map but to a web of happenings without a chronological order. By settling my Dominican handmade chair in a foreign land, I establish my presence, while also bringing with me my emotional history.  Chairs in my series Unknown distances/Undiscovered Islands Settlements come in many sizes and many forces. Some are temporary; others more permanent, but both kinds seem to stop time for a moment. There are those chairs–dealing with the geographical– that endure a more physical placement/displacement and are specific to the sites. They can be explained as here, there, near and far. But there are also the chairs dealing with the emotional; the ones with no geography or body presence. They occur anywhere and without premeditation–as the heart moves like the wind, and asthe soul travels as far as our breath. There can be a misplacement when we try to capture the exact site for tenderness, for hope or for solitude. How well can we exactly remember where leave silence behind, and how expansive or narrow the space of silence is?  I refer to where the distances are unknown to any measurements and everything is a new discovery–where the space between one and another is as far as our desire to be together, and as close as our differences. It may be almost impossible to tag where exactly our silence resides and where company begins­–and how far our vision goes, and how blind we are regarding our own doings. Do we really know how far we are? How close we breathe? How much we need each other to survive? This is what we are, merely a site/a seat, not here not there, but in between”.

NDEREO: Which is your favorite spot to sit in New York City? In the Dominican Republic?

ieG: Always in front of water. Before 9/11 I would sit on a spot in Battery Park City overlooking the Hudson. Now in Brooklyn, I sit at the Brooklyn Bridge Park overlooking the East River–or in Red Hook where I can see the Verrazano, Ellis Island, Lady Liberty, and all the ships coming in and out of  New York waters.

NDEREO: I thank you for taking the time to sit to answer these questions. May you always enjoy the comfort of a well-crafted chair.

ieG: You too! ¡Gracias! I am including two statements that further describe my practice. The first one in a more general way, and the second one, My Painting is a Book, expands on the use of a reason, an object, and a word across my body of work.

Unless stated otherwise in the credits above, photographs: iliana emilia garcía

ilianaeEmilia García / links to work and publications: Website / Instagram / facebook / twitter / Hyperallergic /Artsy / Smithsonian

To read statements click HERE

iliana emilia García  (Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 1970 ), is a painter, printmaker, and installation artist who works in big format drawings on canvas and paper, and escalating installations depicting her most iconic symbol: the chair. Her work often explores concepts of emotional history, collective and ancestral memory, and intimacy. A co-founder of the Dominican York Proyecto GRÁFICA, she holds an AAS from Altos de Chavón/ The School of Design, a BFA from Parsons School of Design | The New School, and a MA Biography and Memoir from The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her work has been reviewed in numerous art publications and catalogues. Iliana Emilia has been featured in solo and two-person exhibitions at the Art Museum of the Americas, Taller Boricua, Hostos Community College (all in New York City). She has been exhibited in group exhibitions at BRIC (Brooklyn, NY), Exit Art (New York, NY); No Longer Empty at Sugar Hill (New York, NY), The Smithsonian Museum of American Art (Washington, DC), El Museo del Barrio (New York, NY), Aljira Center of Contemporary Art, (Newark, NJ), Leonora Vega Gallery (New York, NY), Howard Scott Gallery (New York, NY),  NOMAA (New York, NY), Joan Guaita (Spain), The 3rd Triennial Poli-Grafica (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Barnard College (New York, NY), Museo de Arte Moderno de El Salvador, as well as in Belgium among other places. Iliana Emilia’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington DC), El Museo del Barrio (New York, NY), The Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, Texas), El Museo de Arte Moderno de Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), and others.  An edited monograph on her work iliana emilia Garcia: the reason / the word / the object, was published in 2020 by the Art Museum of the Americas, and edited by Olga U. Herrera, PhD. Her papers can be found at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Dora Selva

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles: I first heard of you and your work through Anna Costa e Silva. We then convened at Emerge, the program I co-facilitate online with Marlène Ramírez Cancio. Would you like to introduce yourself and talk about your creative praxis?

Dora Selva: Well, I am a person who was born and lives in Brazil, but has Honduran descent on my father's side. This is a mysterious part of my ancestry–having a completely absent and terrible biological father–, but I feel a deep connection to the Caribbean, beyond South America. I have a degree in body arts and have been intensely dedicated to dance and performance for the last 16 years. I was a member of the Lia Rodrigues dance company in Rio de Janeiro for 5 years, and I always feel it is important to mention this, as it was part of my training, and it laid the foundation for everything that has happened afterwards. I spent a lot of time working as an employed professional with a dancing repertoire, traveling on tour and performing around the world. Having an intense experience like this was important so that I could later dive into my solitary, instinctive and truer creative process. Since I've been traveling, I've known that working with art in Brazil has endless challenge, as opportunities and spaces are scarce, so is getting reviews, agendas, etc. For me, dance is a devotional profession, and I have always seen art as a profession of faith. I understand that it's not a religious perspective, but I have a spiritual relationship with making art. My vital energy depends on it, and so does my balance as a human being.

NDEREO: One key element in what you do as an artist is the pelvis. How did that come to be for you? I see this part of the body being present, honored and reclaimed in the discourse and movement-based work of people like Nina Terra and Priscilla Marrero. What is your very own story as it relates to la pelvis?

DS: Research on the pelvis was a calling in my life, which came at an intense moment of change. I was working in a contemporary dance company with a high workload, and with a lot of physical and emotional demands. I was beginning to understand that, despite being immersed in the artistic milieu, working relationships were extremely mechanistic and, in many ways, colonialist. my body was just a tool, and this situation led me to an unsustainable state of sickness. I was almost forced (by my body) to change jobs and perspectives in all aspects of my life. I had my first contact with pelvic studies through the artist Fannie Sosa, who came to Rio de Janeiro with her Twerkshops. That experience was a key one that literally transformed my way of living and of understanding work, art, dance, spirituality and health. The pelvis is interesting because discussion of it covers very diverse issues: whether political, social, biological, racial or gender-related. I started diving into these waters and offering practices, which at the time were still very similar to Fannie's Twerkshops. Little by little, I built my own method, and after a while Viva Pelve emerged, which is this research project that involves weekly workshops, artistic creations in dance, performance, audiovisual, sound research (in partnership with dj Yas Zyngier), and also content production through social networks.

NDEREO: You recently gave birth to a child, and during pregnancy you engaged in a photographic collaboration with Helena Cooper? Can you talk about Dawn, as you called this piece?

DS: This work was very special, because although pregnancy is a maximum period of expression of creativity and fertility, it is a state that is not honored by society. Pregnant women, and then mothers, are put on the sidelines, whether in professional and social relationships, but also physically. Urban centers can be extremely hostile to a pregnant body, and also to a mother and her baby after birth. I say this because it is the experience I am having now and people in general are extremely invasive and disrespectful, at least here. Our desire with Dawn was to go deeper into the image of the pregnant body, both celebrating it and also exploring its dark and obscure aspects. Pregnancy, on the one hand, is marginalized, but on the other hand it is romanticized to the extreme, as if the future mother were an immaculate saint. It is stigmatized by aspects of the more conservative Catholic church. However, the experience of gestating is totally radical, psychedelic, visceral, uncomfortable, maddening and magical. I was in my second trimester of pregnancy, and Helena had her two-month-old baby in the kangaroo. It was an opening for a pregnant woman and a newly-delivered mother to create and express a little of that experience that is birth, the great beginning of everything, within a more real perspective, totally fresh, honest and true.

NDEREO: I recall hearing about a friend of mine talk about how “they were pregnant,” meaning she and her partner were pregnant together–and maybe even her whole family, including her other children. This was a new perspective for me, as I was raised in a world that saw pregnancies only in connection to a female/woman/mother and a child. So much has changed and I am glad about the shifts in paradigms. In the case of my friend, my understanding is that she saw pregnancy as a co-creative collective process, and not as an individual one. What are your thoughts about this?

DS: I totally agree. when a new life is on the way, all roles are changed. We become parents, our parents become grandparents, other children become sisters, cousins, uncles, and godmothers. It definitely takes a village to raise a baby! This is very interesting, and I see that there are two extreme sides. It is true that there is a biological connection between the mother and the baby, as they are in total fusion. Both become a single being divided into two bodies, and there are hormonal, instinctive relationships, which should not be ignored, but the situation in which many mothers find themselves today is one of total isolation, loneliness and overload. It is as if the baby were their sole responsibility, when in fact it is also the responsibility of the community. I feel that our children are not ours, they are of the world. Our body is "just" a channel. It becomes very clear that receiving, creating and caring for a new life is a task that cries out for communion. Anyway, it is the mother's body that miraculously orchestrates the growth of an entire human body inside the womb (!), and this far from basic activity could be more honored, respected and supported, collectively.

NDEREO: Your photographs with Helena Cooper speak to me of the power of the erotic and of eroticism. This can be new a perspective for many when it comes to pregnancy. I am curious to listen to you talk about this.

DS: According to the article "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power," by Audre Lorde, the erotic is an internal resource, a source of power and information–a force– I believe, linked to our capacity for creation and transformation. This is a force that has been oppressed and devalued both by the patriarchal system and by the practice of colonization (both are very related, in my point of view). As I commented above, it is very common for the pregnant body to be stigmatized in a model of sanctification, and for the mother to even become devoid of sexuality, as she now assumes the role of procreator, home caretaker, and maintainer of the traditional family. According to this discourse perpetuated by the Catholic church, the body considered as female is just a tool for the perpetuation of the species; an inferior body without desires, rights, free will, opinions, and without power. I'm saying this from my perspective as a cisgender woman, as the experience of getting pregnant for a trans person can be very different, with other types of issues. This is why the pelvis is so important, as it is a great portal of connection and returns us to our most intimate truth, and to our power of action in the world. It is linked to the second chakra, that of sexuality/creativity/pleasure. This is important for all bodies, as we are all living in a system that oppresses the body and marginalizes everything that deviates from the norm. But for me, life and sexuality are, in many ways, one and the same. The same energy. Pregnancy was actually a situation of the maximum power of what life is because it is simply taking place inside your body, through yourself. There's the magic too. This state was also the maximum manifestation of the erotic, if we understand it as a force of creation, power, transformation, which is something totally wild and also vital.

NDEREO: There is a tendency Latin/x America, and perhaps beyond this, to think of Brazil as a nation where there are very little taboos about the body. This perception, I think, can verge on stereotypes or false notions of liberation. I am saying this because this is the same progressive Brazil where I saw dictators like Bolsonaro be granted power by many. What are some of your experiences in relationship to the body in Brazil, which is the country where you live.

DS: It is necessary to understand that Brazil is as extensive as a continent, so there are very different bodily experiences between the states, not the east because the climate, temperature and ecosystems are very different in each corner of the territory. It is a great contradiction because there is a Brazil that is exported with images of carnival, beaches, with half-naked people (in general people of color) that sells this stereotype of freedom, while in reality it can be extremely emasculating, racist, transphobic and neo-Nazi. This is a very strange moment, since Bolsonaro, like many dictators, produces a mass effect from a military discourse, completely schizophrenic, as well as criminal. But speaking from the experience of living in Rio de Janeiro, where I currently live, there is a habit of having my body exposed, largely because of the heat (unlike the city of São Paulo, where I was born). I feel that the experience of the body has everything to do with the geographic and climatic characteristics of the territory. In the city of Rio, which was largely and for a long time occupied by the Tupinambá indigenous people, there is a warlike energy, sometimes combative, and also partying. There is a force that is very characteristic of Rio, which also received many enslaved people and which was the port and capital of the country during colonization. For having been colonized by the Portuguese crown, it is a city that also has a feudal and monarchical foundation in its structure. I once saw a documentary about a dancehall in Jamaica where choreographer L'antoinette Stines commented that it was indeed a sexy country. There is obviously a lot of taboo about the body and about the body that dances, that twerks, that feels pleasure and that has the good life as a premise of existence. I feel something similar here, yes, there is a liberation and a possibility of living in harmony with the environment and the physicality, but on the other hand, to the same extent, there are the systems that came with the perverse colonial practices and that demonize and oppress the bodies that depart from the imposed norm (white Christian heteronormative). This has a lot to do with the issue of the erotic that we talked about earlier, since it was common for original societies to has a different relationship with sexuality and consequently with the body (and with the pelvis!), one that was different from the one that was imposed and that became what we can today call western culture.

NDEREO: I would like to hear about dance and movement and I will leave the space open for you to discuss this with absolute freedom.

DS: Well, dance for me has been getting closer and closer to a community experience in its relationship with the invisible world. I feel that when talking about the body and dance there is no way not to mention the issue of colonization, because the massacre that happened in the Americas was decisive for understanding the way we live today and how our original culture was decimated, even though it resisted incessantly. The body is very interesting, because even if it is totally devastated, traumatized and hurt for generations (I see this a lot in the work with the pelvis), our ancestry is simply still there. Human beings, as they are just another living animal on planet Earth, are connected to nature (we are nature), which is a reflection of the cosmos. The macro is in the micro, and vice versa. I commented at the beginning about my connection with the Caribbean, and even here in Brazil, if you come from a mixed family (almost the entire population), it is practically impossible to trace your family tree, as records and memories have been erased by colonial practice. The story of my great-grandmother, for example, is that of an indigenous woman who was raped, and this is the only information that reached my generation. But what I mean by all this is that it is possible to access my ancestry in the most raw and profound way, through the body, and through dance, as they are aspects of the order of the unspeakable and the invisible. The body is life pulsing absolutely and inevitably, so my practices with dance and art have gone towards these dives in the search for this identity and ancestry. This has been the quest of many people recently, and I think this is extremely important for a territory that has been and still is shamelessly exploited by "more developed" countries.

NDEREO: As we close this conversation, is there anything else that you would like to add or say?

DS: To anyone reading this, get up now and move your pelvis! Honor your nature with pleasure and devotion.

NDEREO: I thank you very much for what you do and for allowing me to learn about your creative engagements.

DS: Thank you Nicolás for the opportunity to be here exchanging with you. In talking about us and what we do there is always a possibility of revising and renewing vows with our practice and conduct in the world. This type of exchange has been very important to me, deeper and richer. I often feel a great apartheid within the arts, and obviously a commodification of artistic relations, since we are inserted in the capitalist system... but practices like this are a breath and a great opening for reflection and connection. I thank you!

All images above courtesy of Dora Selva

Dora Selva / links to work and publications: Website / Instagram / VivaPelve website / VivaPelve Instagram

Dora Selva is an interdisciplinary artist of Brazilian and Honduran descent. She moves through the fields of dance, performance, photography and the audiovisual. Her research has the body as its primary material, and is based on the relationships between movement, spirituality, identity and nature. Her research of the solo dance When the waters have grown above the belly of the earth, supported by the residency program of the Choreographic Center of Rio de Janeiro, was performed at several independent cultural centers, between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Dora’s performances and audiovisual works have been part of exhibitions at EAV Parque Lage, Solar dos Abacaxis, Marina da Glória, and Centro Cultural Municipal Hélio Oiticica. She is the creator of Viva Pelve, a research platform focused on the pelvis, its movements, mysteries, power and healing. This project involves workshops, artistic processes, sound research and content creation. Dora is an EmergeNYC alumna.

Quintín Rivera Toro

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles: Quintín, I recall meeting you at Transart Institute many summers ago, in Berlin, in one of the upcycled industrial buildings in town. I can feel the cool breeze of the summer there and the joy that it was for me to be in Berlin then. What have been transpiring for you since that time?

Quintín Rivera Toro: Querido Nicolás…what a wonderful way to begin this process, recalling this amazing past, making me live it twice, thank you. I have transpired so much. I transpire right now as I write. Since the Summer of 2010 I have matured into an old young man; I have become a “doctor” in art matters and have been sober for a few years now. I am a proud father of a future declonializing revolutionary name Violeta and I make it my purpose in life to stand strong against all forms of oppression which I can affect, through art mainly, but also through teaching and being.

NDEREO: Puerto Rico has been central to your praxis as a creative. It has been key to me, perhaps in a less direct way, but still. While living in New York City for 30 plus years, Nuyoricans, New-York Ricans and other combinations of Ricans has kindly mentored me, guided me and open doors for me. I am grateful. I am wondering if there are strong traditions in your cultures about mentoring, community engagements, and supporting one another? I do not mean to generalize and yet some cultures can be more individualistic-oriented than others. 

QRT: I love the question about mentorship. As a young poet (artist) I looked eagerly for one. I couldn’t find any. I guess I was enamored by the idea of becoming someone's apprentice, but it seems such practices were displaced by capitalistic thought. All I could find were jobs, where the successful artists would stand in as a proxy. Nevertheless, I have found countless professors, such as yourself, who for short periods of time, usually a semester, would serve as guides and inspiration. I remember writing in an opinion column that mentors were figures of a distant past now, and that we should give up on finding them. It seems I followed my own advice. On the other hand, I have never mentored anyone myself, so there, I guess it's an even score, even if a somewhat sad fact. Puerto Rico continues to be a central aspect of my praxis, because there is a perennial urgency here. We live under many forms of oppression in this country and it is very confusing how to resolve it. In the meantime, we make art about it, we hold the torch and our faith until the revolution is irresistible.

NDEREO: A subject that is rarely touched, I feel, in conversations about Puerto Rico is that of racism. I experienced some of this in the Island. People would think that I was Puerto Rican, because many of them correlated Dominicans with dark skin. Those who saw me as Puerto Rican thought that I should be grateful not to be associated with Dominicans. I was enraged by this. 

QRT: It is a very interesting experience you relate here, one that perhaps I could relate to in some ways. Having been born into as many privileges as there seem to exist (being born into a white body, constructed and happy with my heterosexuality, continuously educated; and being the son of a poor man who became the perfect example of a wealthy, workaholic, baby boomer), I can’t really say I have been the target of racism at all. Nevertheless, my grandmother is a dark-skinned Dominican born person, African heritage manifests directly  in my genetic pool of family members, etc.; yet I was born white. I therefore relate ideologically with gender and race justice, but can’t really feel the ownership of such fights. I have recently learned that my place as an ally is to quietly stand to the side and allow for my sisters and brothers and chosen families to be supported through the best of my intentions, through my artistic, social and political work.

NDEREO: Internally, a Black Puerto Rican friend of mine is usually stopped at the San Juan airport. They think she is a Dominican trying to enter the Island with false documents. You and I have light skin, and have derived privileges from that, and we both know that we are a minority in our adored Caribbean. How would you say is Blackness and its tremendous contributions to who we are as Caribeñes being given the space it deserves in Puerto Rican society? 

QRT: This is a very complex question, and it feels that in the year 2023, most non-white individuals would object to my slightest opinion; nevertheless I do have a point of view, perhaps many. The answer is, generally speaking: not yet. I will answer that within myself, I give the African heritage that manifests in my body, in my culture (dance and music), in my history, in my friends and family, a place of utmost urgency, for it to be corrected and compensated; and it feels like a point of inflection. I believe things are changing and that the artworld has a lot to do with this. The conscientious effort to support the black, brown, latino, LGBTTQIA+, et al, communities through art prizes, fellowships, residencies, etc. has reshaped the landscape. I am aware of this in many ways and it feels correct. Alabanza a las manos que trabajan la nueva patria, wrote Juan Antonio Corretjer.

NDEREO: I know that can talk with you with an open and honest heart. No decorations. How does it feel somatically to be part of a colony? Dominican Republic, unlike Puerto Rico is a seemingly independent country, and it still operates under the U.S. Colonial shadow and Europe’s new neocolonial rule. Do you have any practices for engaging in decolonization at a spiritual level?

QRT:  No one had ever asked me this question, thank you. Somatically, it feels embarrassing. I feel like a loser, like I lost, we lost, we continue to lose. It feels depressing and it lowers my existential self-esteem. The general historic and political discourse, and my mind tell me, that I come from a small country, with lost efforts for independence and that anyone can walk all over our political struggle with the entitlement of an idiotic bully. I have lived it so many times: “oh, but you are not even a country.” I make it my life’s purpose to decolonize Borikén. It is my existential commitment to myself, my daughter and my history. Spirituality is something I have only been really close to either during hardship and  through art making to a lesser extent. Yet as I become older, I realize the need for a spiritual dimension in my life, so I guess I’ll say…coming soon. If currently, decolonizing my brain from false ideas about our own history is a main priority, decolonizing my heart and spirit will certainly follow.

NDEREO: I think of so many Caribbean comrades and of a Caribbean solidarity movement, at least within the creative field. Jean Ulrick Desért has generated a Creative Caribbean Community and Diaspora passport. The Salon has a copy of it in its archive. So complex. I mean the Caribbean, with all of its colonial connections and the severing(s) to be made. Where are you in this conversation about Caribeñidad? 

QRT: I have a basic argument regarding the fundamental processes for the unification of the Caribbean thought and efforts. First, there is language. All of the Caribbean speaks in different languages due to the cruel reality of having been colonized by the French, English, Danish, Spanish and, more recently, north american exploiters. Therefore, in a general, basic sense, we can’t communicate. Forget Babel, look at the Caribbean. Second, as romantic as it all may sound to develop a solidarity movement, for this, people need to meet, congregate, exchange and commerce together. Our air ways and water ways are completely restricted by the military powers that be. We cannot visit our own fellow islanders freely, we cannot commerce freely we are neoliberal slaves to north american capitalist interests. A sad and harsh truth. The place where the conversation ends and we drink up to forget.

NDEREO: Tell me about your work about revolution? 

QRT: Thank you, Nicolás, for asking me this. It is probably ask bold and rebellious a work as I have ever made. The New International Antillian Declaration, as I would translate its long name, is a monologue that has been written and rewritten with each presentation over the last 8 years, and which I will read aloud any time it is welcomed. It tells the fictitious story of an Antillean Military Force of 3.5 million recruits that attacks Manhattan, tomorrow morning at 0400 hours. It explains in painstaking detail its plans and strategies, pretending as if in fact the Caribbean had the same overwhelming military strike power as the north american military forces. Evey few paragraphs I emphatically state: “Just remember, this is theater”. This performance has many different intentions, anything from underlying the irony of the oppressed becoming the oppressor, to the idea that we could dream of being an independent, self-respecting republic, like most countries. I have had reactions from grown persons cry intensely on my shoulder afterwards, to others flat out cancel me out. I have come to understand with time that I am a very polarizing type of artist and have had to make peace with that.

NDEREO: Can you update me as to what is happening in Puerto Rico now? My image of the island is outdated. I hear about organic gardens, community associations, new economies, and more.

QRT: This is such a vast question that I would love to answer in detail, but alas, I will pick one subject. “Las playas son del pueblo.” The beaches belong to the people. As corruption has become visible in every aspect of social life on the Island, the arbitrary closing and sectioning of the public land has become our collective ideological battleground. It used to be the University of Puerto Rico; we had a glorious memento during the Summer of 2019 have impeached our corrupt governor; but now, we are fighting for a symbolic identitarian piece of land. The beach defines islander life, the idea of freedom, nature as god and now, a very concrete fight against the “cartels” that exist in our government: with the expediting of illegal construction permits; the impoverishment of local, real estate owners to then have banks foreclose and sell on the cheap to external capital and greedy developers; and a new law that invited billionaires to come and buy everything up and pay cero property taxes to us. It is insult over injury, times 525 years of systematic oppression. 

NDEREO: There is such a gap between those who left and those who stayed. I remember how Puerto Ricans who left the island were looked down by those who stayed at home. The same happens with Dominicans. Dominican Yorks are still seen as lesser, lower culture, not refined enough, as something to be dealt with from a distance…and we keep our portion of the Island going with perhaps the biggest amount of money the nation receives. We send that money from New York and Europe, and that keeps the economy in Dominican Republic afloat. Is anything changing as to how Nuyoricans and New-York Ricans are seen and treated in the Island.

QRT: I wonder how many parallels DR and PR have in common, supporting the islands financially is certainly one of them. Nevertheless I do believe that humans have intrinsically a full gamut of emotions that range vastly from supportive to resentful and back. Each place of site comes with its own complexities. Having lived over a decade of my youth in north america, I feel I could attest to this gamut. One must not forget that each experience is real for whom is living it, and that, as they say, the grass is always greener. When abroad, we miss our roots, feel some sort of guilt and longing (some of what provides for excellent art making), when we consider who left, we see the better quality of life (employment, infrastructure, access to education, etc.) I cannot explain how everchanging these feelings are while we contemplate life’s uncertainties. I will say that it is never simple and that I feel we should continue to turn these conversations into the written word and ponder upon them. As long as economic systems oppress people, we will be divided and fight for crumbs under the table.

NDEREO: How would you say can we start breaking away with colonial and imperial modes of being that prevent us from connecting through the Caribbean? Dominicans are seen as lesser in Puerto Rico, although our economy is outpacing that of Puerto Rico and propelling the Island to become the most important center of commerce and tourism in the entire Caribbean region. Dominicans treat Haitians as lesser, generally speaking. Then there is the English and French speaking Caribbean, eons away from the Cuban, Dominican, Haitian, and Puerto Rican realities. How do we start to connect? Can creativity serve as a link?

QRT: Honestly, I believe that as long as political, military and economic oppression is the system we exist in, it is unrealistic to expect any other behavior from its inhabitants. We do resist, communicate and make a constant effort of allowing self perspective to inform our decisions, but it is not a simple task as we are in it. The prejudice towards Dominicans is shameful and I personally apologize for this. It is being phased out as long as political correctness and social equality continues to be a top humanistic priority. DR outpaced us many decades ago, this is true. Some Dominicans do have a prejudice towards Haitians and this should be re-examined. Regarding the idea of connectivity, I again say, in the beginning there is language. Being pluri-lingual is an enormous disadvantage. As poetic as it could be in other ways, being able to communicate is fundamental. I guess English is an internationally chosen language, so there is a starting point. Then there are non verbal languages, such as visual art, dance and music. Meetings for creatives such as biennials and such are of important relevance, but they do not constitute active economic, political or military agents for change. As creatives, we do our part to maintain a historic discourse present and alive, but we need less poetry and more economic shifting. Our political status will change once we stop being north america’s client and become a vendor to them.

NDEREO: I know this conversation has extended itself. So much to unravel with you. How is it to be a single father raising a daughter and co-creating with the universe? What are your challenges and blessings in this regard?

QRT: It is my pleasure to be considered, especially during these times. I feel blessed to be a single father raising a daughter. Having shared custody allows for me to have half of the year to invest in my art production in a concentrated and meaningful way. Then I come back to “real life” and allow myself to ponder on questions and actions such as: Am I raising a person that will reflect values of change and social progress? Am I being a good role model for her, allowing for conditions of a healthy self-esteem and self-realization? Either way, I do my best. I make mistakes and start again. I have a wanderlust for life. I am grateful for this. 

NDEREO: I thank you again and my blessings to Puerto Rico and its peoples. You have been here for me. May the Island be safe and protected. 

QRT: I am grateful for you, Nicolás. Abrazos siempre.

 All images above courtesy of Quintín Rivera Toro

Quintin Rivera Toro / links to work and publications: Website / Instagram

Quintín Rivera Toro is a conceptual artist born in Caguas, Puerto Rico in 1978. He holds a B.F.A. in Sculpture from Hunter College, New York (2001); B.A. in Communications and Film Studies, from the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras (2007); and an M.F.A. in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island (2013). He has a Ph.D. in Art Production and Investigation with the Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia in Spain (2019). He has been awarded the German DAAD travel grant; A full fellowship for the Vermont Studio Center, in Johnson, Vermont; A studies grant from the National Academy of Design in New York City; He has been an artist in residence at the Ox Bow School of Art, S.A.I.C., in Saugatuck, Michigan; An intern at the Chinati Museum in Marfa, Texas; He was awarded an Achievement Scholarship from the Transart Institute in Berlin, Germany; An Individual Artist Grant as well as a New Genres Fellowship from the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts. From 2017-2019 he has was selected as the artist in residence at the Universidad Ana G. Méndez, in Gurabo, Puerto Rico. He was awarded the Puerto Rico Fellowship for the MASS MoCA studio program. Recently, the Bassat Collection Museum in Barcelona, Spain acquired his art work; and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts has awarded him a full fellowship for an upcoming residency.

María José Contreras

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles: María José, I am grateful that Dermis León put us in touch. When you and I met at Leslie Lohman Museum of Art I immediately felt a connection and I knew that I could open up with you and that we could talk performance art from the heart.

María José Contreras: The connection was mutual! We had a profound conversation about the power of performance and, in particular, the impact of the exhibit INDECENCIA that you curated. I am glad to continue our conversation, thank you for having me.

NDEREO: Can you tell me about Talk to the Future, the performance that you presented at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City? Can you tell me about it beyond what I can read or find about this performance online? I am curious as to the essence of this action from a personal perspective.

MJC: Talk to the Future is the product of a close collaboration with the participants of the Zip Code Memory Project, a project that seeks to find artistic and community-based ways to memorialize the devastating losses resulting from the coronavirus pandemic while also acknowledging its radical differential effects on Upper New York City neighborhoods. I was invited as a performance artist to facilitate a workshop in the context of the project and to devise a performance work. The workshop I proposed, entitled Aquí/Here, invited participants to reflect about their personal and collective experience of the pandemic.

Based in embodied collective practices Aqui/Here offered a ludic yet profound way to connect with the losses of the pandemic while also visualizing the disparity of its effects. One of the core exercises was building body maps: each participant drew their own silhouette on a big piece of paper and then wrote, scribbled and drew their feelings and memories, identifying a specific part of the body where they felt that memory. The exercise was very moving, one participant drew the pain that the death of a friend caused in her chest, while another drew their community supporting them as bricks under their feet. Memories associated with the first months of quarantine appeared in a body map as a box over the head an in another as chains compressing the limbs. Body maps are a great methodology for externalizing difficult memories and sharing them through non-verbal means with others. We spent time sharing the impressions of our body maps and working through embodied practices. This was the first time many of us had time to connect with the experience of the pandemic and to share it with others.

We also worked on tracing maps of the participant’s neighborhoods with personal memories: what was your walking trajectory when you walked your dog during quarantine? Where did you see the freezer trucks used as makeshift morgues the first time? What was your deceased mother’s favorite bench in the park? Each participant traced their personal trajectories over the city map, and then we took time to listen to our stories. Many commonalities became evident, and at the same time, we realized how unique the experience of the pandemic was for each one of us. It also became pretty evident how the pandemic revealed and exacerbated the pre-existing inequalities. In our conversations the wide disparities by race, class, ethnicity, and place of residence became painful and tangible realities.

I conceived Talk to the Future as a reaction to everything I learned while facilitating these workshops. I was moved by the pervasive feeling of isolation but also by the networks of solidarity that were activated during the pandemic. We are all still pretty much processing the cascading traumatic effects of the pandemic, so I wanted to offer the conditions for a caring and careful connection for processing together. A safe space, separated from our daily vicissitudes to slow down and resonate together. Recalling the first months of the pandemic back in 2020 when people starting building walls made of plastic to hug their loved ones and reduce the risk of infection, I thought of a plastic wall. This time not between us, but between us and the frenzy of our daily lives. I recalled a conversation with one workshop participant who told me she didn’t know how she’d explain to her granddaughter the magnitude of our failure as society, “how we decided that some lives were disposable.” That’s when the idea of the time capsule hit me. Instead of asking participants about their memories of the pandemic (as we did in the workshop), I wanted to convey a future with them. When participants come into the time capsule, this transparent bubble, I ask them: “What do you want future generations to know about Covid in NYC?” The question is always surprising and unexpected. We haven’t had time to process what happened, let alone imagine a future together. In the time capsule I practice active listening. I am present with all my senses, trying to resonate with all my body with my visitor’s mood, words, visions and imaginations. When they leave the time capsule, I write down verbatim their words in the bubble. The time capsule was transparent the first day, but every day I perform, every hour I spend in the bubble I write more and more re-imaginations of the future. This is a durational performance. The number of deaths in New York by April 23rd 2022, the first day I performed Talk to the Future, was 68208. I converted that to seconds so I performed one second for each Covid victim, amounting for 19 hours. The time capsule was placed inside and outside the Cathedral of Saint John’s the Divine. I also performed Talk to the Future in Montreal in November 7 through November 11. The next performance will be on February 17th at the Museum of the City of New York. I plan to continue performing and filling the time capsule with the words of the participants. I imagine many years from now, someone will take a look at the time capsule, will read this 3D archive and somehow get a feeling of how we lived through this critical time.

NDEREO: I have worked with children for decades and I was very moved when I saw the documentation of one child talking with you in the pod that you created–while a child outside the pod looked from a distance as to what was happening inside. My immediate reaction was: what kind of future, if any, am I leaving to these children? What do those who talk with you as part of your performance envision beyond the mess in which we are all in?

MJC: Talk to the Future, as the title says, is exactly about that: imagining together what future we are leaving to next generations. Who are we doing the performance for: is it for the participants that come in the time capsule? Is it for me? Is it perhaps for the children in the photo? Or maybe for a futurist multispecies assembly of beings that will read our words as hieroglyphs?

I imagine that the most important spectators of Talk to the Future are future generations, maybe those that are not even born yet.  Talk to the Future somehow twists the linearity of time. I fantasize with someone finding the time capsule 100, 200 years in the future.

An older lady came inside and told me that she had lived during the hippie revolution and that she had been an optimist all her life, but that after seeing how people reacted to the pandemic, not caring, not being able to wear a mask to protect those that are more vulnerable, she was, for the first time in her life, pessimist about the world her grandsons would inherit. She cried. And I cried with her.

Another person told me that the only thing she would say to future generations was, “don’t judge us, we did the best we could.” The futures imagined are as multiple as the people that have participated in the performance.

Coming back to the photo you are mentioning. Several children come in the bubble. I listened with amusement to their thoughts. One that was particularly striking was a young boy who looking directly into my eyes said: “future generations will be lucky if they still exist”.

NDEREO: It is clear to me how Covid has revealed systemic oppression and exploitation. This applies to the institution in general and to the work that needs to be done from within. I admire the legacies of people like Angela Davis, Marcella-Althaus Reid, Robin D. G. Kelly, and bell hooks because they have made sure to talk to about class. I find that missing within the arts, including museums and galleries where conversations on race, gender and sexuality do not address issues of class. Did any of this surface in your conversations with people during Talk to the Future?

MJC: Coming from a Latin American country as Chile where class, more than any other factor, determines the opportunities you will have, the education you will get and the health care you will access, I can’t avoid but thinking in terms of the oppressive system of classes. When I first came to the U.S. I was surprised that this didn’t seem an issue that received so much attention. Of course, oppressive systems are always intersectional, but I agree with you that issues of class are usually missing in the arts here in the North.

The Cathedral of Saint John the dDvine is a very interesting place in NYC. Many different people come inside the Cathedral: tourists, religious folks, LGTBQ+ communities and students. But there’s another population that comes to the Cathedral but not necessarily come inside. Every Sunday there’s a pantry line that provides food to people in need, the Catheral also has a clothing closet that provides clothing for people returning to the workforce. I wanted to listen to this community too. So somedays I placed the bubble inside the Cathedral, or in its front steps but I also placed it at the Sunday pantry line. The worries and memories of those that are marginalized from society are completely different from the stories I heard from those who came inside the Cathedral. The fear of not having food to eat, of seeing their friends die in the streets, of not knowing how their estranged family members were doing. Many told me that their hope for future generations was that no one suffered from hunger.

Working in non-institutional settings, in the streets, and particularly in vulnerable communities is a priority for me. In my work I try hard (and not always succeed) in not reproducing systemic systems of power and reaching out to those that take the worst part of our unjust society.

NDEREO: Chile has been such an epicenter for performance art–well, Latin America has been a cauldron of performance and action-based work. During our meeting at Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, I spoke about the imperative need for performance art to remain fugitive. I remember you nodded your head as if assenting. Any comments about this?

MJC: As you mentioned in our conversation, performance art is an ephemeral practice that resists its commodification. And I agree. Performance art may leave traces, may be documented but it is hardly exchangeable as a good, or an “artwork”. Of course, late capitalism has been very effective in cannibalizing whatever resists to join the neoliberal game and performance art is not an exception. Performance art has sometimes been whitewashed to fit in museums and galleries, or to fit in university curriculums. I believe there’s space for all types of performance and that each artist or creator needs to understand where and how they want to operate withing the system.  For me, the beauty of performance art is in the street, the direct contact with participants, the possibility to resonate, even just for a moment, with someone you don’t know. Most of my work occurs in the streets and looks to encounter other people. I have also performed in institutionalized contexts, but the heart of my creative practice is in the streets.

NDEREO: I am trying to keep this conversation brief, as I know that everyone needs time to recover from the pandemic and to nurture life from within, yet there is so much I would like to ask. I am wondering what moves you when it comes to performance art? I have a soft spot for the Latin American generation of the 1980s and 1990s when the arts were not quite yet such a capitalist industry. I am listening.

MJC: I come from theatre. I have worked as an actor and director for many, many years. I still sometimes work devising theatre pieces. I came to performance art because I started to feel the need to reach out to audiences that are not theatre spectators. One crucial moment was in 2011 during the huge student protests in Chile that demanded a radical overhaul of the neoliberal education system. Our current president, Gabriel Boric, was one of the leaders of the movement at that time. I was teaching at the University and the students refused to go to class in adherence students’ movement’s demands. One week before the final exams date, students decided to come back to class. The university leadership told the faculty that we had to keep the same final examinations dates, and the same “assessments standards and criteria.” I was shocked! The movement was like a tectonic shift in the national political scenario and they were asking us to continue as if nothing had happened? I was teaching a movement course at the School of Theatre. I sat with my students and told them, “we will decide together what our exam will be about, and what our assessment rubric will measure.” I asked, “what’s important for you now? What are the urgencies of this time? How does a course as movement for actors serve and address the issues that compel you? After a couple of days of fruitful discussions, we decided to do a 24-hour performance in one of the main squares in Santiago. We invited 24 teachers to come to the square and teach us something for 45 minutes. After the “class” students would translate what they learned into movement and improvised choreographies. Our list of teachers included the most disparate persons: a teacher of Mapudungun the language of the Mapuche Indigenous People in Chile, an older lady that taught us how to make a cake without an oven, a dissident woman that taught us how to kiss. We stayed in the square welcoming our teachers and then translating what we learned into movement. Passers-by joined our classes and then watched our embodied translations.

Thanks to my students, I learned the power of performance in the public space. I became addicted to reaching audiences that would never come to see a theatre play. I became addicted to the feeling of connection with people that you don’t know. I became addicted to the political impact of performance in the public space. An impact that may be subtle, minor, and yet so so powerful.

NDEREO: Can art be imagined/reimagined outside the capitalist model? Can performance art escape the tentacles of the art machine that co-opts and commodifies everything it can? I dream of networks of care among creatives. I dream of networks of support and love in the arts.

MJC: I think networks of care among creatives already exist. Maybe not as extended as we’d like, but I do feel that there are networks of solidarity and mutual care. Being together with other creatives and collaborating is one of the things that matters the most to me. A great example of a caring network was the work of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU. As you well know, there was a tight family of “hemisexuals” that collaborated transnationally in creative, joyful, and fruitful ways. The experience of the Encuentros was crucial in my understanding of transnational collaboration and in building kinship with other activists, artists and scholars. So many beautiful and powerful things were born in that Encuentros. I speak in past tense because I’m not sure what the plan of the new leadership is. I hope we can re-activate those amazing networks.  

To me, performance art is an incredible way to be together in a caring and careful environment. And this is revolutionary. As you say, the art machine co-opts and commodifies everything it can, but I’ve found in performance practices an effective antidote for that. Performance also allows us to infiltrate in institutional settings and subvert from the inside the hegemonic oppressive systems that are usually in place in these contexts. In my work as a Professor at the University in Chile and now in the U.S., performance is my favorite tool to mobilize critical thinking, feminist pedagogies and embodied knowledge.

NDEREO: Thank you for this conversation. Anything that you would like to say, please go ahead.

MJC: Thank you for this amazing opportunity. I hope we can continue our conversations!

María José Contreras is a Chilean multidisciplinary artist/scholar working in the international field of theatre and performance. She is Associate Professor at Columbia University. Her creative practice and scholarship aim to transform civic and academic spaces and collective imaginaries. Her engagement with decolonizing theatre-making, teaching, and research practice is recognized in The Twenty-First Century Performance Reader (London, Routledge, 2020), an international volume featuring the 73 leading global artists working with innovative approaches to performance. Contreras’s devised theatre pieces, urban interventions, and performances have been presented in important venues and festivals in the US, Italy, Ukraine, Chile, Argentina, Canada, France and Brazil. In addition to numerous articles published in several languages, she recently co-edited two interdisciplinary volumes Cadáver exquisito: tres experiencias de investigación performativa en Chile (Oso Liebre, 2020) and Women Mobilizing Memory (Columbia University Press, 2019). She is currently working on her manuscript Rigorously undisciplined: decolonial approaches to performance research.

All images above courtesy of María José Contreras

María José Contreras / links to work and publications: Website

Contreras, Maria José (2020). "The body of memory: Maria José Contreras performance practices in the Chilean Transition". En Brayshaw, T.; Fennemore, A.; Witts, N. The The Twenty-First Century Performance Reader.  London: Routledge, pp. 131-141. To access this piece click HERE

Contreras, Maria José (2019).  “Aquí. Performing mapping practices in Santiago de Chile” en Altinay, A.; Contreras, MJ.; Hirsch, M.; Howard, J.; Karaca, B.; Solomon, A. (eds.) Women Mobilizing Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 152-171. To access this piece click HERE

2017. “A woman artist in Chilean Neoliberal Jungle” en Amich, C., Varney, D. & Diamond, E. Performance, Feminism and Affect in Neoliberal Times. Londres. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 239-251. To access this piece click HERE

Ruth Montiel Arias

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Ovalles: Ruth, you participated in the video screening which Andrés Senra and I organized for BAAD! as part of Andrés’s Fellowship at The Interior Beauty Salon. The title of the program was We were Never Human. Visiting your online archive, I see that one of your projects deals with concept of “humanity” in relationship to gold. Can you talk about this? 

Ruth Montiel Arias: The project you are referring to is Sin oro no hay hombre (Without Gold there is no Man), which I carried out between South Africa and Perú, one the cradle of humanity and the other the cradle of gold. In it I focus on the definition of "humanity" that is linked to the evolution of the species itself, and how this generates a change in behavior. “Humans” discover gold and decide to use it as the material that would support the global economic foundations, and with it the plunder, torture and destruction of people and territories that harbor this metal. South Africa is the area called the Cradle of Humanity, since there is where the first adult Australopithecus was found in 1936. Without Gold there is no Man begins here, since this area is full of mines that have been originally excavated to search for gold, not for archaeological or anthropological purposes. This came later in a process that led to finding the origins of humanity. My project shows the dark perspective as well as the other side; the people who are wise, generous, empathetic and connected to nature. Such is the case of the women I met in Perú and South Africa during the development of the project, who demonstrate our capacity for change and hope through their struggle.

NDERO: I admit that your photographs of people with cats caught my attention…and more than my attention, they spoke to my heart. Although I do not have a way to prove it, I feel that I have been a cat before. Can we include some of your images of “humans” sitting with their adored felines and can you tell me about the narratives behind these visuals?

RMA: It is an honor that these photographs touched your heart and I am very happy about it. I collaborate with a Cat Shelter when I am in my town and I see first-hand how volunteers work hard to rescue, cure and care for the animals that come into their hands. They not only put all their time and energy, but also financial and material resources. They mourn every loss and celebrate every life they have been able to save with all the humility that characterizes anonymous people in any town.

I started photographing rescued cats so that the organization helping them could put them on their social networks and find families for them, but over time I wanted to pay a small tribute to these people who care about the ones that hardly anyone looks at. This is how Callejeras was born, a small series of portraits of volunteers with rescued cats, who have become part of their families and the stories that accompany them. The beauty of this work is that the animals portrayed have a happy ending, which is not very common in my work.

NDERO: I gave up meat more than a decade ago. I was teaching a class on food and eating at Transart Institute in Berlin, Germany, and through the research I was doing learned about the atrocities inflicted upon non-human animals for the purpose of generating meat. I still eat fish, and my intention is to pull this out of my diet. The fish industry is as atrocious as the cattle, poultry and pork ones. I find it difficult to start a conversation with the purpose of having people see the outcomes of the choices we make regarding what and who we eat. Any words of wisdom as to how to generate a dialogue about this topic that does not create more polarization than the one our societies are currently facing?

RMA: What a difficult question, Nicolás. The basic problem is who is the person receiving the message and how is the message received. In my humble opinion, I think it is important to know how to detect if that person is really interested in knowing about it or, on the contrary, it can make them feel bad. It is also interesting to know what materials interest them the most, that is, sharing tools that we know or intuit may matter to them, whether through cinema, music, literature, art, philosophy, etc. Fortunately, more and more, anti-speciesism is in many of the fields in which the human being are developing. I also see it as equallly important to have patience and be willing to answer questions that, in most cases, we have answered many times.

NDERO: I am fully aware of the “human” suffering involved in food production. There are the mostly undocumented farm workers in the U.S. (and in other countries) who are exploited for the purpose of producing what we eat. There are also the small and independent farmers who have depleted the soil seeking to keep themselves afloat. In some conversations I have had I have heard people discount the suffering of non-human animals as they compare what some “humans” go through in the food business. I personally believe that the suffering of the two, human and non-human animals, is interconnected–intrinsically weaved together. Have you approached this in any of your projects?

RMA: This is a topic that I haven't worked on yet, since right now my focus is more on non-human animals. However, it is a reality that I know. In Spain the same thing happens in many slaughterhouses, hellish places where humans are exploited and animals are killed. Many of the workers in these places are migrants in conditions of exploitation or semi-slavery. In these cases, we must be inclusive in the struggles and fight for the rights of animals as well as for human rights. In these cases, speciesism, racism, sexism, classism and abuse of power are separated. How can we not fight against that in a transversal way? There are other areas of animal exploitation for food, such as some farms or production chains where workers are more protected under labor agreements since unions, at least in Spain, continue to have some presence. In these cases, animal suffering prevails over human suffering. I enclose an article (in Spanish) that speaks precisely about human exploitation in slaughterhouses, I think it is very necessary to read it : Miedo, accidentes laborales y racismo, la dura realidad del trabajo en los mataderos españoles.

NDERO: It is taking me longer than expected to align my ethics to the work that I do and the works that I curate. Many performance art pieces have traditionally been inspired by rituals. I have found myself dealing with the dilemma of not wanting to impose my ethics on others and, at the same time, not wanting to perpetuate more suffering. There are performances and other artworks which utilize fur, feathers, blood, and even live animals. Perhaps it is a matter of kindling awareness and letting others decide. What are some of the ethical issues you have had to deal with as a creative?

RMA: The biggest ethical problem that I have had to deal with in my work is treating the animal with the greatest dignity possible, especially in photographic documentation works that show the exploitation to which they are subjected. In the field of photojournalism or photodocumentary, as with humans, we have to put our moral values ​​before continuing to perpetuate what we reject and we can see this very well in photographic works linked to armed or migratory conflicts where the majority of photographers continue perpetuating a photographic language that does not consider the dignity of those people photographed. I know that it is an eternal and difficult debate, but I believe that we must change the codes and build new stories that move away from what continues to perpetuate what the system wants. Returning to animals, today we should ask ourselves if there is another possible way, without having to use any animal, to represent everything we want. Those of us who work in the artistic field have all the necessary tools to avoid using anything that comes from animal exploitation.

NDERO: I totally agree with you that, as an artist, I have the tools that I need to avoid using non-human animal elements in my work. Talking about non-human animals and the current climate disaster, during the Covid pandemic, many of those in New York City with second homes and financial resources fled the place and came back after nurses, supermarkets cashiers, bus drives and Others deemed as essential workers did the “dirty” work: nourished the living, tended to the sick and buried the dead. What would you say might be the future of cities in a planet facing the ecological mess we “humans” have set in motion? 

RMA: I believe that cities, as they are structured today, are the worst place to face any ecological crisis and, as you indicate, those who suffer the most are people with fewer resources. Cities are the nuclei of overflowing consumerism and therefore the spaces that more people demand in order to make the economic wheel work. Rural areas that are exploited ad nauseam are uninhabited, making them uninhabitable due to the contamination of their waters due to fertilizers from the agricultural industry or the excrement of animals in livestock exploitation. I also believe that these dynamics are generated to make the working and poor class–more so in cities, as you say–to do the "dirty" work that the upper class is not going to do; but it is also a way of hooking the less favored classes, thus making them dependent and thus continue to feed capitalism, which in the end is the essence of most of the problems of humanity and therefore of the planet. Cultural critic Fredric Jameson said that "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." Well, it is up to us to change this paradigm and imagine the end of capitalism so that the beginning of a fairer world, whether in cities or in towns, can one day become a reality.

NDERO: In this conversation I have been critical of us “human.” I would like to balance our exchange because there are many of us envisioning new ways of being that are more harmonious with our planet. How would you say can the arts and artists can be part of this balancing wave?

RMA: We artists also have to stop looking at our navel to attend to everything that surrounds us and learn from those people who, as you say, are more in harmony with the planet: from a peasant from Upper Perú, to a doctor in Ethiopia, from a 20-year-old Iranian woman to an older Palestinian, from a Native American in southern Canada to an African American in Spain. We are not something special and different from others, we are exactly the same, only that we express ourselves with other tools linked to the field of the arts.

NDERO: Can the overwhelming emphasis that the art industry (aka art world) puts into production, fame, ego-worship, branding… be transformed by a cadre of creatives envisioning more communal ways of working? Any ideas as to how a more compassionate art in the service of the common good can become possible? 

RMA: I have no hope when it comes to the art industry precisely because it is another industry greased within a neoliberal system that gives money to a few while many live in a very precarious way. In the case of art, as you point out, the currency of payment is the ego, even if it keeps our stomachs quite empty. I believe that art itself has no obligation to be one thing or another for society. In any case, it would be the artists who, if they wish, can use the tools and codes of art for a common good. There are many artists who use their work to think of transmitting something good to society. However, it is strange to see such artists within the system. When the circuits of the artistic system make room for a work or an artist of these characteristics, the message it transmits is deactivated and domesticated, so it will serve little for the common good. So it's time to look at dissidence or at the independent circuit to find a more committed art. Although it may be that, from time to time, something slips.

NDERO: What can creatives learn from non-human animals? 

RMA: I believe that everyone can learn, whether we are creative people or not, and I would tell you that the first thing would be to stop and breathe. I feel that we already know many things that animals know, the only thing is that we have lost almost all that learning, so we have to observe them to reconnect. What I can tell you is what I learn when I stop and start observing an animal. I feel that it casts a spell on me so that in some way I realize that they are there and that they are just as or more necessary than us. With animals I experience freedom and the privilege of having someone stop and give me a little of their time or attention. I can see in them a liberation from the mundane ties that we humans have to material things. In the case of animals that are part of human families and therefore are treated with respect, affection and protection, I admire their magnetism and the tranquility with which they navigate life. But I also come across many animals in situations of exploitation and suffering, and from them I learn how important and necessary it is to fight to abolish the injustice to which they are subjected.

NDERO: As I mentioned before, I have been a cat. What about you?

RMA: I don't think I have been just one animal, rather I think I have been a bit of many.

NDERO: Thank you for what you do to bring awareness to the conditions that create so much unnecessary suffering for non-human animals. Any last words?

RMA: First of all, thank you for this interview, it's one of the best I've had in a long time. I hope I have lived up to it despite being a sparing person in words. I want to congratulate you for the space you have created with The Interior Beauty Salon and the community that you are forming around it, spaces like yours are very necessary in these turbulent times we are experiencing. And I wanted to close by saying that another world is possible if we really believe in it and work to make it a reality, although we probably don't see it, but we can leave the land plowed and planted so that those who come after us can water it.

NDERO: Thank you so much, Ruth, for your kind words. I hope to meet in person soon to talk some more about what you do and to sit in your presence. In the meantime, The Salon’s doors are open to you.

RMA: If all goes well maybe we can talk in person, as I have a trip scheduled to New York in 2024. It will be a real pleasure to spend time with you and visit The Interior Beauty Salon. I send you a big hug and a million thanks.

Ruth Montiel Arias, Palmeira (A Coruña - Spain), 1977 / Ruth graduated in Applied Arts from the Pablo Picasso High School of Arts in A Coruña. She completed a Master of Corporate Identity at Pompeu Fabra UPF University in Barcelona (2005-06), and the Master of Photography EFTI in Madrid (2010).  Her projects investigate the human relationship with the natural territory, and its derived conflicts of domination and animal, social and environmental oppression. Her photographs have been shown and published in different national and international media and newspapers, as well as in specialized publications. She is the author of BESTIAE, (self-published, 2020) and El 2% , published in 2021.  Ruth’s work has been exhibited in cultural institutions such as the Centro Cultural de España, Lima; Landkreis Galerie, Germany; Museo de la Memoria, Argentina; La Casa Encendida, National Chalcography, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Conde Duque Cultural Center, and Matadero, Madrid; Cristina Enea Foundazioa, Donostia; and Cidade da Cultura, Santiago de Compostela. She has also exhibited in galleries in Madrid, such as Galería Zero, Galería Liebre, La New Gallery, and Noestudio. Ruth has exhibited as well at international galleries such as Galería Moproo, Shanghai; and Galería Ruby, Buenos Aires. Ruth’s work has been awarded numerous grants and residences, including the best photo essay lifestyle at the Ottawa International Vegan Film Festival (2019), and a VEGAP Creation Grant (2017). She was a finalist for Fotopress La Caixa (2015). 

All images above courtesy of Ruth Montiel Arias

Ruth Montiel Arias / Related links: Website / IG / Vimeo / YouTube / Twitter / Contact

Priscilla Marrero

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo: Ooooohhhhhh! Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh! This is my response to pausing to talk about dance and movement after the year I/we have had. What are you dancing with at the moment? With what feelings and emotions are you moving with at the present?

Priscilla Marrero: ¡LA PELVIS! I’ve been taking this time to research my pelvis. Our pelvises. The missing pelvis/pelvises. La Pelvis and all its power. I feel very fortunate that I did the MFA in Experimental Choreography program at the University of California Riverside during this wild and unforgettable year. It was all virtual of course, but I was able to take this time to really dive into my artistic practice while being actively enrolled in courses that were rich and exciting. I was able to work at BAAD! in the Bronx 2-3 times a week for four hours a day which was such a gift. Feelings and emotions? Whoa! SO MUCH! I will say that every day that I am in the practice I try to first engage with my breath, with my body, with my spirit, with the space...y más...the answers then come…or they go away.

NDERE: We met through Luis A., a dancer and choreographer, and I was immediately drawn to what you do movement-wise. You kindly came to visit and work with two of the SU-CASA groups of elders with whom I have worked in Bronx through Bronx Council on the Arts. You taught us some exercises that helped us reconnect with our bodies and to awaken our brains. These practices spoke to me of neuroplasticity. Would you be willing to revisit one or two of these somatic practices?

PM: Yes of course, always! I’ll guide us through La Mariposa practice, inspired by Susan Kaiser Greenland’s and Annaka Harris’s Mindful Games and Activity Cards. I’ll offer through a bilingual experience.

Find a comfortable place you can lay down on your back and be connected to the ground. (If the floor is too much, you can also do this on a chair, with your feet grounded and back lengthened)

Lay your arms by your sides...palms as you wish…. / You can play music if you would like (sounds of el mar..….sounds of birds…something relaxing....)

Close your ojos / Respira...lentamente... / Slow down your breath...your thoughts… / Take deep slow breaths in through your nose...and out through your mouth…. / Continue on with your breath...slowly…. / Notice the state of your body… Ask yourself...How are you feeling? What are you holding on to?

Imagine a Mariposa… / This Mariposa can look and be any way you wish — imagine all the possibilities... / Your Mariposa has magical powers...anywhere this Mariposa will land on your cuerpo it will make you feel calm...relaxed...awesome…vibrant...beautiful...

Your Mariposa will first land on your feet…your right foot…...then your left foot…. / Respira...adentro...afuera… / Feel the spaces in your feet open...relax...expand…

The Mariposa then travels up to your knees….your right knee….then your left knee... / Respira...adentro...afuera… / Feel your knees relax….open...vibrant…

The Mariposa travels up to your pelvis… / Feel La Pelvis relax...open….respira...adentro...afuera…

La Mariposa travels up to your stomach… / Breath in….and out… / Letting go of any anxiety...or stress you may be holding there…

La Mariposa travels up to your heart… / Respira…adentro...afuera… / Feel the warmth of your heart...see it shine…

La Mariposa travels up to your neck... / Breath in….and...out…. / Imagine yourself singing your favorite song...saying what you need to say today…

La Mariposa travels up to your forehead… / Breath in...and out…. / Relaxing your mind…your thoughts / Letting go of any doubt or fear…

The Mariposa travels to your right palm….then your left palm... / Breath in...and out… / gently expand your palm…relaxing…

La Mariposa then travels onto your back… / Breath in….and breathe out… / Feeling la tierra beneath you… / releasing into it… / be held… / with the earth…

La Mariposa then travels all over your body… / spreading love...light...magic…

La Mariposa whispers in your ear… / “I am here anytime you need me...just call me” / And disappears…

Gently take an inhale...and exhale…. / Feel the love offered by La Mariposa…. / You feel vibrant… / Ready… / Loved…. / Gently roll on your right side into a fetus position… / Bring your knees up… / And give yourself a hug… / Slowly roll up… / And bring yourself to a seated position...with your spine lengthened...your tailbone lengthened…your sit bones connected to the ground / Spread your arms and open them… / Lift them up...and down...as you breathe in...and out….like wings... / Now YOU become La Mariposa… / and share the amor… / the luz../ la magia...

Place your hands on your heart…. / And one more... / Respira ...adentro...afuera... / Muchas gracias. 💜

NDERE: Thank you so much for this practice. I started to dance since way back then. That probably was in my mother’s womb—maybe before that, at conception. There is the dance of the sperm and the that of the egg. Can you picture that fascinating choreography? What about your first encounter with dance?

PM: I think it was the same for me; in my mother’s womb. My mom is a great dancer. My parents actually met at a dance club in Miami. I think my dad threw firecrackers at her feet...or something like that the story goes ...I have always witnessed her passion for dance at home and during our house fiestas. My Cuban family’s love for dancing inspired/inspires me greatly.

NDERE: Who and where are you in your dance practice? Who and where are you in your dance practice? Who and where are you in your dance practice? Can you please answer three times? First time from the belly, second time from the heart, their time from your feet.

PM: I am in deep practice with my pelvis…. / I am listening to the dance from within… / I am taking time to play and experiment ideas...

NDERE: I have been studying with the Interdependence Project in New York about the Buddhist Eight Noble Path, which includes: Right View, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Diligence, Right Mindfulness, and Right Samadhi ('meditative absorption or union'). I am pondering where would movement fall within this path? I am thinking of Right Movement? How do I move consciously in ways that do not generate more suffering for me and the world?

PM:  I am convinced more and more that it begins with the self…self-care….taking conscious awareness of our own patterns of movement before engaging with the world. Only then we can truly heal. We must begin with consciously noticing our habits and how they affect our ecosystem. This takes time, and many, many, many years…and retracing, unlearning, to retrace, to rebuild, to then expand. I find solace in moving with improvisation in order to discover this as a daily practice.

NDERE: How would you say moving for you might have changed with the pandemic? How do you move with it?

PM: I am definitely moving slower...and with more appreciation of it. Simple tasks of cooking more fresh foods at home, taking daily walks, riding bikes to locations…has allowed more reflective time and awareness into my life. In return, I think my movement practice has been affected in a great way by this. Durational time on the computer has reminded me to create a standing desk so that I can be aware of my spine while I zoom. Taking long walks with my partner offers new possibilities in connection with each other and with our community. I am also way less afraid of technology (JA JA JA) and looking forward to keep learning and playing with filmmaking and making virtual gatherings in the future.

NDERE: Do you have a spiritual practice? If so, what is it, if you do not mind sharing it with me?

PM: I am very interested in learning diverse cultural ways of spiritual connection through ritual and community gatherings. My uncle, whom I am very close to, introduced me and my brother very early on to meditation. We would sit with my uncle and talk to God and have conversations and ask all sorts of questions. He also practices Hermetic Philosophy, and has shared with me the many ways that all spiritual practices connect or are different depending on where in the world they are learned/practiced.

I like to create my own practice, depending on what is going on at the time...or is needed. I met a couple of years back a beautiful womxn named Queen Catherine Hummingbird Ramírez of the Native American Carib Tribal Queen (she liked to be called Reina) who performs ceremonies each Tuesday at the Miami Circle, for Tequesta peoples. She burns sage and invites anyone to join her in the ceremony. I’ve been inspired by this practice and on Tuesdays, I try to honor her by performing cleansings in my own home and in my own spirit. I feel spirit when I am in nature, when I am close to the ocean, or when I am deep into an improvisational creative practice. I am always looking for new ways to connect and build relationships with Spiritual practices.

NDERE: I am curious about aging and dancing. My perception is that many dancers turn choreographers as they get older? Is that true? If so, does that leave me/us with a vacuum of older, aging bodies in dance, and does this curtail mine/our opportunity to learn about this process? After all, aging is not negotiable, no matter how many plastic surgeries I undergo—gravity always wins—and those beautiful wrinkles and grey hair manage push their way through, like a dance.

PM: Oh Nicolás.. :) Sadly many dancers do choose to retire early on.. I tend to think it might have more to do with the unfortunate lack of stability that our career offers. Although there are some new and exciting Unions that are forming that will hopefully help with this in the near future. And yes, dancers turning into choreographers can also do with aging, but perhaps more with clarity in their voice… discovering their voice in movement as you age… I feel my voice just gets clearer and louder as I age. Ja ja ja! My favorite movement/dance/performance collaborators tend to be older artistas–there's so much more awareness and appreciation of what our bodies are capable of as we age–so much beauty and so much to share.

NDERE: Thank you so much for your words. Any suggestions as to how I can continue to dance with the unknown. It seems to me that I/we are still going through this—Covid-19. Wait! How do I move through something difficult instead of trying to climb over it, go under or around it? Would you teach me a movement or a dance to walk graciously though the very eye of the storm and make it alive and full of life to the other side?

PM: YES! Talk with your pelvis! :) Take time everyday to really listen to it. start your day engaging with it, breathing with it, dancing with it, play your favorite song or play in silence…. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Let me know how it goes

NDERE: Anything you would like to say that we have not talked about?

PM: My partner and I adopted two cats from Miami literally right when the pandemic began in March 2020. We named them Celia and Tito and they have been the most precious gift this year could have offered us. We’ve learned so much from them, especially about the importance of resting–resting with the Sun..

NDERE: ¡Muchas gracias y bedicones pa’tí!

PM: Muchas gracias Nicolás. Pa’tí también. It is always a pleasure to be in conversation with you. Un abrazo.

Priscilla Marrero (ella/she) is an experimental performing + teaching artista from sunny Seminole, Taíne and Tequesta land, also known as Miami, Florida. She is a passionate storyteller and loves to discover new ways to collaborate with interdisciplinary artistas through live performance or filmmaking. She has performed and presented her collaborations in the Musée Dapper (Paris, FR), The Empty Circle (Brooklyn, NY), Miami Light Project (Miami, FL), Inkub8 (Miami, FL), BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (NYC), Korea Art Forum (NYC), Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church (New York, NY), y más. Priscilla has received support from grants such as Artist Access Grant, Miami-Dade Community Grants, Here and Now Grant, and Gluck Fellowship Grant, MFA Graduate Fellowship, and currently the Chancellor's Distinguished Fellowship Award. She graduated from Florida International University with a BA in Performance and Choreography, and from the University of California Riverside with an MFA in Experimental Choreography. In 2022 she graduated as a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher from the Interdependence Project in New York City. Priscilla lives and works on/with Munsee Lenape land, known as Harlem, N.Y., and often travels to Miami Beach for el mar and some familia time.

All images courtesy of Priscilla Marrero

Credits for images of La Pelvis Project  (April 2022) / Creation and Performance: Priscilla Marrero with collaborating artistas for her MFA in Experimental Choreography from the University of California, Riverside Dance Department / Photos by: Ryan Poon and Kali Veach / Collaborating artists with Priscilla Marrero in images / Dance artists: Justin Morris, and Al Ellison / Experimental sculptor and visual artist: Ferran Martín / Clothing design: Liliam Dooley / Composer: Dr. Matthew Evan Taylor / Lighting design + technical director: Omar Ramos / Mentors and committee: Luis A. Lara Malvacías (Chair),  Anusha Kedhar, and taisha paggett

Priscilla Marrero / Related links: Website / IG / Contact

Yali Romagoza

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles: Yali, our connection happened through Arantxa Araujo, after a performance they and I presented at a community garden in Brooklyn. We have friends and colleagues in common both in Cuba and the U.S. Your arrival in the U.S. is relatively recent. You entered the country in 2011, so you have seen the latest developments of the Cuban regime. Why did you leave home, if you do not mind talking about it?

Yali Romagoza: In my world; my body is my home is the title of a performance I created in 2012, but it could be my life's motto. I always felt strange and marginalized in the country where I was born. Unable to express my authentic self-due to the idea of ​​an egalitarian society that suppresses any expression of individuality and self-empowerment. Why did I leave Cuba? Well, instead, it's an escape and not abandonment. As a child, I lived through The Special Period, an economic depression in Cuba that unfolded during the 1990s which led to the escape of hundreds of Cubans to the U.S., where thousands died at sea. The so-called –"rafters– It was part of our daily life to see mothers and grandmothers desperate because their relatives were missing or imprisoned. I remember spending 10 to 12 hours a day without electricity, except for Fidel Castro's speeches, which were transmitted intermittently. The growing social inequality due to the decriminalization of the dollar, invasion of tourists, and rise of foreign companies made my generation aware that the Revolution failed. The Cuban government's abuse of power, oppression, corruption, and violence was only left. Leaving was not a choice; it was survival. When non-Cuban people tell me that the Cuban government is inspiring, I recommend that they go and live there; but leave their credit cards, cash, and passports. The only ones with the right to speak about Cuba are Cubans who have experienced a generational trauma that no one else can understand. And we have the right to express our pain.

NDEREO: Alanna Lockward said something like “Dominican art is diasporic by nature.” She was a radical in the true sense and her phrase resonates with me. I dare to expand Alanna’s phrase to include Cubans and Puerto Ricans, among other Caribeñes. Caribbean art is diasporic by nature. How does that relate to your work-life?

YR: I'm glad you mentioned the word "diaspora." It is so relevant to my artistic practice, and it's one of my missions to give a voice to the Cuban diaspora through my work. The politics surrounding everything related to Cuba does not include the Cuban diaspora within the Caribbean diaspora in the US. The voices of the Cuban diaspora have been erased and made invisible within the Western art system. The art system, including the market, museums, academia, non-profit institutions, etc., offers platforms, in general, to Cuban artists who produce within the island, turning their backs on an entire history of Cuban art in the diaspora for decades and creating a fissure between the two. The Cuban art of the diaspora is also Cuban art, and it is also American art. My artistic work of autobiographical nature centers on the experience of being a woman, Caribbean Latina, an immigrant in the U.S., and highlights the struggles of living between cultures. But I feel I have had to fight harder for the right to express my diasporic condition as a Cuban in the context of U.S. art, which is full of stereotypes, assumptions, and prejudices. The diversity of identities within the Caribbean diaspora is a concept that the art world is hesitant to accept and understand, resulting in exclusion and a false portrait of what American art is.

NDEREO: I recently got into an almost heated argument about the mythologies and deceptions involved in the Cuban revolution. I am referring to the view that some U.S. Americans hold of what might have been a liberating movement, and which might have turned into a regime that censors the free flow of ideas, bodies, thoughts, and ways of beings not aligned with those at the top. How can one engage creativity under these circumstances?  

YR: Meditating my way out of Capitalism and Communism. Twelve thousand four hundred ten days of Isolation is an excellent example to approach this issue. In the performance, my alter ego Cuquita, the Cuban Doll, meditates for 30 minutes in the form of a public action near each subway stop along 14th Street as part of the Art in Odd Places performance festival in 2018. Twelve thousand four hundred ten days refer to my age through which I reflect on my past and present and recognize how the systems in power–Capitalism and Communism–oppress and marginalize the individual similarly. This piece has significantly resonated with the audience and subsequent writings about my work because it fell into this dilemma of good Cuban Socialism and evil American Capitalism. Whenever I think of the Cuban government, I think of the abusive husband who beats his wife, and when the wife goes to denounce him, no one believes her because her husband's reputation precedes him. Through my alter-ego, I propose to transcend this dichotomy and make visible the pain and trauma of Cubans for decades and our need to be heard, believed, and supported. 

On the sign accompanying Cuquita, the Cuban Doll, in her meditations along 14th Street in each subway station, she says: Hello, my name is Cuquita the Cuban Doll. I was born in La Habana, and now I live in NY. I identify as a woman. I find myself surrounded by thorns. Also, I bleed every month. I will meditate my way out of Capitalism and Communism for 30 mins. Join me if you want. Please do not touch me. 

Through the piece, I seek to establish a direct dialogue with people from my personal experience, where they can begin to demolish myths about the experience of Cubans in Cuba and also in the United States.

NDEREO: So much of the Other America, Latin America, has been in perpetual crisis caused by colonial forces and by empire. La crisis. My eyes watered the other day as I thought as to how many, or the great majority of the people in our nations are always in crisis.  The wealthy nations have been sucking our resources for so long. Cuba was a dream for a different Latin America. How do you allow creativity to flow from this perspective of crisis and constant struggle?

 YR: I am staying alive, which is hard enough. No one can deny my truth or take away what I have lived and learned. Making art is a great way to communicate. In my art are all the answers.

NDEREO: So much of the glamour of being a Cuban artist has been fetishized by U.S. curators and arts organizations as being connected to being a Cuban artist in Cuba. This is a generalization, since I have friends in the island who could benefit from been fetishized, and their work is great, and still underrecognized. What does your practice entail as a Cuban artist outside the island?

YR: In the book Latinx Art by Arlene Dávila that I read recently, there is a section called “Behind the fetish of Cuban art” under the chapter “Nationalism and the Current Status of the Categories.” For those who have not read the book, Dávila explores the problem of visualizing Latinx art and artists within the global contemporary art market, showing the importance of race, class, and nationalism in shaping contemporary art markets. 

Nationalism is something I have thought about a lot in the importance of drawing attention to an artist's work. In the diaspora, we lose our privilege of nationality, which in the case of Cuban artists, dramatically affects our careers. There is interest from curators, museums, gallery owners, collectors, and art institutions in Cuban artists producing art in Cuba; many artists I know claim that they are based in Cuba when they reside in another country or create projects that keep them going back and forth from the island. Within the art system, nobody seems too excited by Cuban artists living and producing work abroad. For example, I have lived in Queens, NY, for 11 years. The Queens Museum has never invited me to participate in its exhibitions nor accepted my applications in its open calls. I have visited exhibitions in this museum where Cuban artist friends have participated and have been cataloged as residents of Cuba and/or Cuban as the only nationality. If I didn't experience it myself, I wouldn't believe it, and this is to mention an example; there are many more.

Juana Valdes, an artist of Cuban origin based in the U.S., talks to Arlene Dávila in Dávila’s book: They want to buy that story; they don't want to buy the American story... what makes Cuban art marketable is the exoticness of collectors being able to say they were at artist's studios and had this amazing experience in Cuba ... if you're in Cuba, you're it. If you're in Miami, then you are one of the many. I bring this up because it explains so clearly how this help to reinforce nationalist boundaries and makes it very hard for Cuban artists who don't fulfill this expectation to be exposed to the same opportunities. However, I’m hopeful. Some artists, myself included, are pushing for a more inclusive and diverse contemporary art world. 

NDEREO: Can we talk about dolls? Who are they. How did they come to be?

YR: Cuban cuquitas were cut-out paper dolls that used to appear on the back covers of magazines dedicated to women in Cuba in the 1970s and ‘80s; these figures were accompanied by costumes and accessories and cut-outs with which the cuquitas could be “dressed.” Many generations of Cubans grew up playing and imagining women through cuquitas and their designs. I was no exception. Between the heat of Cuba and the blackouts during my childhood, I played with the Cuquitas, escaping to an imaginary world. This reference inspired my alter-ego Cuquita The Cuban Doll. Cuquita The Cuban Doll as an alter-ego comes off the paper, migrates to a three-dimensional world, and exists in an English-speaking context. She suffers from my uprooting and the lack of representativeness and assimilation in the U.S. society. Her character is provocative and defiant in the face of the stereotypes with which she is judged. She exists in the freedom that I do not have either as a person or as an artist.

NDEREO: What are some of the pressing issues your Cuquitas bring to the forefront?

YR: As a result of my experience in the U.S. coming from Cuba in 2011, I created my alter-ego Cuquita the Cuban Doll, to rebuild a cultural home within the U.S. art scene, where I often do not feel included or represented. As a former fashion designer, I carefully craft each costume that Cuquita the Cuban Doll wears to connect with her body in an inherently behavioral way that transforms her body and the spaces she occupies. Through her narration, she illustrates what it is like to inhabit a space between cultures to address feminism and marginalization while poking fun at the misogynistic and racist stereotypes that particularly plague Latinas in the U.S.

NDEREO: I see connections between your work and that of Elia Alba and the one that the Guerilla Girls do. Elia, because of her masks and dolls, and the Guerilla Girls because of the masks and also their ongoing critique of the status quo prevalent in arts institutions and beyond.  I feel that, with all of its shortcomings and cooptation, there is not much institutional critique being done by artists now. Any thoughts as to how your work still questions the conscience of the institution?

YR:  I studied Art History at the University of Havana in Cuba. I mention this because my first approach to art was through a close look at history. At the time, the absence of female artist figures in periods of art history or the existence of significantly few female artists compared to men seemed very suspicious. Criticism of the art institution by artists is essential to highlight injustices and fight for a more equitable art world. Art history has been written primarily by privileged western white men who selected their kind, excluding female voices throughout history. In that manner, they created the foundation for what we understand today as the art system. Through my work, I critique the art institution a bit further, asking questions about the exclusion and erasure of the Latina artist in the diaspora–within contemporary feminism, how diasporic female voices are validated and supported. 

NDEREO: You talk about your struggles as a Latina artist? What are they?

YR: The lack of representation and inclusion. The lack of opportunities and support. The misunderstanding of the diverse Latina identities, histories, languages, countries of origin, and stories. The stereotypes, prejudices, racism, and misogyny. The lack of acceptance of diverging conceptual narratives. I have been the only Latina in my MFA program, in art shows, residencies, etc. There are a few spots for us in each opportunity, and they put us to compete against each other. They call us "minority" (ugh, I dislike that word) when 62.1 million Hispanics live in the United States. The nation's second-largest racial or ethnic group after non-Hispanic whites. According to these statistics, there are so many of us; how is it that very few of us make it into the mainstream of the art world? The Latinas also have to deal with the machismo that comes from a vicious circle of learning how to oppress, harass and kill women by Latin men. Our partner is also our enemy. 

NDEREO: I admire how many artists in Cuba have managed to keep creativity alive and to even risk their lives to express ideas. How easy would you say it is to express ideas in the U.S. context? I am asking because you have experienced the communist and the corporate sides of being an artist.

YR: No me pongan el lo Oscuro (Do not bury me in Darkness) is a project in public spaces, particularly outside art museums and art fairs. Museums security has always been vigilant about the development of the performances, but at least in NY, it has never intervened or stopped the actions. Another story was in Florida. The police aggressively approached the public space outside Miami Beach Art Basel, where we performed. They wanted us to leave. I had to negotiate with them, but we finally did it. Cuquita, The Cuban Doll, has never been in the public space of Cuba. And I don't wish that for her because I, Yali Romagoza, was arrested and sent to a police station when I was 20 years old, and the officers didn't allow me to speak. They just took me.

NDEREO: I have no more questions for now, so I open the space for you to say anything that calls to be said.

YR: ¡Muchas Gracias! Thank you for sharing your platform with me and allowing me to express my ideas. I am deeply grateful for your kindness and hope that we continue to have the opportunity to discuss these critical issues and always be very honest.

Yali Romagoza is a Cuban-born multidisciplinary artist currently based in Queens, NY. She graduated with an MFA in Fashion from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Art History from the University of Havana. Her works have been included in the Art and Social Activism Festival, and The Immigrant Artist Biennial. Romagoza has performed at Links Hall Theater, White Box, Teatro LATEA, Art in Odd Places, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Grace Exhibition Space, NY Latin American Art Triennial, Satellite Art Show, and Abrons Art Center, NY. She has been granted awards and residencies, including Cátedra Arte de Conducta by Tania Bruguera, NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program, Creative Capital NYC Taller, Franklin Furnace, SVA Art Residency Project, EMERGENYC, Queens Art Fund.

All images courtesy of Yali Romagoza

Yali Romagoza/ Related links: Website / IG / Contact

Arthur Avilés and Nicolás

Amor Raro and Other Heart-Shaped Islands