Podcast
A Guide to Art, Activism, & Culture
The Aerogramme Center is pleased to present "A Guide To Art, Activism, & Culture" a podcast that delves into social issues seen in museums and in art collections today. We aim to focus on themes of decolonization, representation, and appropriation within the frameworks of art and activism.
Hosted by Zoë Elena Moldenhauer
Listen Elsewhere: Anchor | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Amazon Music | YouTube | RSSEpisode 13: The Puerto Rican “I”, 5 Years After the Hurricane
I spoke with the Whitney Museum of American Art’s DeMartini Family Curator, Marcela Guerrero, about their recent exhibition “no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria.” Coinciding with the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Maria, the multi-generational exhibition brings together artists from the island and the diaspora to explore the overlapping disasters compounded by Puerto Rico’s ongoing colonial conditions.
MAY 19, 2023-
Marcela Guerrero received her Ph.D. in Art History and Visual Culture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has worked on notable exhibitions including "Martine Gutierrez: Supremacy"; "Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945"; and Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art" at the Whitney Museum of American Art. From 2014-2017, she worked as a Curatorial Fellow at the Hammer Museum on "Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985" organized by the Getty Foundation's Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. Marcela is currently the Whitney Museum of American Art’s DeMartini Family Curator.
Image Credit: Installation view of no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art In The Wake Of Hurricane Maria (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 23, 2022-April 23, 2023). From left to right: Edra Soto, GRAFT, 2022; Gamaliel Rodríguez, Collapsed Soul, 2020-21; Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, Untitled (Valora tu mentira americana) (Untitled [Value Your American Lie]), 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
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About the no existe un mundo poshuracán exhibition.
Teacher’s guide for no existe un mundo poshuracán.
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Zoë Elena Moldenhauer:
Welcome Marcela, it is a pleasure speaking with you today! Can you introduce yourself?
Marcela Guerrero:
Yes, my name is Marcela Guerrero. I am the DeMartini Family Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
ZM:
And today we will be discussing an exhibition you curated “no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria” that recently ended at the Whitney Museum of American Art on April 23rd, 2023. Can you introduce the exhibition and why you wanted to tell this story in the way that you did?
MG:
Yes, though this is an exhibition that opened the year of the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria--the hurricane happened on September 20th, 2017.
It was a category 5 hurricane that the minute it touched land, it got downgraded to category 4. Although, in some parts of the island, the winds were felt at a category 5 gale. And it was a moment that everyone knew that it was going to really mark the history of Puerto Rico.
I was in Brooklyn. I had just given birth to my daughter. I was with my mom, who typically lives in Puerto Rico, but she was here helping me. My dad had been here, but he went back. And so, as it happened with many people, we couldn't get in touch with him for a couple of days. That separation that one felt--that the experience of what people were living there, and also this other kind of different trauma felt by the diaspora of not being able to be in touch with their loved ones and family. And knowing that in the recent past, Puerto Rico had announced a massive debt. There were already blackouts. There were already, you know, closing of schools, so many things that became more exacerbated after the hurricane.
But thinking about, why all of these overlapping disasters keep happening? It's kind of this colonial weight expressed in the most perverse of ways. And I knew when the hurricane happened that Puerto Rican artists have always you know sought to analyze its colonial condition and imagine ways to think and process this moment. And so, that was kind of the gist of the idea.
ZM:
The exhibition, as well as the events of Hurricane Maria, are so personal and are present in many people's lived experience. How did you consult with everyday Puerto Ricans in the planning process of this exhibition? And what resources did you draw on to get a sense of what people wanted to know or have presented?
MG:
First and foremost, that the lived experience of a Puerto Rican also included people on the island and in in the diaspora. Those were different experiences, but both were very valid.
I was implicated, obviously. Not just as a curator, not in that authorial way, but as someone who has very strong feelings and attachments to Puerto Rico.
Your question made me reflect a lot on this of the conversations that I had with the artists. And it was at that level. Like, you are not only the artist whose work I want to borrow for the show, but you were also someone who experienced this and were also the typical Puerto Rican that I consider them as a visitor level and as a viewer. And so, we had many conversations about the thesis of the show, how it was going to be represented, who else was going to be part of those stories.
In 2019, a group of 10 scholars or thinkers or curators--all happened to be women--and they came for a a workshop or a day, day and a half, two days of conversations closed doors with me. And that included people like Marina Reyes Franco from the Museum of Contemporary Puerto Rico, Natalia Viera Salgado, a young emerging curator very involved in the local scene and emerging artist scene, Susana Torruella Leval, kind of the other end of someone who's been working with Puerto Rican artists for decades.
So, it was 10 people. All with different levels of adjacency to the arts. And many of the ideas ended up in the exhibition in a way. My process of this exhibition was already embedded in my own life, you know, going to Puerto Rico was something that I was doing once or twice a year because I have family there and I have friends and all of that. That, kind of, rhythm was already part of my life and so it was easy to translate it into the process of the show.
ZM:
The exhibition is celebrated as being one of the first major retrospectives of contemporary Puerto Rican art in a major New York City museum. What makes contemporary Puerto Rican art distinctive, and how do you go about selecting the artist for the exhibition?
MG:
I think it was important to mention it was a groundbreaking exhibition, the one that happened in 1973-74 at the at The Metropolitan Museum and with El Museo del Barrio--and obviously, understanding well that there had been many exhibitions of Puerto Rican art in Puerto Rico and in other museums in the US.
The Met Museum from the ‘70s covered everything from Taíno art to the present. And it had a very kind of pedagogical element being that El Museo was involved, a former school, so it had gray merits based on those points. For the Whitney, the differentiation would be that it was a very specific small window that we wanted to look at and unpack. By using the hurricane as a lens, we can think of this overlap of climate change, something that will continue to occur, and colonization. That is not unique to Puerto Rico, but it is a condition of Puerto Rico.
But what became very beautiful from comments that I heard from people on how much they could see their own countries reflected. I was glad to get those comments because it's a very specific exhibition, obviously, but it has echoes in many other contexts.
The process for the show happened in ways that might be surprising. I had seen the work of some of the artists like Edra Soto, but I had never met her. Meaning they weren't necessarily artists or friends, or in my network. The workshop that we did in 2019, that also helped. Really, by doing research and following galleries in Puerto Rico that I go to often and seeing like, ‘OK, this person might fit.’ It's also art that's different from what you see in Chelsea and blue chip galleries. You don't necessarily know all of the artists and you do research, and you might have an idea or a concept, and so that helps define which kind of artist you're going to visit, or you're going to reach out to do a studio visit.
But those were many, obviously more than the 20 that I invited. It was a very large pool of artists that, as I was refining the idea, I was refining the selection.
ZM:
Museums are about exhibitions, but the hidden part is what goes on behind the scenes of choosing to present an idea for an exhibition—what controversies a museum chooses to embrace and what controversies to avoid. Can you take us through that process at the Whitney that led to this exhibit and the form it took?
MG:
I came back from parental leave, and I think it was within that year, we pitched exhibitions. Which is not typical. Getting an exhibition on the calendar can take many forms. That year, it happened to be this way that the chief curator asked us to pitch a couple of exhibitions. Everyone could pitch up to two ideas. And so, one of the ideas that I pitched, it was a very brief like 5 minutes, very raw, kind of, version of this exhibition. I think it was the next meeting and people could comment on other people's exhibition to get feedback and say which one's kind of came to the surface. And many of my colleagues said, ‘This is an exhibition that the Whitney should do. This is something that we really should host here, and Marcela should organize it,’ blah, blah, blah.
That was pretty much the way it got green lit. After that, we typically present to upper management committee. And then it got on the calendar. If there was anything, there are certain moments of like, ‘OK, so what kind of language are we going to use? And why are we using certain language? Are we using colonial? Yes, we need to use the word colony. That's very important.’
The show was going to be where this exhibition “Josh Klein” is right now. So, on the 5th floor like that size, so a much smaller footprint. Because of the pandemic, a lot of things also got moved and extended and we had to shift a lot of things around. So, that kind of benefited the exhibition in a way. I feel bad saying that, but a) we had more time which helped for the catalog and get a catalog. And also, the chief curator said, ’Oh, OK well, let's try this new thing which we've never done in the past in this building,’ which was to do the exhibition on the 6th floor. Because the 6th floor is typically a permanent collection floor.
And so, he gave me the entire 6th floor. And that was like, ‘OK great!’ So, now I need to rethink the thesis so that it can incorporate more artists, and all of that. So, those behind the scenes things that happened, ended up benefiting the show, actually.
ZM:
You mentioned what kind of language you wanted to use for the exhibition. There were several stages of experience between the art and the explanation, where viewers were given a specific interpretation that wasn’t necessarily apparent in the artwork. What parameters did you set in writing the wall labels?
MG:
Usually, the way I write wall labels is information drawn from my studio visits with the artists and inside knowledge of what they think the work is about. Also, if there's anything published about a work and those are ideas that I think might be important too, I put it in my own words--I rewrite them.
Yeah, labels are tricky because every museum has its own way of thinking about labels. We don't describe what people are seeing. So, it's more about an interpretation and analysis of the work without overdoing it.
So, I'm thinking of the label for Gamaliel Rodríguez “Collapsed Soul.” I've been reflecting a lot of on ships, and so I added a little bit of that interpretation of how it can go back to 1898, and that ship that exploded outside of Cuba and led to what is sometimes referred to as the Spanish-American War. That's not something that Gama was thinking when he did the painting. But I think I added it and I mention the Jones Act (1920) to kind of--how ships have been so important in the imaginary of Puerto Ricans, for so long.
So, we have a whole department that's working--I write them, and then they give me feedback. And then, we show the labels to the artist to make sure that they agree with what is being said, and that it is factually correct and all that. So that's an important process.
I think yeah, the labels had an ideology, if we may call it that. And I think that is also derived from the artists. Someone like Yiyo Tirado [Rivera] who--his position and that of his work are completely against the privatization of beaches.
And there’s a—yeah, a very clear point of view. That's definitely true. I think I was either agreeing with that point of view, and also representing that point of view from the artist. So, not putting anything that the artist wouldn't agree with.
ZM:
How do you see art contributing to the plight of Puerto Rico?
MG:
That's a really great question about--I was actually just reading a quote by Colleen Smith--not related to the show at all, but she said, ‘I actually believe that art can contribute more--’ and I'm paraphrasing her here--’can contribute more than politicians even can because we've tried that and we know where that has led us.’ And so, this real belief in that when you go to a museum--this is my thinking now, not Colleen’s--when you go to a museum, you go in knowing that you're gonna see works of art. And that you're going to derive a message in something, you're going to learn something from a work of art. If you're coming to the museum, it is because you're ready for that, you know, you're ready to do the exercise of looking hard at an artwork and wanting that artwork to tell you something that you can't find anywhere else. I also think that when it comes to Puerto Rico, because there is so much heavy history, and law, and like facts that we've also tried that, and should continue to exist in the form of history courses in the way of journalism, but let's try this other method. Let's try to look at art and see what we can learn from that, what we can gain, what new knowledge, what new discourse we can learn from looking at a work of art that that it's that you can't find it anywhere else.
If you see Gamaliel’s boat, and you don't read the label, you don't have to. But even knowing that you're in the context of an exhibition about Puerto Rico, you're going to feel something. This is not a beautiful rosy story that the painting is telling you. It's quite harsh, right?
So, I think that that it can happen at many levels, to many different people.
ZM:
Right, that there are many forms of activism and art can pick up where the written word can no longer continue. So, the exhibition was extremely successful and received rave reviews. What do you think excited people the most? Was it the fact that Puerto Rican artists were given the recognition in a major institution? Do you think that success will rub off on Puerto Rican based art organizations like El Museo del Barrio or The Clemente that don’t have the cachet of the Whitney?
MG:
Yeah, I think people were excited, and surprised, to see a show like this in this museum. That's for sure. We have to say, their surprise says a lot of what people think of the Whitney, and so, we have to be honest about that.
Even people who are in the arts told me, ‘Oh, there were so many names of artists that I didn't know.’ So, that element of surprise at many levels, from seeing Puerto Rico in a museum like the Whitney to ‘who is this artist that I didn't know?’ It wasn't lost on people how much considerable real estate was given for this show that every artist, also because of that, they weren't crammed into the wall next to the stairs or next to the bathroom.
Yeah, I don't know if El Museo del Barrio or smaller institutions--if they want the reviews and everything, the attention to rub off on them. I don't know if that's how they would characterize it. The Clemente gave one of the artists a residency--or two of the artists. That could have been probably in the plans from before the exhibition, I don't know.
But many created programming that overlapped with the show, so that was really nice to see. Your question made me think about was in the recent Bronx Museum Gala there were many artists who were part of the auction and Gamaliel--that I've mentioned before--there were I think 18 bids for his painting. Which I don't think is typical.
There is a tension that is going in many different directions, and I don't know if "rub off” is the right phrase, but will have an impact on other museums. We're all here to learn from each other. I've also been thinking about this recently and how the more of us that are in the field working means that there's a little bit of competition and I say that, for lack of a better word, because it's very collegial, obviously. But it means that it's like, ‘Ohh, El Museo as going to do a show about this. Like, ohh man, damn!’ We don't want to be redundant.
There's more there are more spaces for artists to show, and we're all really interested in wanting to get to that artist first and things like that so. The way I see more about the network of museums and connections and spaces that will show more of the artists that were in the show or other artists that perhaps in the future will have a relationship with the Whitney.
You know, that type of thing.
ZM:
You mentioned programming, how will the museum maintain the momentum of the exhibition’s message in an ethical and meaningful way without fading away over time?
MG:
Yeah, your question made me think of the recent show that we have now that opened and it overlapped with “no existe” by a week of “Jaune Quick-To-See Smith.” And how beautiful it was that those two kind of followed each other. And I don't know if, honestly, if those exhibitions would have been possible 10 years ago. For different reasons. But I think that that's a meaningful way of continuing the conversation of saying how there was this exhibition about a very specific colonial context, and then we have an exhibition of a Native American woman artist that is also, in a way, talking about colonization, extractive policies, and laws and uses of the land. And even “Josh Klein”, you know, in his own way, dealing with ideas about the climate catastrophe that's going to happen.
Because sometimes I get this question asked and I don't know if it's my fault, maybe I take it too literal--they do ask if there's going to be another exhibition about Puerto Rican art. Sure, there should be more in other institutions and by other curators, and we want to hear other perspectives, but we also need to keep thinking and moving. And that for me is a question of like how meaningful the program can continue to be and not go back to things that might be at odds with these ideas. That I would find really problematic, things that might in a way, I don't know, celebrate the patriotism of America. That would be super weird. That would be the opposite of what, you know, of what a meaningful progress means.
On the other hand, there's also the work that the Department of Education does in creating long-lasting partnerships and that's really the role, right? Connections that extend beyond the exhibition. And so, we have partners like Loisaida Center, The Casita Maria, we had a partnership for the exhibition with El Centro that we're now thinking, like, in which other ways we can continue that, right.
One way, that I guess I'm excited also to see in the future of the museum of the Whitney is because we're acquiring many works from the exhibition into the collection. Always, the wish and the desire is to have them live and imagine many, many, many contexts in which a painting, a work, a sculpture can be in exhibitions at the Whitney with other works from our collection. But it's when it's next to this other work by a non-Puerto Rican artist, what other conversations that might bring.
Art can be very flexible in that way that it always will retain its original context and ideas, but then it can spark other conversations.
So, I'm excited to see that in the future of the of the Whitney.
ZM:
That's exciting to hear that people will encounter the artwork outside of the exhibition's context and have those same experiences. Do you have any final thoughts or announcements you would like to make?
MG:
Thank you for your questions, because I'm reflecting now a lot on the future of the show. Luckily, we created a lot of content that will live on the website. We translated the catalog into Spanish with the intention of teachers from New York and teachers from Puerto Rico, can teach the exhibition and also make use of the catalog in Spanish. That's completely downloadable for free on the website without having, you know, that barrier of the $40, whatever, coffee table book that these catalogs have.
So, we'll see. Because I just closed the exhibition, I'm at this point of like, ‘OK, so, what afterlife will this have?’ I'll watch from my little apartment in Brooklyn, how this will develop.
Episode 12: The Quinceañera in the American South
I spoke with Saskia Lascarez Casanova about her exhibition “Cultural Traditions: The Quinceañera in Cabarrus County” currently on view at The Cabarrus County Museum of History in North Carolina till April 22, 2023. Through oral histories, Saskia explores the intersection of race, gender, class, religion, migration and family to present how the quinceañera has shaped the way that young Latina women identify themselves in American society.
FEB 3, 2023-
Saskia Lascarez Casanova is an Costa Rican born-North Carolinian historian and museum professional. She received her bachelor's in History from Georgia Southern University in Savannah in 2019, and graduated with a master's in History and Museum Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2022. Saskia is the Public Programs and Collections Manager at the North Carolina Museum of Dolls, Toys, and Miniatures, and Exhibition and Programs Contractor at the Historic Cabarrus Association.
Image Credit: Installation image of “Cultural Traditions: The Quinceañera in Cabarrus County” (Cabarrus County Museum of History, North Carolina, September 26, 2022—April 22, 2023). Image of purple quinceañera dress on stand. Photograph by Saskia Lascarez Casanova.
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Zoë Elena Moldenhauer:
Welcome Saskia, thank you for speaking with me today! Can you introduce yourself?
Saskia Lascaraz Casanova:
Sure!
My name is Saskia Lascaraz Casanova. I am originally from Costa Rica. I was born and raised there till about 11 years old then my family and I migrated to Miami, Florida. We’ve lived there with my grandparents for about five years. Then we came to North Carolina, and I've been here for the majority of my life, so I kind of just call North Carolina home.
I have my bachelor's in History from Georgia Southern University in Savannah, and I just graduated last May with my master's in History and Museum Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
ZM:
And today we'll be discussing an exhibit you curated entitled “Cultural Traditions: The Quinceanera in Cabarrus Country” currently on view at the Cabarrus Museum of History in North Carolina. So, what is a quinceañera? Where does it originate, and can you share with us how this project started?
SC:
Yeah, so a quinceañera is a life cycle ritual that's celebrated across the entire American continent. Its origins are unfortunately unknown, but from my research I found that there are roots in indigenous and colonial practices.
And it all started from my own experiences as a Latina growing up in the South. Once we moved here, I had to adjust to the Southern culture, the accent, the way of life here. And, I guess because I'm such a social person, I always want to adjust to my spaces which kind of erased my Latina identity a little bit. And I kind of suppressed it [my identity] to fit in with my friends who were majority white.
After a while, I went off to college, and then joined a Latina sorority that basically taught me the beauty of being, you know, I don't have to choose between my Latina identity and my American identity, I can be both and exist in both spaces. So, it kind of made me wonder, you know, how are the new generation of Latinas growing up here in the South, especially in North Carolina, identifying themselves. Are they identifying as Mexican-American? Are they identifying as just American? Are they keeping any cultural traits from their family's heritage? So, that's kind of where it started.
I figured the quinceañera is such a perfect kind of micro world to see all of those things: sexuality, religion, family, economics, identity, all those things kind of can be studied through the quinceañera.
ZM:
The quinceañera is typically associated with Mexican culture. Can you explain what happens at a quinceañera and what are the required aspects to make it complete?
SC:
So, I think, the reason why we think of quinceañera, and we associate it with Mexican culture, is because the Latinos in the US--the majority of them--are from Mexico, and so, they bring that Mexican culture.
When I asked my cousin what do the last 30 years, you know, in Costa Rica has there been an uptick in quinceañeras? What's it like? She said that it has become very prominent, especially with the rise of “My Super Sweet 16” and all those MTV shows. So, I think other Latin American countries do practice it, but perhaps not with the importance that is given in Mexican culture.
So basically, there's two big components, there's the party and the Thanksgiving Mass. So, majority of Latin America--not everybody anymore--is or was Catholic. They would have a Thanksgiving Mass to give thanks to God that the young lady has reached the age of 15 and she is reaffirming her faith and beliefs in God and The Virgin. And committing herself to a life of what's called Marianismo, which is like the beliefs that women in Latin America have to act, as close to possible, to The Virgin Mary. So, they have to be very godly, very subservient to their men, take care of their children, take care of the house. And promise the community that she will become an active member of the Catholic Church.
In newer years, the Thanksgiving Mass has kind of gone a little off to the side. There're tons of different reasons why, but it's just an outdated portion of the celebration. However, the party now is like a really really big deal. So, within the party your like three main things that I would say is you have to do a waltz. Typically, with your dad or with your Court of Honor or Chambelanes and Damas, or not. The changing of the shoes. Usually, the quinceañera will walk in with flats or--one of my interviewees was wearing Crocs, another one was wearing Vans. So, you walk in whatever shoes that you're comfortable with. But those shoes are the ones that kind of represent you, as a child, and then your dad is supposed to change you into heels. So that represents you becoming a woman. And then the cutting of the cake, which is very wedding-esque. Used to be you would have little steps, so it was a fountain in the middle, and you had your little like dolls of your Chambelanes and Damas lined up. I mean there were crazy extravagant.
I want to say in Mexican culture, since that's what I've studied the most here, they do a baile sorpresa, which is like a surprise dance. To kind of thank the guests and be like, ‘Hey look at the performance I made for you, thank you for coming to my party.’
And there's also a big thing happening nowadays, which is like a surprise gift. So, you get like this huge box, and you open it and then there's a bunch of trash and newspaper. And then there's a smaller box--it's a Russian nesting doll of boxes until you get to a big gift, which is usually like the keys to a car or very nice jewelry, or like a huge wad of cash.
There's of course, you know, little things here and there like the last doll. So, they used to get a doll made exactly to their likeness, even down to their dress. Nowadays a lot of girls are opting for teddy bears instead. The crown has a big aspect of it. Used to be, you would wear a tiara and then when you changed into your shoes you would also change into a crown. Nowadays you just wear your big crown from start till end of the party.
You just customize it to how you want, and that's I think one of the aspects of American culture that's kind of made its way into this very Hispanic tradition.
ZM:
And I remember asking you about the extravagant dresses. Do you know where that specific style comes in?
SC:
So I do know a little bit about the history or the transitioning of the styles of dresses. Originally it used to be a white dress to signify purity. Then it went from white to like a baby pink and then from baby pink, I want to say beginning about the maybe late 80s to early 90s is when girls started customizing their dresses to whatever color that they wanted. And then of course it really blew up in the early 2000s. So you had red, green, purple, silver, gold, champagne, any color imaginable. Gorgeous gorgeous dresses.
Again, that individualization that is such a like pillar of American culture. Also, probably because their mothers were a little more willing to allow their daughters to choose whatever they wanted for themselves instead of the mothers choosing for them.
ZM:
And so, you talked specifically about Mexican culture. But are there some specific differences between, the yeah, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Costa Rican, et cetera?SC:
Well, having a conversation with my cousin who still lives in Costa Rica, she did mention that it's kind of 50/50. So, 50% of the girls will want the party, 50% will want either the money, or a trip, or a car.
I'm willing to say that, more than likely, most of Central America--I do know in Mexico they still, I mean the Thanksgiving Mass is--you're doing it. So, I'm thinking that probably throughout Central America it's, ‘We're going to do the Thanksgiving Mass, and then we're going to do the party. Otherwise, you're not getting anything.’
At least here [in the US], a lot of the quinceañeras I've gone to, it's mostly chambelanes or the male escorts--they don't put a lot of emphasis in having the Damas, the female accompanying party.
For my quinceañera, I had 14 couples. I had 14 guys and 14 girls. But a lot of the girls I've spoken to say that either they only have a handful of girlfriends and their girlfriends just plainly say, ‘You know, like I appreciate you inviting me, but I don't really want to do that.’ Or they do have some friends, but they don't ask them to be their Damas because girls can be catty and jealous so they're afraid that they'll kind of outshine them at the dance or whatever maybe. Which is completely understandable. It's their big day.
I guess, maybe that's one of the variances I've seen is that most Mexican quinceañeras I've attended, it's mostly the quinceañera and the boys to kind of make her shine. As opposed to, I guess, maybe in other cultures you have a mixture of both the guys and the girls.
ZM:
How did you start your research? Did you send some kind of notice to different communities to find out their customs or attend different quinceañeras?
SC:
So, I did make flyers and I reached out to a couple of friends that I have in the local school district. They weren’t able to kind of mass email it out, but they were able to put me in contact with a few Spanish teachers and English teachers, History teachers, that might be willing to let their students know about the oral history project. Ultimately, I ended up finding the people that I did, through word of mouth.
Yeah, so, again, the whole reason why I kind thought about this topic was just my own experiences growing up in the American South and kind of grappling with these dual identities. So, I was interested in learning how this generation of young ladies are growing up and grappling with their identities. And I was taking, like research methodology just to teach us the different sources, how to analyze them, how to get information that might be hidden. A professor wanted us to pick a topic and because I had already been thinking about quinceañeras, I was like, ‘Oh, you know, let me do some research on quinceañeras. I want to see what's available.’
The Library of Congress has a historic newspaper section, I found a ton of newspapers, but it was mostly from very Latino friendly states. So, Arizona, California, Florida, New York, Illinois, Texas. I decided to focus on a newspaper from Arizona that was ran by a woman and a newspaper in Corpus Christi, Texas that was ran by the Catholic Church of Corpus Christi, Texas. So it's a very secular paper, I believe.
So, in that newspaper the emphasis was about the celebration. So, if you're planning on having your Thanksgiving Mass, you need to sign up for our quinceañera classes. It's, you know, X amount of money. It's for X amount of weeks. And then afterwards you have your party. Then they started announcing retreats for quinceañeras, and then I remember seeing one of the announcements was talking about a group quinceañera, that they were hosting at the Church. So instead of having one Mass per girl they were having, like a huge Mass for a lot of quinceañera. The latest newspaper from Corpus Christi that I saw was talking about a boy quinceañero camp to teach them about God and get them prepared for their Thanksgiving Mass to celebrate their quinceaños celebration.
Then the Arizona one, was mostly announcements. So, it was a lot of beauty tips. So, if you want to look like, ‘una quinceañera con tu cutis muy bello, blah, blah, blah.’ So it was a lot of, ‘Oh, you should be doing these things to look young’ or, ‘Don't use too much makeup if you're young, it's going to age you and make you look older,’ and ‘Wear your hair a certain style.’ ‘You should use these certain types of dresses to accentuate your--’ it was very focused in the appearances of women and focused on quinceañeras. Like that was a quintessential youthful look that you wanted to achieve.
So anyways, did all that research, ended up realizing that there wasn't--when I say Southern States, I mean like Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, those Southern states. I found a gap in the scholarship in North Carolina. And I know that in the 80s and 90s there was a large influx of Latinos to the state due to farm workers. And I started to think, surely I can start seeing when they [Latinos] started arriving. Maybe I won't be able to see exactly when they started celebrating quinceañeras and stuff, but I could at least start to trace when the population started to grow. Then potentially look at when Latino or Hispanic serving businesses started to open up.
ZM:
You kind of mentioned that there were quinceaños for boys. Is that also typical within sort of the celebration, or is the focus more on young girls?
SC:
From my research, the focus has always been on girls.
Like I mentioned earlier, you know, we don't have a record of when the quinceañera really began or its origin, however, there's been records found from as far back to the Mayans, Toltec and the Aztecs, even. Back in those times, the life expectancy was so short that as soon as you were able to bear children, you needed to start having children. The whole thing was to produce soldiers for the empire. So when the girls turned fifteen, they were basically ready for marriage and the ritual that they would have was to try and find a suitable partner.
The boys would become soldiers so they would get this big celebration and get their weapons, swords, whatever they used during those times. Then, you know, colonization happened. Spaniards brought Catholic religion and they also had debutantes. So, in high society, when the girls were coming of age they would have kind of like a debutante ball to show off to society like, ‘Oh, you know, here's my beautiful noble daughter, she is ready for marriage, who is the highest bidder?’
So those two mixed along with the Catholic component gave us maybe the basis of what we understand, the quinceañera to be.
ZM:
I'm interested also in the social utility of this custom. Do you have a measure of how much is being spent considering how extravagant these celebrations can become? Are people spending more compared to their incomes? Do families go into debt? How are families financing quinceañeras?
SC:
When I conducted these oral histories, we briefly touched on the financials of it but I didn't want them [the interviewees] to feel pressured to tell me like the exact amount or anything like that. But here there's a system of compadrazgo, so you've got your comadre, compadre--your daughter’s godparents. And those are their religious godparents. But for a quinceañera you can have godparents for basically anything.
So, for example, you could have a godparent for your cake. So it's more of a sponsor type of thing. So you ask somebody, ‘Hey, would you be willing to be my sponsor for my cake?’ and that person, if they say yes, they're in charge of purchasing your cake. And then, as a ‘Thank You,’ in the invitation of the quinceaños, they'll list me, so it'll be ‘madrina de pastel’ or like ‘cake sponsor.’ And during the celebration, at one point, they will call out all of the godparents or all the sponsors, they kind of come up, you take a photo and then you go back and sit down.
And it doesn't even have to be a family member. I remember when we first moved here it was back in 2004. The Latino population was, I would say, a quarter of what it is now. So, the women who were throwing parties for their daughters had left all their family and friends behind. So, this was a way for them to make community on top of being able to celebrate their daughters quinceañera. Despite the difficulties, despite the migration, the tough challenges that they face moving to a whole new country.
A quinceañera can go as little as $10,000 and you could have it as big as $50,000.
Families do go into debt, but they see it as--I don't want to say an investment on their daughter--an investment in memories if that makes sense? So, some of the mothers throw the party for their daughter because they themselves either had to grow up very, very quickly. Help take care of their siblings or perhaps they had to leave their home at a very young age. Perhaps they were pregnant at a very young age. Whatever reason may have been that they were not able to have a quinceañera, when they throw the quinceañera for their daughter, it's kind of like a way for them to also have a quinceañera they weren't able to.
So they spare no expense. They also use this compadrazgo system that helps them offset some of those expenses. And a lot of times they just start saving from a very young age. And I know a lot of people criticize, ‘Oh you could have used that money for their college’ or, you know, ‘for a car’ or for whatever other thing. But I look at it this way, ultimately, it's the girl's choice. If she chooses, like, ‘Hey, you know I don't really want to party. I would much rather you spend it on my education.’ Of course, the parents are going to say, ‘Yes, absolutely honey, we'll save it for your college.’
Others, which is what I'm finding out, who may have been born in another country and migrated very young, who are DACA recipients or maybe don't have legal status, are not able to go to college. Or if they are able to go to college, they have to pay for it out of pocket. So, for a lot of them they don't see college as a viable option.
It's difficult.
ZM:
And that was actually my next question, was considering how common the celebration is, do families want their daughters to get an education or is there still this expectation to marry young?
SC:
So, what I found out from my oral histories is that the mothers 100%, ‘Yes, my daughter needs to be educated. I want her to graduate high school.’ One [mother] said, she had to drop out because she was pregnant with her daughter right after her fifteenth. So, she was very explicit, ‘I don't care what she wants to do, I will support her.’ Marriage is no longer the security for these women, and education is the security. So, that's what the mothers are seeing and learning, and so are the daughters.
So that was--of course, you know, just swells my heart to learn that we are now focusing more on educating our daughters as opposed to marrying them off. So, it gives me a little bit of hope that perhaps that machismo that's been so prevalent in our culture, is starting to shift, hopefully, you know.
ZM:
And I kind of want to circle back to--you were describing the cultural practices of the quinceañera. But your research mentions Karen Mary Dávalos who connects the importance of rituals to the formation of identity for young Latina women in the US, as well as, the familial structures within the communities and the high importance placed on the Church. So, can you talk more on what influence the Catholic Church has on the mindset of the quinceañera?
SC:
Yeah, so, that newspaper from Corpus Christi really was a great resource and it really opened my eyes to how much reach the Catholic Church had in everyday people's lives.
One of the first things that I remember reading was a four-part editorial piece from a man who later became the first Mexican-American Archbishop of Texas, I believe. And it was basically him having a big rant about how much we have strayed from the real meaning of the quinceañera which is to give thanks to God for allowing the young lady to reach this age and for her to be able to give herself back to God and The Virgin. So that's kind of where I started to see the religious portion of Thanksgiving Mass is starting to drop off then. And so, they [the Church] were just trying to do anything and everything to get people to start having it [Thanksgiving Mass].
In Catholic religion you have, I believe it's 5 [7] sacraments--the quinceañera celebration is not a sacrament by the religious Church standards. So technically, the Catholic Church doesn't need to be having a quinceañera Thanksgiving Mass. It's just somewhere along the line somebody started doing it and then others started doing it. So, it's very interesting to see if it's not sanctioned by the Church as a sacrament, why are they having it, you know?
Oh, and I tried to interview a local priest, who is Hispanic and gives Spanish Mass here, but he wasn't very interested in interviewing with me. And when I asked him, you know, ‘Well, can you just tell me briefly, you know, what your experience is, how you feel about it?’ He's like, ‘My experience doesn't really matter, you know, these girls here, they're going to have their party with or without the Church, and they're going to do what they want. They mostly just want the party.’
So, it even seems like they don't even want to partake in the celebration.
ZM:
I wonder if the religious component of the quinceañera isn’t a way for the Catholic Church to dominate or control women’s bodies? I have a working understand of Catholicism, but so much of the language used is almost violent to where women are punished—historically—simply because of their gender. And this notion of purity and the desire to have or control a women’s virginity is predatory under the umbrella of the quinceañera.
SC:
That also falls within that marianismo term I was talking about earlier. Absolutely! It seems like a way to try and control women's bodies. Because they [the Church] would literally tell the girls like, ‘This is your chance to pledge yourself to God’ and like, ‘You will be an honorable woman and stay pure until you are married’ and then like, ‘You will not give any lip to your husband. You will do what your husband says. You will give him however many children he wants.’
This isn't spoken, but it's implied--it doesn't matter if your husband steps out on you and has other relationships with other women. That's expected of him because of this machismo/marianismo paradigm. The way that they show that they’re a “man” is through their virility. Through having however many women, having however many children. And the women, no matter how they're treated, they will achieve the love and peace and comfort of The Virgin Mary through all of these sacrifices that they have to go through. Through living with abusers, with men who have extramarital affairs.
ZM:
So how are Latinas finding agency within the cultural practice of having a quinceañera?
SC:
Well, I definitely think the definition of womanhood has changed and these girls are adapting to that. The perfect example to me was literally one [interviewee] wearing Crocs her whole party, the other one wearing Vans. It's like genius, of course!
So the one that was wearing Vans, I think, I wanna say she told me that she skates so it makes sense why she would prefer to wear Vans throughout her party. They're creating agency because a lot of their responses was, ‘I wanted to have a quinceañera not only because my mom wanted me to, but also because I wanted to connect with my heritage.’ So, some of these girls have been born and raised in Cabarrus County. So, this is all that they've known. Even though they all speak English, understand Spanish, and can reply, a little bit, in Spanish they're still able to connect to their heritage through their classmates, through their family, and through this party, in the South especially.
ZM:
How do quinceañeras for people who identify as nonbinary or with the queer community, are they more receptive to having a quinceañera knowing that it is gendered? Or is there just an acceptance of having a birthday, on your fifteenth year, that incorporates some of those like pageantry elements? If you've seen anything like that?
SC:
I would have been very grateful to been able to interview somebody who identifies as queer or nonbinary.
So, the advances that we have achieved in the US--even for me it's difficult to find the words for some of these terms, so I have to reach out, you know, to cousins in Costa Rica and ask them like, ‘Hey, how do you say gender nonbinary in Spanish?’ Just even having those types of conversations with my parents, it's difficult finding the words in Spanish to express what these things are? With that being said, I haven't here, in Converse County, heard or experienced a nonbinary person having a quinceañera. I did hear about a woman who was celebrating her sons quinceañero.
So, HBO has a documentary on quinceañera--the name is escaping me right now--but it's, I believe, a four part series. They're about an hour long each episode, and the first episode starts with a trans girl who's celebrating her quince. And they're talking about how--because they're older women, so probably I'd say their forties-fifties maybe? Back in their day, even here in the US, they weren't having these opportunities. They couldn't be their true authentic selves out in public. It's great that you are able to have this and exist in this space and not like fear for your life and not have the obstacles that we had. It's a very touching episode, but I would love to see that happen more.
I'm just afraid that even Latino culture here in the US, is not as advanced as the rest of America. And even American culture is still not as advanced as it should be when it comes to these topics.
ZM:
Yeah, so we talked a lot about the social practice of the quinceañeras, so how are you trying to frame your research? How do you extract information on this huge subject and organize it? Is the exhibition based on geography, by origin, or looks at the history of quinceañeras? How are you choosing what pieces to display in a museum setting?SC:
That's a great question.So, the Cabarrus Museum of History where the exhibit is currently displayed, is a one room museum inside the Historic Cabarrus County Courthouse. The city wanted to demolish it to build a new courthouse that is existing next to it. So, a group of local citizens got together and attempted to save it, and they did. So then, from there stemmed the Historic Cabarrus Association--it was called the Concord Museum, and now they're the Cabarrus Museum of History.
I mean, I originally--I wasn't even going to do an exhibit. My project was supposed to be just oral histories. And as I started the first oral history, I mentioned something about, ‘I wish I would have kept some of my things’ and so the quinceañera I was interviewing, she said, ‘Oh I still have all my stuff.’ And I was like, ‘Would you be willing to lend me your things for an exhibit?’ And she said, ‘Of course, just let me know when.’ So then I started the task of finding a museum that would be willing to host this exhibit.
So, then I started reaching out to different museums. This one, here in Cabarrus County, obviously was my top choice because they also have an oral history project collecting the stories of local Cabarrus County citizens. I said, ‘OK, these are Cabarrus County citizens. This oral history can go nestled in within that bigger oral history project that they've got.’
So I had one dress--I basically had one whole collection. We're going to call it the Purple Collection because everything's purple. So, I had her dress, I had her crinolina which is the big hoop skirt that goes underneath, I had her crown. She gave me her quinceañera ring, her earrings, her necklace. She gave me her bouquet, her Bible, her cushion. She gave me her heels since she didn't use them. I had an invitation because I was invited to her party. I had a little keepsake, so her party was September of 2021. So her keepsake was a little organza baggy with a mask and a hand sanitizer because, you know, that was still COVID.
The photographer, who photographed the Purple Collection, I reached out to her and so, she put me in contact with a few others [quinceañeras]. I was able to get the collection of one other girl. I'll call her the Gold Collection. Most quinceañera dress skirts are made of tool, like layers upon layers upon layers of tool. Her dress was, I guess maybe the tools on the inside, but on the outside it's a very beautiful satin cloth and it's--I mean--it's got the most gorgeous embroidered detail crystals everywhere. Beautiful! And it has a cute little bolero like a shawl that's also all embroidered. So, the shawl you're meant to wear it when you're at the Thanksgiving Mass and then at the party you take it off and most of the dresses were sweetheart necklines, some of them had like spaghetti straps. And then through my mom I was able to find one of her friends, has a daughter who is in a wheelchair. So, her dress wasn't as poofy, but it was also golden and it has like these very beautiful turquoise embroidered butterflies everywhere. And so, she gave me the little doll that she got, which looks exactly like the dress and her crown.
I did go to the local Catholic Church and I found some books on quinceañeras. So, they have like preparation books, so it's like a little quinceañera booklet that teaches you what things to read before your quinceañera class that you're meant to go to. I had to supplement things like that, like the book. I had to get a rosary because none of the girls that I interviewed had a Thanksgiving Mass.
And then after I had all the items, I just kind of figured out, you know, how to place everything and so then I started the first panel is basically like a very brief introduction to what the quinceañera is, the definition of the ritual, and then just a brief definition of some terms that I used. So, for example like I outlined on there the term Latino, Latina, Latinx, Hispanic is used interchangeably throughout this whole exhibit. It means a person who is of Hispanic or Latino descent that lives in the US. That's it. Kept it simple.
Then the second set of panels is talking about the origin. So where do we believe it came from, how it was practiced back then, the traditional parts of it. So that white dress, the very covered dress, the Thanksgiving Mass. Then we move on to new things that have stemmed from the celebration. So, then I showed a picture of this little girl who was celebrating her cinco-cincañera. So she was turning five but she had a big old poofy quinceañera dress, and she had her Court of Honor. I think she had like three or four little boys with her. Adorable with her crown and everything. And then, there's also women that are turning fifty, they celebrate cincuentañera.
So, then after that it moves on to the like quinceañera of today. So the US Quinceanera, which is a term Julia Alvarez coined in her book “Once Upon a Quinceanera.” If you watch MTV’s “[My Super] Sweet 16”, that's a US quinceañera. Very extravagant, over the top, ‘I expect a car for my birthday,’ which, you know, of course, that's not the experience of every girl who's celebrating their quinceañera here in the US. But, the emphasis is more on consumerism and materialistic possessions.
And then on one side, I talked briefly about the oral history project, how it ties in with the quinceañeras, how the items tie in with the quinceañeras, and I put like a small little sound bite of one of the interviews.
ZM:
Who do you imagine your viewer being?
SC:
I did the panels both in English and Spanish. With the text for the panels, in Spanish in particular, it was definitely a challenge because, like I mentioned, I have a pretty good working Spanish. But I know that most text for museums can sometimes be daunting, can be very scholarly, and sometimes it just puts people off. You know, you start reading the first sentence and you read a word you don't understand and you're like, ‘OK, moving on.’ I wanted to make sure that it was accessible for all, starting with 8th grade level and lower.And I had that same challenge with Spanish. So, what I would do is, I would type my text in Spanish and show it to my mom and ask her, ‘Hey, read this and tell me how you understand or what you're understanding from this.’ So, she would read it and then she would tell me, ‘Well, I'm not sure why you're saying this?’ I would explain the context and she would say, ‘Well, then you need to explain the context because if I just read this, I don't know what you're talking about.’ So, she really helped me bring it down to a public history accessible level where everyone could understand.
Not even to mention the nuances that there are within regular Spanish, Mexican-Spanish, Costa Rican--like all of our Spanish is all jumbled. So, I had to figure out, you know, how to make sure that my audiences were understanding what I was trying to say in the most plain, clear, jargon free, text possible.
I really, mostly, wanted to hit Latino and Latinas in the community. However, I knew that that was going to be a challenge just to even get them to the museum. The museum's free, but a lot of our people don't like to go to museums or don't go to museums because they feel excluded. They feel like it's a very elitist organization, or they just don't enjoy going to these places. So, I wanted to try to make it welcoming and make it friendly and make it seem less daunting than what most museum experiences have been for Latinos.
And I also created a program, like a little take home paper doll quinceañera. So, I had five different skin tones, so you would pick whatever doll you wanted. Then I had every color imaginable for the dress and then you had like glitter glue pens and washi tape and little sequins like all kinds of fun things. And it was really fun to see which dolls certain girls would pick. So I figured most girls would go for a doll that looked like them, but they would choose other dolls that didn't quite necessarily look like them and they would dress them up and make such intricate, beautiful designs on their dresses and they were so proud at the end of it to show it and take a photo of it. It was the cutest thing. But it wasn't just little girls who were doing it. It was also older women.
I remember I took my grandma to see the exhibit and she made one. She still has it and she, I mean, she sat there for like an hour and a half because she wanted her doll to be beautiful. And she said, ‘This is what I would have worn if I would have been able to have a quinceañera.’ That's what I wanted, you know. So, yeah.
ZM:
There are two audiences that you’re speaking to, Latinos and non-Latinos. And so, how are you making the research accessible or interesting to both?
SC:
I wanted to be able to introduce people who are not familiar with the tradition, with Hispanic culture to the quinceañera--a small glimpse of what it's like to grow up Latina. And I wanted Hispanic and Latina women or people that came to see the exhibit, to see themselves represented.
So, one of the biggest things for me that basically propelled me into my museum career was seeing myself, seeing my culture represented in these spaces that are majority white spaces. So, I wanted to create that same feeling, especially for these girls who I interviewed. Just the fact that they were able to give me their time and participate in this record that will stay forever. So, I just wanted a way to be able to give back to them and let them see themselves represented through an artistic way to potentially inspire them to want to peruse whatever career they want.
This career for me, has been in the making for fifteen years, it feels like. But, you just have to continue and preserve and make that representation. If you don’t find it, make it for others so that way they can also be inspired to fulfill their dreams and follow whatever it is that they want. And then, they can then be the representation that they want to portray for others.
ZM:
Yeah, well do you have any final thoughts or announcements you would like to make?
SC:
I will be presenting on this topic at the National Council on Public History is happening down in Atlanta, Georgia, April 12th through the 16th and I'll be presenting on the 13th, which is the Thursday. And then in March, I will be presenting the same project as well at the North Carolina Museums Conference in Gastonia, which is from March 26th through the 28th.
At both of these conferences, I'll be presenting the potential of creating this as a statewide project, particularly at the North Carolina Museum's Council. I would love to see what kind of reception I get to the idea. Because then, you know, I could just partner with local organizations and I could put that into my proposal for this grant I'm thinking of. And then at NCPH to show the progression of the project and how it's gone so far. Why not do it on, you know, the whole South. Let me head up South Carolina and Georgia and head over to Tennessee and Kentucky and, you know, of course that would be ideal, but we'll see.
Episode 11: Encountering the Imperial Museum
I spoke with Sarita Echavez See about her 2017 book “The Filipino Primitive” which traces stolen Filipino objects in the United States that have served as the foundation of power and knowledge in museums. One level her book is about two very specific museums, but in reality, the points she makes can be applied to any similar museum that considers itself to have an ethnological collection. I was particularly interested in the concept of the imperial museum how a museum reflects subconscious prejudice.
NOV 25, 2022-
Sarita Echavez See is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkely and obtain her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Colombia University.
Image Credit: Display cases E3-E8, Philippine exhibit at the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History, Ann Arbor. Photography by Mark Gjukich.
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The Filipino Primitive: Accumulation and Resistance in the American Museum (2017)
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Zoë Elena Moldenhauer:
Welcome Sarita and thank you for joining me today! Can you introduce yourself?
Sarita Echavaz See:
I am Sarita Echavez See, and I am an academic with lots of interests in deconstructing-destabilizing the university, as we know it. And I am the author of the book “The Filipino Primitive” that we'll be talking about today. I currently teach at the University of California, Riverside and I'm delighted to be here!
ZM:And how did you come to museum studies and to your book “The Filipino Primitive”?
SS:
So, I really do believe that wherever one is located, shapes one's research in addition to whatever baggage or histories, both personal as well as communal, shapes our work. But I was actually teaching and writing at the University of Michigan.
And so, the museums and the collections and the archives and vast imperial storage bins that I write about just was part of my workplace. And also, it was part of my own education about the importance of the Midwest when it comes to the discovery of disciplines by America like anthropology, archaeology in the Philippines.
So, I was very happy to be part of and welcomed into a very vibrant under the radar group of Philippine, Filipino, Philippine-x diasporic studies, scholars and students, and staff at the University of Michigan. And it was also part of a journey to understand Ann Arbor, Michigan, in particular as, an imperial capital.
So we used to joke that whereas Vietnam and Senegal maybe get Paris or Sri Lanka, you know, in India and Pakistan get London. The Philippines gets Ann Arbor, Michigan.
ZM:
Your book “The Filipino Primitive” traces stolen objects in the United States that have served as the foundation of power and knowledge in museums. You center your research on two museums in Michigan, the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History and the Frank Murphy Memorial Museum. Can you share what drew you to these collections?
SS:
So, lots of things have changed on that campus since I started doing this research, learning about these collections and archives and the role of the university, particularly the American university and the University of Michigan in the colonization of the Philippines prior to military conquest. But it was really just kind of walking around these museums that were right on campus, right? And then getting to know through our colleague Eloisa Weller and her students who had done lots of research on a beach north of Ann Arbor in Harbor Beach, Michigan, which housed a collection of lots of colonial artifacts from the last American Governor General of the Philippines.
But really, in terms of the natural history museum on campus it is just part of my workplace and I just realized there was there was a huge huge huge Philippine collection in the storage bins. But in terms of what actually got displayed was tiny on the 4th floor of this building and the way it was narrativized or exhibited just had these, you know, quite astonishing-- I mean not astonishing obviously to indigenous peoples and scholars in particular, but still astonishing the way in which so much got alighted, erased, you know, completely rewritten, including the mythology around who is a “primitive” and a “savage” and how contemporaneous that experience was. How much it actually really, really shaped my ability to get a job connected to build Philippine-x diasporic studies.
So, its that eerie sense of walking back in time just literally visiting the museum exhibition time and time again just to experience the space. But then also, you know, understanding that this affects our present. That the many, many thousands of schoolchildren who come through every day and look at recreated dinosaurs, stuffed Michigan birds and other wildlife, and then indigenous peoples and Filipinos.
ZM:
You describe the formation of the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History's collection through sponsored expeditions. Who is Carl Guthe and why does he matter?
SS:
Yeah, so, Carl Guthe is one of the trio of University of Michigan white American male amateur in some cases and then professional archaeologist-ethnologists who were really, really crucial to the so-called “discovery” of the Philippines as an object of study that founds the disciplines of anthropology, natural history and archaeology in particular at the University Michigan.
So, Guthe who collected things from the Philippines that would found the collection at the university, and in addition to others like Joseph Steer as well as Steve Worster whom there's many, many books and articles about them. Guthe worked in the 1920s or so to produce this collection. He had zero expertise in Asian archaeology--that didn't stop him. But he was funded and he, you know, seemed to be a very good negotiator. Agreed to go on this so-called expedition to the Philippines if upon return he would get to become professor and director of, I think, the Archaeology department.
So, I focus on him because I wanted to just read about what he thought, right? Some of the ways in which to engage with the colonial archive will mean taking seriously what the colonizer says in in in their words, right, that's sometimes going to be the only access to written information. What was particularly shocking is his journal notes and published articles about excavating burial sites that seemed to be still like actively sacred burial sites in the Philippines and bringing back to the United States apparently 95 human skulls from these burial sites. So, the collection in Ann Arbor literally is a mass grave. As far as I can tell from his own writings.
Part of it too is that when you went into the foyer of the Natural History Museum--which has been torn down and rebuilt but in the original building there's these busts of these founding scientists and collectors and Guthe, I think, is one of them. And I was like “who's the headhunter here, you know?”
There's just Filipinos like puns, right? You know terrible, terrible corny puns, but this was a conceptual pun and ideological pun that kind of haunted me. Whose heads are being collected, you know, and who is the savage here?
ZM:
On one level your book is about this very specific museum, but in reality, the points you make can be applied to any similar museum that considered itself to have an ethnological collection. Can you talk about this? I'm particularly interested in the concept of the imperial museum.
SS:
I honestly can't speak to other museums. I came to this project not as a museologist or a museum studies-- you, you are the expert here. But I will say just to backtrack to the Guthe example that while he was collecting human remains in the 1920s or so his irritation about what he calls native shamans interrupting his collection his, you know, work in these burial sites. His irritation is actually picked up in a 2013 special issue about Guthe where contemporary PhD students or graduates, right, are mournfully or lamenting the way in which, you know, even though, you know, his practices would not pass muster today ethic in terms of all the violations there's this mournful kind of tone that actually affirms today, you know, in 21st century Guthe’s irritation at the interference by native shamans.
So that's what I mean by like there's this strange, doubled experience of the past and the present when it comes to encountering the imperial museum. And the affirmation of that, in the 2013 special issue about Guthe that I write about, because the goal is to research burial practices, but it's the very burial practices which are collectivist and ongoing that they are irritated at. It just doesn't make any sense!
One wants to be open to the research questions but the actual question, and then the method actually doesn't allow the Western researcher to even investigate what they say they're going to investigate, right? So, in a way, Sylvia Winters’ work on Europe's discovery of the New World was very important to me because she inverts it. Her, really quite sweeping argument, but very compelling is that it's not that the West discovers the New World, but that the West needs the New World in order to discover science in order to then discover the New World. So, it's something kind of similar to that I think that was going on with Guthe and University Michigan in Ann Arbor example. That they needed the Philippines in order to discover certain disciplines of anthropology and archaeology, for example, and then and then the Philippines, you know, can be discovered to have no culture, no ability to understand, conceptualize the importance of history and preservation etcetera.
I think that's perhaps what I can contribute to the concept of the imperial museum that it's very, very present today.
ZM:
When I read your book, I came across the term knowledge nullius, I was very excited because it summed up so much of what I've been noticing being the underlying issues in museums. Can you talk about the term and where you came up with it?
SS:
Oh, so, knowledge nullius is very much just a phrase that I coined that is just really following in the footsteps, deeply indebted to the work of many indigenous studies and black feminist scholars. So, we were more familiar with the concept of terra nullius. Terra means land, nullius--null, zero, right? And that we get this concept of empty land which can be filled by settlers, right? Who know how to farm the land, how to make the land bloom and become productive. That concept of empty land obviously can come around only by emptying the land. So, a act of genocidal dispossess.
So, what does that mean then when it comes to knowledge? While going through and reading Carl Guthe’s work and sort of starting to get to know where the origins of certain disciplines, you know, collections comes from, it occurred to me that terra nullius has its counterpart when it comes to the accumulation of academic knowledge. Who gets to produce knowledge? And who is empty of knowledge and just needs to be filled?
ZM:
That's interesting because we are seeing activism of indigenous –as well as other groups—reclaiming knowledge of cultural artifacts in museums. Challenging the prejudice and discriminatory claims that indigenous peoples don’t know how to preserve their own cultures in the same way as the Euro-American does. And I would say, as museum professionals, when we go into a museum, we automatically start to decode the museum. You do this so well in your book. Can you describe how a museum subconsciously expresses reflective prejudice?
SS:
So, I am greatly influenced by the work of the feminist narratologist and cultural theorist Mieke Bal, who started out as a narrative theorist--attention to stories in typically textual objects like novels, short stories, etc. And then she turned to the application of narrative theory to paintings, realist paintings in particular paying attention to where the direction of what eyes are looking at, what hands are pointing at, and then moves on to museums floor plan as well as the exhibitions themselves.
So, though just the way in which a museum tells a story, tells a story of exposition in particular, of showing things, not showing certain things or people. Who gets to become silent? Who gets to become highly visible? How ideology that seems perfectly normal, natural, transparent is perhaps the most powerful mode of storytelling that there can be. So, definitely Mieke Bal’s work on narratology was just so helpful to me. The work of the artist Paul Pfeiffer was also really, really influential. He had this really great exhibition about the “Heart of Darkness” about [Joseph] Conrad’s novel. And then the way he depicted it by placing a miniature little white tent in a jungle. It also felt like it was Central Park in New York City too, you know?
And then, I actually walked through the Museum of Natural History in a more deliberate way knowing that I was going to study it, write about it, with a friend at the time who is a contractor who eventually became an architect. And just walking through with a companion who pays attention to what materials are used, the curve, the angle of the display windows whether they're canting up or down, the height you know, can a child actually look at the necklace of boar's teeth or look at the display of human teeth. The warmth of the color of wood that was used as opposed to concrete, which is much, you know, rectilinear and all of that. So those three kinds of influences really helped me to kind of put together the story, the sensation, and then the alternate artist perspective. That was very helpful for me.
ZM:
And as you described, the materials used in the Filipino exhibit for the display cases are made of wood that evoke earth tones. And people feel like they're meant to be among nature. And this connection to nature subconsciously conveys this idea of primitive. And what I was struck most by was the visual comparison of boar's teeth to that of human teeth as well as comparing that to another display case where the museum presented weapons. And that museum goers would subconsciously read those images together, even if the museum is not directly saying anything, that our takeaway is that primitivism is synonymous with cannibalism or barbarism.
And those connections are still very present, not just in the University of Michigan, but any natural history museum. And something that also struck me was how this process of knowledge nullius not only affects the gaps in indigenous people's knowledge and memories, but also the gaps in scholarship and research that no matter what the information is going to be incomplete because curators and researchers do not interrogate the historical context and conceptual framework that have made these collections possible. In your opinion, what should a museum do when exhibiting or writing to fill in those gaps?
SS:
Part of what I try to do or tried to do in this book with this particular museum and collection was to simply document the work and the activism of graduate students at the time. And it was graduate students, not faculty, right, or administrators, right, who were working towards the decolonization of the museum or the very least, you know, starting to open the question of how to try to treat with some dignity some of the objects, including human remains, in the collection.
So, you know, in my own minor way, just documenting the group that formed the time “Ethnography as Activism” which again was spearheaded and led by graduate students. They got a lot of flack for that and some of them, you know, moved to other universities and I would imagine partially, you know, as part of the repercussions of their activism. So, I think that's one way, you know, and I think their work is much more legible today. The other way that I've tried to interrupt, you know, or--is it about interrupting the imperial space of the museum or creating an alternative?
I turn to contemporary artists of the Philippine-x diaspora and try to do what might be called a kind of thick description of their work, interrupting the imperial space of the museum. So, for example, paying real attention to what somebody like Paul Pfeiffer is doing. And in the case of this book, I write about Stephanie Syjuco's work, in particular an installation called “Raiders” where she is creating a parody of the accumulative, you know, collecting of the museum and the Asian art museum, in her case. So, what she does is to find, you know, all these images of what looked to be like classical East Asian ceramics and vases and just download them, print them out, slap them on to kind of cardboard and set them up as like just a whole big collection of fake vases and call it “Raiders”. So that we kind of think about the act of looting which is a criminal act and is usually criminalized in a highly racial and classed way and to kind of turn it onto the imperial museum itself.
Then there are other ways more progressive museum staff who are dealing with very, very conservative institutions sometimes commissioned a contemporary artist, right, to enter the space and try to activate alternate ways of encountering objects or spaces of the museum. So those are just some of the ways that I'm familiar with.
ZM:
That’s a great transition, because now we're going to turn to the Frank Murphy Memorial Museum. You examine the foreign nature of the Filipino collection in a domestic space that houses a collection of personal and cultural artifacts that range from paintings to furniture. So how are you looking at the philanthropic taste towards objects that affect the context of Filipino culture?
SS:
So, the juxtaposition or the simultaneity of the foreign and the domestic when it comes to this experience of walking through somebody’s home. Yeah, so Frank Murphy last American Governor General of the Philippines and who was from Michigan, went to the University of Michigan’s undergraduate and also law school, I believe. Anyways, he was a bachelor all his life and so he brought along his sister as his first lady, to the Philippines. Their home has turned into a museum in Harvard Beach, Michigan which is where the Murphy family is from. So, you go through, and these volunteer museum curators have done their utter best, you know, to take care of these objects and there's this juxtaposition position on the foreign and domestic. So, at the same time as you were pointing out in your question that these objects from the Philippines become exotic and it is quite odd. You know, small town in Michigan, you know, and you're suddenly surrounded by all these Philippine things.
But there's a third way in which the foreign and domestic I meant to sort of call forth as part of the analysis of this home turned museum which has to do with the phrase foreign in a domestic sense. When it comes to how the United States Supreme Court wrestled with what to do with so-called “new possessions” of the United States: Hawaii, Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines. Does the constitution follow the flag, right? All these new lands-territories are being acquired, meaning, you know, new resources and possibly more raw resources and possibly markets, you know, for consumption as well as possibly labor. But do the peoples associated with those lands, then do they get to have any rights? Do they get to have passports? So, the US Supreme Court comes up with this phrase foreign in a domestic sense in an attempt to kind of reconcile what largely was a tax issue, right? Do objects, being you know, imported from the territories or colonies, are they subject to tax? So, I think that was just trying to do. Trying to draw parallel between these legal capitalist colonial questions and infuse them into the simple act of walking through somebody's home turned museum.
ZM:
You reflect on a tour you took at the Frank Murphy Memorial Museum, but I think this applies to the University of Michigan as well that because Filipino culture is not well known in the Midwest and the objects are extracted and isolated in an aristocratic home. That the collection suffers from historic amnesia as a result of colonialism and is presented in an exotic curiosity. How does it feel to you, as a Filipino woman and scholar, to see your culture defined by this imperialist?
SS:
Uh, it's very eerie.
So, I'm half Filipina and I'm also half Chinese-Singaporean. And my brother and I were raised as embassy brats. My father’s actually a retired diplomat from Singapore government. So, we would go on assignment and our home was an official residence and representative of the Singapore government.
I don't talk about this at all in the book, but I think that definitely shaped what it means for a home to have all this kind of state apparatus attached to it very explicitly, right?
As a Filipina, I don't know. It is a constant sort of recognition and misrecognition. Maybe that might be a way to kind of put it.
ZM:
It absolutely does, and in 2020 we witnessed a social shift where museums responded by publishing equity pledges to address their colonialist foundations and how to ethically represent cultures and identities. And yet, we are seeing museums awkwardly put forth their action plans. You call this confession and avoidance syndrome. Can you explain this term and how you were thinking about this in 2017 when your book was published to today?
SS:
Oh! So, you know, the confession and avoidance syndrome that's actually not me, at all. That's actually Angela Miller who wrote this really great book called “Empire of the Eye”. It was very, you know, important and helpful. Perhaps I could talk about, again, how in the space of exposition--of showing in the museum space I think the --just as a critic-scholar who's just trying to not merely document but just to give a sense of thick description. I mean, that's I think what I can contribute as a cultural theorist is to pay attention, once again, about what gets shown and silenced.
I mean sometimes the most visible thing is the most silenced thing. And the most invisible thing is the loudest. When it comes to shaping the discourse and how all of that--what I think Angela Miller, if I understand her work right, calls confessions and avoidance, all of that becomes more powerful when it becomes normalized naturalized. Which is the work of ideology.
Not only is it about what gets shown, what is not shown, what gets spoken about, who gets to speak, right, but it's also that display window that we don't even see any more. And I think it actually is probably Gayatri Spivak who paid a lot of attention to transparency and what gets naturalized as neutral. But then Denise de Silva whose book “The Global Idea of Race” gives us this concept of the subject of transparency. That is to say, the European subject who becomes the mind versus the body, you know, not subject to nature, whose position as the mind becomes completely naturalized.
So, I'm not sure if that is at all helpful. But what I can contribute is that attention to not simply what is true or false. Right, I mean, get really, really caught up in like “oh does this is really represent how things are, who people are, what are the practices, is this accurate or not? I just tried to kind of pay attention to the processes of collection, of accumulation, and to draw on Marxist theory, black feminist theory, indigenous theory. But finally, to ask people to pay attention to what gets rendered transparent. What is the role of that display glass through which we look at the object of the primitive?
ZM:
How I interpreted confessions and avoidance syndrome as museums acknowledging their participation in colonialism but avoiding taking real action. For example, land acknowledgements. Every institution, business, organization in the United States acknowledge the indigenous people that had once lived on that land but what one questions, by acknowledging the lands that have belonged to indigenous people what is going to be done about that?
Will the museum repatriate objects back to those communities? Will the museum give up their land? Is it enough to just acknowledge or is part of activism seeing that action put into practice? And so, reading your book was profound for me, in my own research thinking about the museum as an imperial space.
Do you have any final thoughts or announcements you would like to make?
SS:
I guess my only final thought is whereas, you know, our conversation has been mostly about the imperial museum, right, in the space of exhibition. That for quite a while now, what has kept me going in dealing with being constantly recognized-misrecognized in the space we call academia is being constantly inspired by contemporary artists of the Philipine-x diaspora.
And so, in writing this book, you know, you need a way out of the imperial space. You need a break, you know, and that has always been through just the amazing amazing work of artists right now that I'm very, very grateful for. So, that's the only thing I would say.
Episode 10: Investing In What Change Looks Like
During my final year at NYU, I took a course on Ethical Frameworks in Museums taught by Visiting Assisting Professor of Museum Studies, Lauraberth Lima. I invited Lima to speak with me to help define terminology such as decolonization and equity and how these words are co-opted by museums as well as to provide insight on how to communicate complex theories to the general public who might not be aware of the decolonial movement. I was also interested in how one teaches ethical frameworks and how such a course prepares emerging museum professionals in the field.
AUG 29, 2022-
Lauraberth Lima is a cultural consultant and educator with over 12 years of experience in museums, community engagement, and cultural institutions. Lima has worked with The Wellcome Trust, Art21, Visual Aids, and MoMA PS1 with a focus on intergenerational engagement, LGBTQ2SIA+ gender representation, youth engagement, and health equity. Lima is a founding member of The Love Yourself Project in New York City, a member of The Committee to Empower Voices for Healing and Equity. Lima is current a faculty member at New York University's Museum Studies program and at the Bard Prison Initiative.
To learn more about Lima, visit their website: www.lauraberthlima.com
Image Credit: Lauraberth Lima
Episode 9: On Our Own Terms
Today, I am sitting down with Puerto Rican artist, Miguel Luciano who spoke with me about their residency at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and their project Cemí-Libre: Block Party Celebration and Pop-up Exhibition (2021). The project featured work created during the Civic Practice Partnership Artist-in-Residency in where Miguel explored the history between The Met's collection and its connection to the East Harlem community in New York City. In our discussion, Miguel reflects on the social responsibilities of leveraging the institutions resources to give back to the community as well as to challenge the colonial framework by replicating one of the museum's artifacts, the Zemí Cohoba Stand (A.D. 974-1020), and symbolically returning it back to the Taíno community in El Barrio.
JUL 13, 2022-
Miguel Luciano is a multimedia visual artist whose work explores themes of history, popular culture, and social justice through sculpture, painting and socially engaged public art projects. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at The Mercosul Biennial, Brazil; El Museo Nacional de Bella Artes de la Habana, Cuba; La Grande Halle de la Villette, Paris; El Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City; The San Juan Poly-Graphic Triennial, Puerto Rico, and The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the Latinx Artist Fellowship (2021), The Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award Grant. His work is featured in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The National Museum of African American History and Culture, The Brooklyn Museum, El Museo del Barrio, the Newark Museum, and the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico.
Luciano is currently a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts and Yale University School of Art.
To lean more about Miguel Luciano, visit their website or follow them on Instagram @miguelluciano_ny.
Image Credit: Miguel Luciano. Cemí in bronze, East Harlem, 2021.
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Art Heritage of Puerto Rico (1974) Catalog
Zemí Cohoba Stand (A.D. 974–1020)
Miguel Luciano: Cemí-Libre Block Party Celebration (2021)
Caney Indian Spiritual Circle
Activists Protest Christie’s Over Sale of Taíno Objects: ‘These Aren’t Just Cultural Heritage’ by Tessa Solomon
El Met | Support Latinx Art | The Met Store
no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria (Nov 23, 2022 — Apr 23, 2023) at Whitney Museum of American Art
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Zoë Elena Moldenhauer:
Thank you Miguel for joining me, I’m really excited to be featuring you on The Aerogramme Center’s podcast. Can you introduce yourself?
Miguel Luciano:
Thanks for having me, Zoë. My name is Miguel Luciano and I’m a visual artist based here in New York.
ZM:
Yes, and we’re specifically talking about your art residency that you completed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I wanted to reach out to you and include you because you have this interesting collaboration with the recent Arte del Mar (2019-2021) exhibition that was hosted in last summer. And our previous episode featured museum professional and archeologist, James A. Doyle who shared the behind the scenes of their curatorial research and practice on the exhibition. How did you come to the residency program and what were some of the themes and goals you wanted to explore?
ML:
The residency program was sort of an experiment. We were kind of in the pilot program, phase of the residency. It was initiated under the leadership of Sandra Jackson-Dumont who was the Director of Education at The Met, at the time, and it was part of a larger project called the Civic Practice Partnership. And the Civic Practice Partnership was a collective of organizations in New York that were brought together, The Met was the convener, and had received some funding to think about how the museum could reach out to underserved communities, right? How social justice as a focus could lead that kind of programing, and so, they organized this collective organization large and small to be in kind of a think-tank together. So, Rashida Bumbray and myself were the inaugural artists of that project and we were invited then to think about the museum as a resource, how could we partner with the museum in the work that we do in our own communities.
So, all of the artists that were invited eventually into this residency space were artists that have community-based practices whose work connects directly to their own communities and the communities we live in and connect with are often communities that are marginalized from the institution and from most institutions.
And that was the idea coming in. It was wide open, in terms of how we could approach that work, and in the beginning, we were really just trying to understand the institution, its history, how to navigate this institution because its enormous. It’s like many institutions within an institution in some ways.
So, for me, where I started, was really looking at where’s Puerto Rico at The Met? Where is my culture and history represented? I’m from Puerto Rico originally and I live in East Harlem which is a historically Puerto Rican neighborhood. What’s the history of the relationship between the community I live in in El Barrio, in East Harlem, and The Met and so, that was kind of my starting point.
Where that took me was to 1973 and the very first and only exhibition about Puerto Rico or Puerto Rican art at The Met was this really incredible exhibition called the Art Heritage of Puerto Rico. It was a collaborative exhibition between El Museo del Barrio and The Met. So, El Museo was founded in ’69, this exhibition happens in ‘73 and El Museo was really kind of the leader in proposing and shaping this exhibition with The Met.
It's a fascinating history and El Museo at the time was led by Dr. Marta Morena Vega, they were located in a storefront gallery on 3rd Ave between 106th and 107th, a very modest space. There were a couple of conjoined storefronts that was, at the time, the museum that was very community-based. So, it's a remarkable story in the sense that they were able to bring artwork from Puerto Rico, some of the most important art historical works, in fact, to New York for the first time. It combined everything from Taíno artifacts and artworks to contemporary work by artists in the 70s, so, it was a large survey of work covering a huge span of history.
It opened first in El Museo del Barrio. That was also part of the demand. And was first made available to our community and after its opening for a month or two, and then it travels to The Met a few blocks south where it opens as a larger exhibition there. They did a catalog that was bilingual, the catalog, the exhibition text was bilingual. There were all these really incredible kind of progressive things that happen in this moment, this is kind of before my time, but it does influence a whole generation of Nuyorican artists who are coming of age in New York at that time, so, it was really, really important as a history. And so, I interviewed and talked to people that were involved in it, who helped create that exhibition, people who attended the exhibition. And that was kind of part of my early research in trying to find the original catalog and images of the show and to ask the questions, ‘What happened afterwards? What happened after all that exchange?’
The sad answer to that is that not a lot happened afterwards. There wasn’t continued relationships, it didn’t lead to major acquisitions, and it didn’t lead to future exhibition opportunities for Puerto Rican artists. Puerto Rican artists and Latinx artists in general are very underrepresented at The Met. So, it opened a lot of questions without providing a lot of answers and that was part of what I was researching was unpacking that history. And fifty years later, almost, asking the questions, ‘What can be done now and how does this history move forward today?’
So that was one of my starting points and looking for like, you know what is in the collection at The Met, where is Puerto Rican art at The Met? There are some works by a few contemporary artists there are works by Juan Sanchez in the collection there are paintings by Rafael Ferrer, there's there are a couple of things there, not a lot, and some historic works on paper by Puerto Rican artists and printmakers, Tufiño, Omar, and others, but almost all of that work has been in storage forever. It's never been exhibited. You know, I was cataloging and documenting what I could find but also you know, learning that that work has just been in storage forever. So again, they were disappointing histories.
Meanwhile, if you go to the museum today and try to find something from Puerto Rico on view, what you will find are some Taíno artifacts – so, you know, the galleries of the Ancient Americas are closed right now for renovation but while I was there they were open so you could find a couple of artifacts from Puerto Rico, small artworks, Taíno artworks in the Ancient Americas collection in a small vitrine about the Caribbean.
And then if you go to musical instruments on the opposite end of the museum, in a kind of little-known gallery, you'll find other objects. There are musical instruments from Puerto Rico and very old version of the cuatro made, I think, in the early 1900s and a more contemporary version of the cuatro that was made by a Nuyorican instrument maker who actually – his name was Efrain Vega. He was an employee at The Met. He worked in the plastic shop, in the plexi shop, making vitrines for museum displays and exhibitions. And in his spare time also made musical instruments, a few of the of the guys in the shop apparently made instruments and had other hobbies and his were so good that they really impressed some of the curators when they found out about them, and they ended up acquiring a couple of his instruments in the 90s and one of them is on view. And so, the electric cuatro, this black and red kind of plexi faced cuatro is on view and that's like the sole object made by a contemporary artist or craftsman in the museum today.
And it's got another kind of fascinating history in that it was made in the bowels of the museum by a Puerto Rican artist and employee of the museum, really, at that time. It's not a well-known history and so I started to try to unpack then at least these points of entry at the museum to see what I could do with the few works that are in the collection, right, from pre-Columbian work to even some of the musical instruments.
ZM:
Yeah, that’s fascinating. I think it makes me question what were the motivations of the curators when they saw that?
ML:
I mean there's a bigger history because there was a musical program about the cuatro that happened during those years in the 90s. There was also the Puerto Rican Day parade.
So, the Puerto Rican Day parade is on 5th Ave, and it stops kind of like where The Met begins. You know, usually comes up 5th Ave and stops around like 81st, or something like that, it kind of turns off. But there was a time when some of the floats and things would still be in that area of the city on 5th Ave and somewhere in that history, there was this huge float with like a 20-foot-long replica of a cuatro. A cuatro is like a folk instrument, kind of a small guitar that's our national instrument in Puerto Rico. It's very nostalgic and widely celebrated in our folk music, and there are a few cuatros in the collection that got into the collection in the 90s made by expert cuatro makers from the island and a replica of one of those was made into this kind of this 20-foot-long version on a float for La Rosa Del Monte in which is a company that does the shipping back and forth to the Caribbean. It's during that time also that, you know, Efrain Vega is making the cuatro in in the museum and so there's this awareness I think of some of this is going on amongst the curators.
So, it happens during that time and there was like this musical problem called the Cuatricimo, or something I think was called, in the 90s that was a celebration of Puerto Rican music there. So, there was this moment through musical instruments that our culture gets celebrated and represented in that era. I think instrument is kind of like evidence of those connections in that history.
ZM:
And when I spoke to James previously, he had also mentioned The Art Heritage of Puerto Rico and the exhibit that followed in 1985 at The Met solely of Dominican art. And so I think hearing you add to that story about, not necessarily a lot happening at The Met, but there are things happening around it and outside of it, and I think that's you're kind of pointing out like between those two major exhibitions and the recent one of Arte Del Mar, in your opinion, as someone who's kind of coming in and has kind of been working adjacent to it, I think what is still missing or needed to be explored? And I think as an artist, like what were the responsibilities abilities you felt needed to be highlighted?
ML:
You know, I had the good fortune in terms of the timing of like having a residency during a time when there was a Taino show in the works. You know, the first Taíno show there in like a generation.
James Doyle was one of the first curators that I met in the residency, and I reached out to him and his department really early on because that one vitrine, and it's a small vitrine, that hosted Taíno objects in the galleries of Ancient America. And that's the representation of the Taíno’s, you know.
The most striking object in that vitrine was the Zemí Cohoba Stand (A.D. 974–1020). It's just incredibly detailed wooden sculpture that's probably one of the most important sculptures made in wood that survives in the world in terms of Taíno sculpture. And it's been a touchstone like for Caribbean folks for years who will be in those galleries and seek out that that small space of representation. So, when I found that they were doing a Taíno show was it was exciting, you know, that the vitrine would get at least a gallery in this pop-up space and it's literally at the crossroads between the art of Africa and the art of Ancient America.
I had approached James about seeing the collection and got to see a lot of the work behind the scenes, which was amazing. He was super supportive in terms of the research. I was also learning about kind of the resources that the institution in terms of like what might be possible to have the objects photographed and scanned digitally. Is it possible to create a replica object of something, and so they have an imaging department at The Met that does all of that work.
I had this idea of making a replica of some of the Taíno objects and wanted to sort of explore that possibility and really from the beginning, for me, the idea was is it possible to make a 3D replica that could symbolically be removed from the museum and kind of reclaimed as an object and reintroduced in another context in a community context, right? In a way that could be more accessible to our communities outside of the museum, etc. And so that proposal, like, turned into a real project and it just so happened that this exhibition was happening, Arte del Mar, the work was going to be de-installed, so we were able to scan the Zemí Cohoba Stand and went through the process of getting this really high-quality digital scan and having replicas made. It took a while to happen, but for the first year of my residency I was exploring all the technical aspects of that project and finally arriving at this 3D replica that was robotically carved and milled and then cast in other materials.
I was worried that they [the museum] would be kind of protective of these things. In a way there was some of that energy in terms of keeping these objects in the museum context. And I was interested in how we might reinterpret these heritage objects that really belong to all of us in terms of our culture, our history, and our heritage. If I could make a replica, it could introduce this other possibility of another experience, where we see and get close to the work outside of a museum context outside of the kind of colonial framework of a museum, and it can experience the work on our own terms. And what would that be like? You know, how can we actually learn about these heritage objects up close and build our own relationships with them, with the expertise of our own community coming forward and things like that. So yeah, that was sort of the experiment.
ZM:
And what was that process like replicating it?
ML:
Yeah, it's a good question. So, I mean the technical part of it was that, you know, was scanned and then the scanned gets either printed or milled through another fabricator. It was carved in a material that would give us kind of the maximum resolution or maximum quality to have as close to the original detail as possible. And so, I made castings later from that, I made molds of the object and castings. Because I was interested in people being able to touch the object, get close to it, so make castings in resin and plaster and fiberglass.
And I also wanted to sort of experiment with reimagining this object, interpreting it, you know. Parts of it are broken off, parts of it were removed at some point and so we have to use our imagination a little bit to imagine what might have been in the space of the eyes or in the ears as material.
I was interested in sort of fixing the broken pieces and also reimagining the other connections and interpreting it, you know, through my own practice, right, as a contemporary object also. So, what's the relationship between this history and our culture today? And I often do that in my own work is, like, incorporate historic objects and artifacts in a way that can reimagine them in a contemporary context through the lens of popular culture and history and social justice.
What I arrived at in the end as a solution in terms of creating a work that could be publicly exhibited and experienced was, I made a bronze replica. And the bronze was the closest to the original in terms of surface in terms of the patina and the color of the object and also really durable so people could touch it. People could get close to it if they wanted to and engage with it without a vitrine around it and without the danger of it being damaged.
And so that's what I actually ended up producing and exhibiting in this pop-up space at the end of my residency last summer. We had this pop-up exhibition in a storefront gallery in East Harlem and, the project was called Cemí-Libre. And so, the whole project sort of play on words because the word [c]zemí is, you know, the name in Spanish – well, it's an indigenous word that gets kind of spelled in Spanish sometimes, but [c]zemí is the word for an ancestral spirit. There are many [c]zemí’s that have different names and different sort of identities. So Cemí-Libre was also a play on the idea of like being cemí-libre, right, semi-free.
All of that in reference to the zemí being sort of liberated symbolically from the vitrine, from the museum and returned to a community context for the first time, in the diaspora, here in El Barrio. So that was the first presentation. And it's also kind of a reference to Puerto Rico and our politics, you know, in terms of the island and the question of freedom and sovereignty. And cemí-libre is also kind of a metaphor for the paradox of our political status.
ZM:
And you also created protest shields and you were looking at the Arms and Armor section at The Met at in the various shields that you described as pageantries of power. Can you also talk about that research as well?
ML:
Sure. So, in the exhibition, so fast forwarding it is a kind of like the culminating event of my residency, was this pop-up exhibition in East Harlem on 104th St and I showed a few different projects that happened during the residency were produced independently and sometimes also with the support of The Met. I was originally looking at them [the shields] and started working on them in 2019, during the summer of protests in Puerto Rico. And there was a huge public uprising in protest of the Governor of Puerto Rico, Ricky Rosselló, and the movement really was to oust to the governor who was corrupt and had offended the entire island. And this is all in response to the treatment of the people in the island after the hurricane and during a debt crisis where people, I mean, we're just struggling, you know, incredibly struggling.
And so, the debt crisis has been an ongoing problem that was exacerbated by Hurricane Maria. The impact of the debt crisis is felt most heavily that the heaviest burden falls on the poorest Puerto Ricans, and so the priority is to pay back these U.S. bond holders and banks and people who own this debt. Meanwhile, they're instituting major austerity programs, like hardcore austerity programs, that have led to massive school closures, like hundreds of public schools being closed, other social services, public service programs, hospitals, you name it are being closed to try to reduce the debt. Schools are big, big, big, big problem, obviously and so the future of education is at stake for the next generation.
Anyway, during that time I was back and forth to Puerto Rico quite a lot and had like noticed, these abandoned school buses and several places and met one of the operators of a local school bus company who had talked to me about the impact of the school closures and the debt crisis on his business. And they were like these school bus graveyards, you know, that were just kind of out of commission buses that were not worth servicing in some cases because they didn't have the work.
He allowed me to use some of the material from the buses and we stripped a few of them down and used the metal from decommissioned school buses and turn them into protest shields that were symbolically designed really to support the protesters who were fighting to protect public education on the island among other things. Yeah, all of that happened between 2019 and 2020, and the work was finished in 2020 and also influenced by the uprisings and the protests here in the United States, during Black Lives Matter and after well, the murder of George Floyd and everything that happened in 2020. That work was produced really in response to both of those things.
I spent a lot of time looking at the Arms and Armor collection. You know, rethinking what arms and armor and protection mean not for the nobles, you know, but for the people, right? So that's what the shields were about. So, they were in the show and so were images from a public art project about the Young Lords that had happened between 2018 and 2019. That was a large public art project about the history of the Young Lords Party here in El Barrio, in New York. I had the honor of collaborating with Hiram Maristany who was the official photographer of the Young Lords and one of the founding members of the New York chapter, also, one of the most important photographers in our community.
We recently lost Hiram, he just passed away a couple of months ago, and it's a tremendous loss for our community but he was a very dear friend for many years and a neighbor, and a collaborator and that project was such an honor to work on. And we took ten of Hiram’s photographs of activist moments of the Young Lords and we enlarged them into billboard size images that were installed at the same location that they were taken 50 years prior. And so, it's called Mapping Resistance: The Young Lords in El Barrio (2019) and with these ten images we sort of mapped out part of the history of the Young Lords in East Harlem.
And we did these walking tours that reactivated those histories through the voices of some of the people that helped shape it, like Hiram, and other members of the Young Lords. And we also worked with different high schools and local educators and El Museo was also a partner, you know, their education program did tours, and I did all this while I was still in residence at The Met, and I brought The Met into the project as well. And so, some of the banners or the enlargements we also showed in this gallery as part of the project. In the eventual celebration of this exhibition at the end, which became this block party celebration.
But the star within this whole exhibition was the bronze Zemí and we made an altar like pedestal for the Zemí. It had its own wall and its own space, and it really was the feature of the exhibition and sometimes people brought offerings and different things. You know, we had fresh flowers every day that were at the altar, we had fruits and other things that were actually from Puerto Rico and from the islands that were imported. Everything about sort of receiving the Zemí here was also about kind of honoring its presence with other connections to the Caribbean and to El Barrio at the same time.
ZM:
In James interview, he spoke about the recent changes and emphasis on research and scholarship surrounding indigenous history and culture. That the Taíno were believed to have been extinct but in fact there's evidence of genetic research, cuisines, linguistics, that say otherwise. And your project is a really good example of realizing that research. And by welcoming the Zemí statue to New York City and witnessing that celebration, I think you described it as welcoming, can you speak to that
ML:
Sure. Yeah, I mean the idea was that we would have two events really. There was the exhibition and the block party. So, at the end of my residency I wanted to use the remaining resources to really celebrate in the space of community. I had always wanted to do that, but it was during Covid, so my residency was delayed and extended.
And so, I was sort of holding out for the opportunity to have a public event and at the end of last summer, the city finally allowed for permits for block parties. So, we got the permit and produced a block party. And it was beautiful. It was amazing. It was the first block party in like 2 years on 104th St in East Harlem, which is a street that has regular functions and events, like block parties. And the idea was to introduce the Zemí through that event and welcome the Zemí to El Barrio.
So, I reached out to some people in the Taíno community here in New York and outside of New York too. And so, we invited Miguel Sague who is a beike, he is like a shaman, he's a Taino elder, who's part of a spiritual group the Caney Indian Spiritual Circle. He came to New York from Pittsburgh. He helped us welcome the Zemí through as sort of bienvenidos, and they created an altar in the street. He and some of his colleagues came together and did a very, very special sort of invocation and welcoming of the Zemí and sort of gave a blessing to the street and to the public. And it was a way of kind of welcoming the ancestors into this space. And that was important to me that I wanted the event to be grounded in a kind of welcoming of the ancestors and to reach out to folks that could actually ground it in the traditions of Taíno spirituality.
So, it was a really special way to open the event. And there were songs and there were eventually music and dancing and a whole celebration. After the kind of ceremony with the Zemí in the street we return the Zemí to the altar in the gallery and then we opened the program with Legacy Women who are an amazing musical group of women that play Afro-Caribbean music and it's the music from the Dominican Republic, from Haiti, from Puerto Rico, Cuba. So, we also grounded the event in music of our African ancestry in the Caribbean, so welcoming again, our ancestors into the space, Taíno, African and that also kind of set the tone for the rest of the day. It was it was beautiful. It was really, really beautiful.
From Legacy Women came Kinto Zonó, a Bomba y Plena group here, in New York, that was amazing. And finally, at the end of the program, we had Fabiola Méndez performed on cuatro. And that’s where the connection to the cuatro as the real, really like the sole object on view of the museum made by a Puerto Rican artist got activated. And so, Fabiola sort of brought us home with the cuatro with the sounds of the islands.
We had an incredible day. People were dancing in the street. We had a lechon for about 100 people that ate. The Puerto Rico Schwinn Clubs came, classic riders from Brooklyn. It was a great way to end the residency in the space of community.
ZM:
Yeah, that's incredibly powerful. One of my favorite scholars to read on the subject of decolonization and community museums is Amy Lonetree who writes extensively that Indigenous collections should have the voices of those communities incorporated in educational material, the wall text in an exhibition, and even incorporating knowledge practices to classification systems. What I appreciated about your project and your work as a whole is that it encourages people to learn and ask questions about their culture and histories that have been largely absent/ignored/left to forget. In your research, how were you thinking about the cultural loss and absent knowledge of Taíno history and culture in the museum space
ML:
So, one of my frustrations has always been that any access to information about the objects that do exist in the collections is so limited. There are these outdated sort of plaque cards with very generic information, oftentimes about the object, about its history, etc. so there are so many gaps.
Arte del Mar exhibition I thought did a really great job in terms of like introducing a broader context for Taíno history that was not solely the Caribbean, even, but that actually span into central and South America. And it was really about that whole region, so it opened up all these connections of artistic exchange or cultural exchange that I think encourage people to think more flexibly about Taíno history and heritage. So that was encouraging but this was kind of also kind of like a blip on the screen, it was a temporary exhibition. This was also the last exhibition also before that whole wing closed down so it's going to be interesting to see what they do in the wing afterwards.
So, we'll see, you know, for me, the opportunity here was – I'm not an expert on any of this so as an artist, I was interested in how making the replica object was sort of an act of resistance in itself, right? It was a way of challenging the museum as a colonial framework or colonial context and kind of resetting the terms of engagement on our own terms as a community. The work as a heritage object accessible so that we can actually build our own relationship with it, you know, imagine our own connections, create our own connections. So, people who came through the exhibition, some people identified as Taíno and have a deep knowledge and history and awareness of their identity and history in that sense, and others who share Taíno heritage but maybe didn't know anything about it, right? And it was a space to really welcome everybody to engage and understand something more than they might have originally. And even for people who are experts, like nobody can’t get close to these objects, you know what I mean? Like we're just not allowed to, they're [the artifacts] always behind glass, etc. So, you know, part of the idea was it was about an educational opportunity also for our own community and for myself.
I mean, throughout this, for me, was an extraordinary way just to learn more about this Zemi Cohoba Stand, right, and to try to understand its history to understand its energy, honestly. And I've had the privilege of living around these objects now for several months, and they're powerful work to be around.
So, it was quite a privilege to do all of this work and I'm still thinking about what it means and where the next sort of iteration of this project will happen.
ZM:
Did you see the Christie’s video of them auctioning Taíno artifacts, I think it was –
ML:
I didn't see the video, but I'm aware of like of the event.
ZM:
Yeah, I mean just relying on the same rhetoric that the Taíno are completely destroyed, there's, you know, no reason to not claim these works or sell them at auction. As you can imagine there's a lot of social media backlash.
ML:
Yes, huge backlash publicly, but it didn't stop them from selling those objects, right?
ZM:
No.
ML:
Yeah, yeah, what a mess. And what a shame. It's like, that's the marketplace for these things, it's really sad that history is part of the history that also influences these institutional collections, and while I think institutions are trying to think more critically about their own collections, the provenance of these objects and their acquisition history is, and all this stuff, they still have collections that are full of objects that came in through these kinds of marketplace exchanges all over the world. So, they're incredibly problematic histories. And I think that's also important to talk about.
You know, in the case of the Zemi Cohoba Stand, for example, it's not identified with Puerto Rico as an object. It's identified with the Dominican Republic or Haiti, but we don't really know for sure. There's a lot that we don't know. We don't know where it came from exactly because it was never documented, at least not the records that are available. It has a very strange kind of acquisition history that goes back about 100 years to an estate sale in Ireland. It was bought by a British collector and then it goes from there into the Rockefeller collection in maybe in the 50s, but it was acquired originally like in the 30s. Prior to that, there isn't any documentation on the object. You know it's 1000 years old so how it got to Ireland, who knows and where it came from. But so many of the objects have even more obscure histories than that.
That, for me, also makes them [the artifacts] kind of wide open to interpretation. You know what I mean? Because no matter where you're from in the Caribbean, you share a history and heritage that does connect to this work. And that for me is also important to sort of recognize and again to think more sort of flexibly and more openly about inviting all of us. But what I loved about the exhibition that James produced was that pop-up space, as I mentioned before, was really at this crossroads section between the art of Africa and the art of Ancient America. And so, at the very back of the exhibition, he included a painting by Wilfredo Lam that was kind of a bridge between these two spaces that incorporated both African and indigenous symbol systems in that space. And I had always sort of wanted to see something like that happened at The Met because if you're from the Caribbean and you walk into those galleries from that same kind of like central hall, the Caribbean is in this one vitrine, right, but really, our history is right there in the middle of both of those spaces, right? And so, where these spaces merge and connect with one another has not really been explored very much at the institution, anyways.
That for me also, you know, presented really exciting possibilities, you know, because so much of what we understand and actually know of our Taino heritage survives through the African presence on the island. And so, we have to sort of look at those connections and understand the interconnectedness between our African and indigenous history I think to fully understand anything about ourselves as Caribbean people. And so, and they're often separated out in ways that I think should be connected together more often. So, I'm really interested in sort of like those possibilities and that was some of the work that didn't get fully explored in the residency, but hopefully will continue in another way.
ZM:
Yeah, and I think you kind of are doing that because I've noticed on The Met’s social media, and I didn't know that it was directly connected to you, the promotion of T-shirts, totes and mugs and caps to fund acquisitions of Latinx art. That was an initiative you started by wearing El Met T-shirts and promoting the fund kind of without permission. So, can you speak more about the El Met merchandise? Where did this idea come from? And do you have a role in selecting the acquisition works?
ML:
Yeah. Thanks for asking that question. So that was the very last project before I finished my residency was this merchandise project that was really kind of a provocation in the beginning.
I took The Met’s logo and just flipped it with the same kind of script, flipped it from The Met to El Met. I made a series of T-shirts, and I made some postcards and things and started giving them out to educators. I gave it to the then Director of Education, Sandra Jackson-Dumont and I was trying to promote this idea of Puerto Rican and Latinx art fund at the museum. That if they would carry these T-shirts then we could use the project as a catalyst to start this new acquisition fund.
And so, in every public talk that I would do I would always wear those shirts and tried to sort of like prompt other educators and folks to talk about it. Took about a year or two before this actually kind of caught on. It also happens like after the summer of 2020.
There were a series of events, you know, we had the pandemic, we had the summer of protests in 2020 that I think kind of galvanized some areas of the museum into a more conscious space. And we saw this happen all over the city, all over the country where museums often very awkwardly were responding to the cause of social justice. And the calls of decolonization and of confronting their own colonial histories.
There was a new person that came on in merchandising at that time and they loved this project and so it finally became a real thing. So, we partnered together on it and actually created like a larger line. And the whole pitch was that anything with this logo, with the El Met logo will be sold as merchandise that will only support this new fund for Latinx art. That's been the agreement and so far, started to actually generate funding. Between June and December, the project generated over $50,000 in revenue. Super exciting. You know, I'm not sure exactly where we're at right now, but I'm going to check in pretty soon because we're going to reach the one year mark and the goal for me was to try to see how much money we can generate within the first year and then challenge the museum to match those funds and really use this project as a way to leverage more support from more significant sources to get The Met to really invest in this as a project.
So that means like getting their curators on board, getting other people invested in this project, trustees, and other donors to really donate significant funding. The idea was really never just to rely on T-shirts alone to raise this money because that would be offensive. I mean, I would be offended if that was the only thing that we really like relying on, but this has all been kind of an experiment. In the end, we'll see what it turns into. The goal really is to bring more Puerto Rican, more Latinx art like into The Met that's a really underrepresented constituency at The Met, like we have very, very little work right in that collection and even less on view.
So, we'll see where it goes. It's all a work in progress and my hope is that I'll be invited to these conversations about acquisitions, when we have amassed some significant funding to make those things happen. But it's exciting and again it was kind of like a last gesture before leaving and part of the idea also is that you can buy a shirt knowing that your money is going to support this specific initiative. You know, all the merchandise is tagged explaining the initiative, some people just think it's a cool shirt because it says El Met in Spanish or Spanglish and people identify with it in that way.
But for me, it was always about like remixing a logo to really challenge the institution to see themselves through our lens, right, our language and our lens. And to sort of reimagine what the institution can be like when we have a bigger stake in that space. It was really a response to my whole experience in the residency understanding very, very quickly, how underrepresented that we are at the institution. Yeah, it was a gesture to help remedy some of that.
ZM:
I'm excited and I definitely am looking forward to seeing the results of that initiative.
ML:
Yeah, me too!
ZM:
Yeah, and I think you’ve been widely successful in your career and continue to advocate for greater representation of Latinx art in museums and not just in art, but in artists as well. Now you're working at two prestigious schools, School of Visual Arts and Yale, so what advice would you give for future artists and museum professionals seeking ethical change within the museum?
ML:
Well, that's a great question. I mean, in my experience in these institutions also where I teach is often similar. It's about trying to advocate for more diversity, for greater representation. It's the same struggle, you know, everywhere. Part of it is also sort of encouraging artists encouraging curators, educators to really invest in in our culture also. And in our artwork and to embrace our identities I think to challenge sort of like what has been such a Eurocentric sort of historical space, right? Whether it's the art museum space or institutions of higher education to really challenge those spaces, to think in more complex ways about the world, about who we are. And we need to also have this space, to speak for ourselves in these spaces, right? Rather than having others speak for us.
And that's part of the history that's gone wrong so often, right? I'm excited about how some of these places are changing and a new generation of young writers and curators and researchers that are going to be entering into these spaces, that already are and really transforming them. If the museums in this city represented the diversity of our overall population, they would be extremely diverse and we're just not there yet. But I think that's part of the goal is to think about how institutions better reflect the communities that they serve and to understand that we have a stake in this and also can create our own kind of agency, you know. So, I think we're in exciting place because there are so many incredible Latinx artists, so many incredible Latinx researchers, curators, writers, that are all coming of age at a really important time, but all the work in progress, right? We keep pushing, the generation before us pushed us, we're pushing the next generation and that's kind of our charge, you know.
ZM:
Just keep working.
ML:
Yeah, there's a lot of work to do still.
ZM:
Yeah, it's sort of daunting, but I appreciate making the effort in finding those people and building that community. Well, do you have any final thoughts or announcements that you want to make? Any upcoming projects that you working on?
ML:
I would say in terms of upcoming projects, there's an exciting exhibition at the Whitney Museum in the fall on November 23rd will be the opening of no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria (2022-2023). It’s an exhibition of contemporary Puerto Rican art at the Whitney for the very first time, and it's going to be a really exciting show. And the shields that I mentioned, the protest shields, will be actually on view in that exhibition. That's a really exciting opportunity, and again, like the first exhibition of Puerto Rican art at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
We're still in that space of creating these first. Marcela Guerrero is the curator, she's been wonderful, excited also about the work she's doing at that institution.
ZM:
I'm excited. I will be there!
ML:
Yeah, yeah, please, please do. It's going to be great. Incredible artist from the island and the diaspora in that exhibition together, so it’s a really exciting opportunity.
Episode 8: Nothing About Us, Without Us
Today I am sitting down with archeologist and museum professional, James Doyle, who spoke with me about their recent exhibition, “Arte del Mar: Artistic Exchange in the Caribbean” featured at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Arte del Mar (Art From The Sea)” was the second exhibition at The Met to explore the cultural, ritual, and political interconnections between the Taíno civilizations of the Antilles archipelago. In this episode, James shared his curatorial and research practice, exploring new ways to presenting non-Western art in museums, and the recent cultural and social shifts in museums to address systemic racism and land acknowledgements via their collections.
FEB 11, 2022-
James previously served as the Assistant Curator for Arts of the Ancient Americas at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, was a Post-Doctoral Associate in Pre-Colombian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, and is currently the Director of the Matson Museum of Anthropology and an Associate Research Professor of Anthropology at Penn State University.
To learn more about James, visit their website.
Image Credit: Installation Image of "Arte del Mar: Artistic Exchange in the Caribbean" (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, December 16, 2019-June 27, 2021). From left to right: Zemí Cohoba Stand, 974–1020 CE; Bowl with Resist Design, 7th–10th century; Heart-Shaped Bottle with Phallic Spout, 11th–15th century. Photograph by Hyla Skopitz.
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About the Arte del Mar exhibition.
Read the Arte del Mar catalog.
Episode 7: A New Lens
Today I am sitting down with Maryland based printmaker, Juan Esparza, who spoke with me about their artistic process, reclaiming Mexican stereotypes, and the struggles of representation and priveldge to peruse art.
JAN 28, 2022-
Currently based in Silver Spring Maryland, Juan was born in the city of Aguascalientes and is from the small town of Tepusco, Jalisco. His family emigrated to the United States when he was only three years old.
Retrospection is a driving force in his creative process and is inspired by his Mexican American upbringing. Through the use of printmaking and animal symbolism, he creates expressions of nostalgia from being raised in a Mexican household and traveling to and from Mexico throughout his life.
Follow Juan Esparza on Instagram @justjuanofakind
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Zoë Elena Moldenhauer:
Welcome Juan!
Juan Esparza:
Thank you for having me.
ZM:
Yes, can you introduce yourself?
JE:
Yeah, so my name is Juan. I'm an artist currently based in Maryland. I work primarily with printmaking, and I've really been working with printmaking since I've been in college.
ZM:
And we met at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), in undergrad.
JE:
Yeah, how is that we met? Was it through HLSU?
ZM:
I think it was. I don't think we had shared any classes together. I'm trying to remember now, but I think it was through HLSU which was this student organization that you and I both participated in for four-three years.
JE:
I think it was through HLSU because I met Inga in one class that we had together and she said, “Hey you should show up!” and I said “OK.” And then, yeah, I just started showing up.
ZM:
I feel like a lot of the friends I met through that organization; I have also featured on The Aerogramme Center. So, I'm excited to also now be featuring you as well, which is a body of work that you made during your senior thesis at MICA and a lot of the work that you submitted which explores identity, and memory and heritage can you explain the general thesis of that work?
JE:
Yeah, so a lot of the ideas that I was working with was referencing going to Mexico, being Mexican and things that I didn't think I would miss like speaking Spanish was something that I would miss all the time.
So, I really felt homesick and maybe not even homesick, but culture sick where all the little Spanish TV was on all the time, the music in Spanish, speaking the language. Everything was just missing and that's when I really felt more connected by being disconnected because I realized how important it was to me. And since then, I've just continued working with that idea and being really nostalgic now as I look back on time that I spent in Mexico and the important things that I feel I need to highlight.
ZM:
Those feelings come when you’re in Maryland, reflecting on your time being in Mexico. Do you have that feeling when you're in Mexico wishing that you were back in Maryland or is it just sort of a one way?
JE:
Well, definitely I do feel that way, but it's more so because we don't have Wi-Fi, or the cell phone signal isn't that good. But when I'm there, time just passes by way too quick. But as I've gotten older, I've really started to realize how much I like being there and the time that I want to spend there just isn't enough. I just couldn't spend any more time there, but I'm already looking forward to taking some time. Hopefully about a month or so there.
ZM:
That’s a good chunk of time.
And your work specifically uses themes of animals. In your exhibition, you talked a lot about farming, but also the significance of the donkey and using cultural stereotypes, but as a way to reclaim them. Can you explain more of that as well?
JE:
Yeah! So, I've always liked animals ever since I was in high school, actually, taking my first art classes. I don't think there's too much of a deep meaning there, I just think they're really cool. But as I've gotten older and realizing the stereotypes, and like you mentioned, reclaiming them because there is always a negative connotation to donkeys of working hard. But it's always hard labor and it's not necessarily celebrated, but it is something that I think needs to be highlighted because there isn't anything inherently wrong with hard work, and its oftentimes stuff that needs to be done.
Agriculture is the main source of income, whether it's agriculture as in farming or raising animals, livestock, and that's really the main way of living back in my hometown. Animals were always present one way or another. Whether it's my grandpa who had them or I would see my uncles have them or just walking by the street, you would always just see animals, so it's always been present. And as I've gotten older, I started thinking more critically about the animals and their role that they take place culturally.
ZM:
It is sort of a hot bun topic; I think a very politicized topic that you're kind of exploring. Like the underlying-- or something that sort of present in your work but that isn't sort of the forefront of it. I really like that connection, like a social issue but also something that's spiritual.
JE:
I really like the way that you brought that up because in large part something that I have to navigate when I'm creating art is what it is that I can say, what I can’t say, what is OK for me to say, and what I think isn't OK for me to say. Because even though I am Mexican, I've grown up in the United States since I was three years old, so I have a degree of removal from the culture. Even though we would travel back as often as we could, sometimes year by year, sometimes every two years, I've only ever been in Mexico for a snapshot. At most, a month or two out of the year, but then there is 10 other months, and there's countless things going on at that time.
Especially because of the time that we would go. We would always go during summer, so it's the tourist time. It's when all the kids are out of school, it's when people ask for time off, so it's very different seeing it versus my last trip, which was in early November. And I mean it's completely out of season when it comes to people travelling. Because it's after the summer and then before the holiday season. So currently we're in between Christmas and New Year’s so right now is peak where people are traveling there, visiting family, some of them stay for both, someone only stay for Christmas or New Years, but seeing it in November, I mean it's so quiet. There's so little going on, but at the same time there's still so much going on for the people that live there. So, as a tourist, because that's the way I see myself, I’ve only got it snapshot so it's hard for me to navigate what it is that I can say and what I can actually comment on because I don't know. I genuinely don't know what's going.
ZM:
You’re talking about representation, but also how you're using art as a way to kind of bridge both identities of being an artist, but also being -- I guess you're calling it a tourist -- going from two places at once. I am interested in how art is a part of that process of thinking through these ideas. What is your process when you're thinking about these split identities?
JE:
When it comes to process, I have always been an artist that works very intuitively. I don't like having things totally planned out 100% or if I do have it planned out, I always allow myself to adjust things as I go. I work primarily with printmaking, and it can be a little bit difficult. If I carve something out of wood, I can't necessarily go back. I always allow myself to work through it and to change the drawing as I go.
When an idea comes to mind, I like to make lists. I'm old school, so I always write things down in pen and paper. I don't like having things really digital because there's a degree of removal there. But I'll just make a list of different animals, different things that I like, and then write a little bit about why they're significant.
For example, when I think about farm animals, I start making a list of what I see. So, there's chickens, there's donkeys, cows, fowls, goats, sheep. And then from there I start picking out the significance of them. So, there is a bit of a research because sometimes they're nicknames for other things, right? Or their sayings that reference them. I started out by writing and then from there I just allow myself to draw, look up pictures to see what they actually look like. Always allow myself to be playful with them.
ZM:
Something I was thinking about when looking at your exhibit and sitting with your work, was looking at the donkey as a representation of you, is that…?
JE:
It it's funny that you bring that up because my mom would say, “ay que burro eres.” Basically, it's like “oh, you're so donkey” if you're going to translate it, but basically, it's you're not listening. I would just think of myself as it yeah so kind of personifying it. But I did see a lot of myself in it or people that I knew. So, there's also the personification of my grandpa and of my uncles, in a broader sense the people that I've seen growing up. But there is definitely a sense of self there.
ZM:
And some pieces you've titled in Spanish, but others not, and I'm wondering, I think because you have these specific phrases in some works. I'm wondering how you're kind of bridging, I guess, the Spanish culture with your art?
JE:
I don’t think it necessarily has to be a completely literal. Sometimes the titles just come to me easier in Spanish or I'm specifically referencing or a specific memory (nostalgia) that I want to reference, and it just happens to be in Spanish. It just comes down to the piece and then how work on.
ZM:
The piece that I just kind of pulled up quickly, En la calle is the same image of the donkey, a humanoid donkey, surrounded by a crowd of people. But it's printed in four different colors, can you also share the significance of the color choices? I know it comes with an interesting story.
JE:
So, for En la calle, basically the colors choices that I have, specifically the green and yellow that one is referencing maseca, so maseca is what they use to make tortillas. So, I was referencing that because we eat tortillas with everything. And it's something that I would see all the time, it was in the center of our small town, so as I'm driving to the store I see it, on the way back home I see it.
But then there's also pink with pink which is a reference to my uncle’s house because for some reason the house was painted pink. Mexico is known for really bright colors, so that's where the neon green comes in with the pink and yellow. It's just again nostalgia and referencing back to different buildings where the general idea of colors that I see. The use of multiple colors, one, it's a way of creating editions when it comes to printing and then there's the idea of once you start getting to print where it can exist in multiple periods of time. So, a memory can also exist in multiple periods of time, or you can see it multiple different ways as you're getting older. So, it's just highlighting that as well.
ZM:
Because memory is not reliable, and it changes so often—
JE:
Yeah, memory is super reliant on what's currently going on with you as well, because you'll remember things differently depending on what's going on.
So, if you're super stressed out about something and you think back to a time, I don't know last year, it’s hard to pick out, “Oh, I was doing the same thing back then”. Whereas if you were to look back on it [that memory] in a couple months when you don't have that going on, you're not going to pick out the same details. So, memory isn't reliable, and it does change. Also, as you realize why certain things are happening and why certain things happen at a period of time. And you start to process that as well.
ZM:
Does it come easier to do your work after a trip, coming back from Mexico, or is it something that you sit with for a while before you feel that inspiration to make a body of work or a print?
JE:
It's something that I work with. But usually what I do is, I'll make a list, like I have mentioned before, with different ideas, different stuff that I like, and I'll just work out sketches. And then sometimes I'll be doing whatever it is that I'm doing, and I'll be like, “Oh, I could do this for that.” I'll go back and edit the drawing a little bit. It just kind of depends on the piece itself, but I don't usually sit down and say, “OK, you got an hour to plan this out.”
It's just it takes its time and takes it course.
ZM:
So, you sit with a memory for a while and that is part of the process where you think about what you want to say and how you want to represent your home. Also, your identity and how that is translated through into the process.
JE:
Yeah, yeah, I guess you could say it is process based. I work specific way to really highlight an idea, but sometimes things just need to cook more. Or sometimes you have an idea and it's just not working right so you have to let it simmer you got to let it cook for a little bit. Adjust it, adjust it, adjust it and then it works out. So, it depends on the idea and depends on the piece.
ZM:
How do you see your work evolving or what you hope your work will evolve into as you grow?
JE:
So, something that I've been looking at a lot is expanding medium is something I’ve been working out. It's something that I've always struggled with is when I start getting comfortable, I immediately feel like I need to make a switch. So, I want to expand out mediums. I would love to start doing things with textiles or fabrics, embroidery possibly because I think it lends itself very well.
Going from printmaking to embroidery because it is very process based. You spend a lot of time on little details, so it works well with my personality. But ideal wise, I've spent a lot of time thinking about my time spent in Mexico, but then on the other cultural side of it I've lived most of my life here in the United States, so I want to start highlighting that, growing up in a Mexican household, because there's a lot of day-to-day things that I see as cultural, right.
Either television, so highlighting media, I think about sayings so maybe illustrating that, food, traditions there's a lot for me to unpack with that, and the other idea that I was thinking of is the in between. Because growing up the way that we would mostly go to Mexico, because we were a large family, we're a total of six, we would always drive down to Mexico. So, there's the United States and there's Mexico, but then there's the in between of us going there.
And that's a whole thing in itself where you're stuck in a car for two and a half days with five other people, and yeah, there's a lot of landmarks that aren't landmarks that we see as “OK, we're getting close.” And then the whole border situation is a whole other thing because there's that point that some [people] experience there that have to be unpacked, so those are the two general directions that I'm that I'm thinking about. Focusing more so on the United States and being Mexican here, and then also the in between of getting to and from.
ZM:
The whole U.S.-Mexican border is such a fascinating subject in itself that it's this invisible line drawn in the sand, but that it has real consequences that affect people every single day.
JE:
It is a way of, how do I say this, of blending the cultures because privileged takes a part of it. I'm very thankful and grateful to be able to say that I can go between the two [countries], and that's not the case for, you know, so many people. And there's a lot of things growing up, seeing things, I mean, literally seeing people trying to cross, but they're not allowed to while I'm in the car waiting to go where they just check your passport and you’re good to go.
So, there's a lot on pack and as I've gotten older, I started realizing the impact of privilege. There’re things that I feel like I can say, but are there things that I should say for others? Yeah, privileges is a big thinking point for me.
ZM:
In private conversation, you’ve spoken about the conflict that you feel as not just someone who has the ability to travel freely between one country to another, but also that you're an artist. That you come from a traditional Latino household, but also being able to pursue art and trying to find that sense of belonging-
JE:
Yeah, that in itself is a whole can of worms to unpack. Being first generation, right, is so broad. There's the most baseline typical definition where you’re the first generation your family to go to college and first generation is so hard to navigate in itself because you can get different amounts of help, but people want to put everything in one basket when that's just not the case.
ZM:
And also, internal conflict of having to justify art as a career choice that there's more fluidity. And that creates, yeah, I think just a lot of internal conflict. And I experienced that myself because it's about the hustle more than anything.
JE:
Yeah, without a doubt. I wanted to do art. I wouldn't have really gone to school had I not studied art. Unsure. But I started out trying illustration, didn't like that, trying out graphic design hated that even more and it wasn't until I got into fine art where I really decided, “OK this is what I like, and this is what I want to pursue.”
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely that struggle of wanting a “proper” career. But yeah, I mean, you can make it work for sure as an artist. It's just like you're saying, it's about the hustle. There's always an element of guilt, too, because I’m here in the States, I’m studying art. Meanwhile, there’s people back home that want to be a nurse or a doctor who don’t have opportunities for it. And so, there's always an element of guilt.
ZM:
Also, from experience looking at how little representation there is for Latino or Latinx artists out there trying to make a name for themselves. Something I'm interested in; is how you're navigating or how you're thinking about who your audience is?
JE:
My audience is always going to be very Mexico centric. So, people who are from Mexico or, you know, have lived in Mexico, people who can relate who come from a small town, who have similar experiences. That's always been the audience that I have in mind.
And if it reaches more that's good but that's, at the very least, that's who I want to make art. Because I think of my parents as sort of the audience that I want to get at. My parents, my cousins, where if they’re able to understand my art and if they're able to say. “Oh yeah, like I understand this” then that's a successful piece for me.
It's not about somebody from down the street get it, right, because they might not have the same experience and to me that's never mattered. It’s always been with the idea of can my parents understand it, and can my cousins understand it because that's really what the experience is about. It's about Mexico and navigating that. My answer has always been that. I've always thought of my parents as the big audience and then framing it from there.
ZM:
Yeah, it's a celebration of shared culture, a shared identity.
JE:
Yeah, getting your work out there it's super-super hard! And everybody wants something different out of their work.
Some people create art more so as a side thing, I think that's where I'm at currently. Other people, they need it as their job, so they're going to approach it very differently. Like I care about people who have a shared experience who have a similar upbringing who may be feeling the same way, that's who I want to make art for.
ZM:
Were you in Curatorial Studies? Or where you working…
JE:
I was not Curatorial Studies, but I was part of the Exhibitions department. That was my work study job. So, a couple days a week I was helping either put up shows, take down shows, I was gallery watching whatever it was in the gallery space we were doing that.
Yeah, it was really interesting being exposed to that side of it [exhibitions] or seeing the work that was coming in. I think because I was exposed to that I really felt a bit disheartened/disillusioned with art. So, after graduating I just didn't really feel like creating and I think a lot of it was just the work that was being put up just wasn't what I wanted to see.
ZM:
Working in the Curatorial department, how did that shape your work in any way? What do you want to see when you’re in an exhibition space?
JE:
I mean, I think accessibility is a big issue with art because with a lot of pieces you need to know something about the process, or you need to have some sort of background knowledge to understand it. Where in a broader sense, that shouldn't be a thing. Art should be accessible; art shouldn’t just be made for artist when it should be made for the people. Like whoever your audience is, right? But it should be made for broader sense, not just people who work in galleries or curators or other artists.
I believe that art shouldn't be made to just for that. Obviously, if that's who you want to make it for, that is your decision. But in a broader sense, art should be accessible, and it should be for whoever wants to see it. Or if you just happen to be walking by. That was another thing! A lot of these galleries on campus, you had to be on campus to see, so it just wasn't accessible.
I think that was my biggest take away is art is hard to understand. And it's not taking away anything from the art if it's not accessible, right? So, if the art is accessible, it's not taking away from it. You shouldn't need a degree to understand the intricacies and all details for it. Obviously, you can take away from it, but you shouldn't need to know everything about a medium to “get art.”
ZM:
So, accessibility would be an artist drawing from a very specific moment in history or is over complicating their artist statement or–
JE:
I think a lot of it is, is being overly complicated with art. I think you can use a lot of buzzwords, and this goes for anything, right? If you're reading an article, you will see a lot of buzzwords, where I'll be honest, I'm reading something I need to go Google some words because I'm not getting it. So, it's just not sensible for people, it comes down to artist statements, to the piece itself sometimes.
You know, like it's hard to navigate that as well because sometimes your ideas just genuinely revolve around process. But that's not the most accessible thing, but then it's framed in a way that it supposed to be accessible. It's a super fine line and I just think that a lot of people weren't aware of it and weren’t conscience of having to navigate that.
ZM:
I think because it's [that language] always being seen in galleries, unless you step outside of it then you're suddenly aware of the trends that are happening. I can definitely speak to going to many gallery openings or exhibitions and being alienated from a space or from an artist. As you're saying, it's just accessible in some way.
JE:
So, I just started being a teacher, just a couple weeks ago and let me tell you it's a struggle. But something that I have been thinking about constantly is contemporary artists and presenting that to my classes.
Because art is a very antique thing. Who do we think of when you think of art? You think of the Mona Lisa? You think of all these dead artists who are fantastic, but there are countless artists that are currently making art that are super, super great, are really addressing issues like accessibility and represent, but they're just not being talked about. So, that's something that I'm trying to highlight.
We're at a point where art has never been more accessible, but at the same time it feels very alienated because social media is one of the…yeah, it's a blessing and a curse. But there's so many artists that are currently making out. It's so easy to see their work because there's online galleries, there's the artist pages themselves, so why not highlight them? Why not bring that to the forefront?
Definitely you need to learn art history, but you can also learn about what's going on now. And I think now it's the best time because you can do anything. I mean really, there's never been a time where every art movement is currently taking place right now. You can be the classical painter and that works, but you can also be super conceptual in that works. You can take sculpture and whatever direction if you want functional, form, vessels, ceramics or if you want to be completely off the wall and work with whatever medium, right. So that's something to be aware of where now you can really do anything but why is that not being talked about?
ZM:
Given a chance like what, what would you like to see? I think besides accessibility, how would you-
JE:
I think of community that I grew up and having to display art is the first step. So, I would like to see more small gallery places and art just being displayed in restaurants in common settings.
ZM:
Another artist that I interviewed spoke a lot about art being accessible. That every person should be able to purchase a piece of art for their home.
JE:
There’re craft fairs around here, art fairs and I've tried to go to that. And seeing art for sale and it's, you know, it's inexpensive and I see people buying this and that. But I think making art accessible part of it has to go to price as well. You don't need to spend $5,000 on a painting.
You can buy a print and prints are fine. So, I think the way of going about it where you can only have art if it's original that's also not a healthy mentality. It comes out to honesty and then how are you trying to just fill space? Or is that how you work? Accessibility just raises so many questions about art and about what the next step is because there's so many things you need to do to make it accessible, there isn’t just one solution.
ZM:
Who are some of the people that you're looking at? Or what types of readings are you doing?
JE:
I don’t think I’m look at anybody in particular now. It’s just more so whatever I'm feeling that day. So, if I'm thinking sculpturally, I will look up different sculptors, I'll just browse social media. I think that's the biggest inspiration for me currently. Because there's so much good work out there and there's such a variety of styles in any medium, so I look at printmaking a lot, because that's what I like, and there's so many different ways of handling the medium.
Some are very classical, traditional wood engraving, but that some of them are much more abstract process based, so I'll just hop on Instagram and look. That's really what I'm looking at now because you'll see when they [artists] post it [their work]. A lot of stuff you'll see, the progress, and it was made last week, so you know which is very current, very contemporary, and not just something that was made “contemporary” but was actually made in the 90s, right? Because those 20 years everything changes. I also have a big interest in clothing and sneakers. So, I'll browse on Instagram and just go down the rabbit hole until I find something that's cool.
ZM:
What I personally like about Instagram, when I'm researching artists, is its from their own words. And it's [posting] done informally so it's not full of that or statement jargon its -.
JE:
There’s definitely something autobiographical about it, but there's also a lot of them [artists] that are just posting the process, and it's a very raw artwork. For some people you only see the finished work, but for others you see the process. And not so much finished work. So then that's what's important to them. Yeah, I love Instagram. I think it's one of the good things about social media where it's easy to get exposed to a lot of things.
Just don't spend 8 hours on it.
ZM:
And you spoke before a little bit about going to art fairs and something that you and I had started before The Aerogramme Center was The Aerogramme Center was this collective. We were trying to find a way to support artists but also ourselves.
You had graduated a year before me, I graduated, and we were both kind of feeling like there wasn't that sense of community because we didn't have the facilities that we were used to at MICA, and it became a big deterrent in holding ourselves accountable for being artists. And again, that internal guilt that we feel because we weren't making art [after graduating] and so how do you justify that kind of degree?!
JE:
Yeah, for sure I mean the facilities at school were super nice and anybody that's in college, listening to this, you’re going to definitely feel it when you leave because the facilities, no matter how good or bad they are, they're still going to be better than whatever you have at home.
That's one of the hardest things. And then just having a space to work because working in your bedroom is really hard or working in your house. Even if you have a separate room or, it's on a different floor like the basement or anything, it's so hard to remove yourself because you still know you are at home. But at school we were given studios, what junior year? Some people got it all junior year or half of junior year and then senior year you receive at least a studio space. Which was awesome because you got to see so much different work all the time, you get to just have a space to work in that's removed from your house because working your apartment when it's late, you have your roommates there and they’re playing Mario Kart, you don't want to do art.
There is a degree of self-discipline, but having a separate space, it just helps you think differently. Then you also have other responsibilities. Then you have to get a job to support the art making, but then you're tired.
ZM:
It’s definitely a safety net being in a school because you were paying for that. And earlier iterations of what this art collective was, was sort of like a book club where it would be a group of artists that would meet like once a month and share what you are doing.
JE:
Yeah, because the idea of a book club right, you get assigned a book, you read it and then you check in about it. So having a similar art club or collective you kind of hold each other accountable to be to be making. Or maybe not making, but you're researching or you're doing something in the creative process so you're holding yourself accountable for it as well as holding each other accountable. And I think that's super helpful but it's hard when you're at an adult just finding time for stuff.
But I think now, because this was all way before Covid and before Zoom took off, I think now would probably be the easiest time to get it set up because there’s already so much leg work done for it.
ZM:Do you have any final thoughts? Are there any projects you’re working on?
JE:
I'm currently trying to figure out different mediums. I want to do something with patches because I like cloths, like I mentioned, and I think that would be a good way of also presenting art. Stick it on a denim jacket so I'm just working on really expanding out the mediums. Maybe going back to painting since I've been so averse to it. Just thinking of ideas, how I can present them differently? Where I can present them? Do I want to present them because that's a whole other conversation!
ZM:
And that's all we can do right now, but it gives you something to focus on when you're stuck inside.
Episode 6: New York City's Hidden Treasure
Today, I had the immense pleasure of sitting down with Development Officer, Alexander Campos and Educator, Maria del Carmen Barney from The Hispanic Society of American Museum and Library who spoke with me about the museum, it’s complicated history with its Washington Heights neighborhood, and ongoing work to connect with its predominantly Dominican-Puerto Rican community.
SEP 22, 2021-
Alexander Campos is the Development Officer at The Hispanic Society of American Museum and Library in Washington Heights New York. Prior to joining The Hispanic Society, Campos held positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Campos received an M.A. in Arts and Museum Administration from New York University and an undergraduate degree in History of Art and Romance Languages from the University of Pennsylvania.
Maria del Carmen Barney is an Educator and Art Historian with research interests in Islamic Art from the Iberian Peninsula. Barney received an M.A. in Art History and Archeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and an undergraduate degree in Art History from The University of Texas.
To learn more about The Hispanic Society of America Museum and Library visit their website or follow them on Instagram @hispanic_society
Image Credit: Installation Image of Mezzanine Paintings Gallery (Hispanic Society of America Museum & Library, New York).
Episode 5: Latinidad or Trojan Horse?
Today, I am sitting down with New York based artist and educator, Carlos Jesús Martínez Domínguez (FEEGZ) who spoke with me about Latinidad in the art world. Referencing The Cheech Marin Chicano Collection, currently under construction in Riverside, California, how can this push for Latino representation in museums and art collections further colonial mindsets by adhering to words like Latinidad, Latino/a, Latinx?
AUG 19, 2021-
Carlos Jesús Martínez Domínguez (FEEGZ), is a Caribbean-New Yorker, parent, atheist on some days, educator, Dominican-Puerto Rican, interdisciplinary artist born on a military base in North Carolina in 1976. Carlo’s work can be seen at The Hispanic Society of America in partnership with the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance and HBO until August 14, 2021 and is an educator at El Museo del Barrio in New York.
To learn more about Carlos Jesús Martínez Domínguez (FEEGZ), visit their website or follow them on Instagram @feegz173.
Image Credit: Carlos Jesús Martínez Domínguez. The Early Diaspora (1890s – 1940s), 2021.
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El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files 2011 Takes to the Streets
The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today
Camila Osorio: The Battle Over the Soul of El Museo del Barrio (Article)
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Zoë Elena Moldenhauer:
Carlos, thank you for joining me. I’m really excited to have you on our podcast, can you introduce yourself?
Carlos Jesús Martínez Domínguez:
Thank you Zoë, I’m really honored to be here as part of the podcast. My name is Carlos. I go by Carlos Jesús Martínez Domínguez and believe it or not three more names FEEGZ, FIGARO, and FIRO and they’re all kind of a critique on where I come from and the cultures that make me up.
I’m an artist and an educator. I have a G.E.D, so I don’t necessarily come from a place of formal education. I’ve been given a wonderful opportunity that I think more people should be given to work in institutions without having formal education but having a lot to offer in terms of lived experience and also exhibiting work and being out in the community that I serve. I don't know how else to really introduce myself. I think I try to advocate for different things, but maybe it'll unfold in the conversation.
ZM:
And you're an educator at El Museo del Barrio in New York City.
CD:
Yeah, it might be more relevant to say this, even though I'm a little show-offy sometimes. I'm very proud of the fact that I'm part of their permanent collection of El Museo del Barrio. So, I work there but I started off my relationship with them ten years ago to be exact in their 2011 (S) Files Biennial and a piece of mine that was in that show was acquired by the museum. So, it was the first kind of collection, especially a museum collection, that I joined that might be relevant to the conversation we're having.
ZM:
And today we're going to be referencing the Cheech Marin Collection that is currently being constructed by the Riverside Museum and you brought this up to me when you were talking about collections, like who are the people who are deciding what gets collected, you also talked about the terminology of Latino, Latinx, Chicano/x art and now the wave for museums to catch up with diversity.
CD:
You hit it right on the head. The terminology we are using so many of the times, you know, not that I have a lot of experience in it but grant writing, trying to get support for certain things we use these catch words like Latinx or Latino or Latin American and so on and we find ourselves, unfortunately through George Floyd, I mean if we can look at the recent incarnation of this push to be more inclusive and to pay attention to equity, to women’s art to queer arts to catch words like Latino art, right, which in that way it becomes a lot more foggy. Like, sometimes, I flippantly joke that adding more Latinidad to your collection or to your education staff could result in a bunch of blonde Argentinian women that speak Spanish and are blue eyed, right? So, are we really escaping this, you know, colonial mindset, this white supremacy by adhering to words like Latinidad?
You say, Latinidad and I hear white supremacy. So, if a museum is going to put together a show being like, “We're gonna honor Latinidad” like the Guggenheim did a few years ago with Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today (2014), and I go there and, you know, I see Argentinian, Argentinian, northern Mexican, Uruguay, Colombia and not one Dominican artist in New York City with a population of over close to a million Dominicans. And then a few Puerto Ricans, then if we break it down even further, how much of these artists are people of color? How much of them are Indigenous? How much of them are Black, you know what I mean?
Maybe I can talk a little bit about myself. I was born in North Carolina to Dominican mother and a Puerto Rican father. And I catch myself, making a long story short, growing up in San Diego on a military base. For those that know, Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California and I remember thinking about identity through learning about herbivores and carnivores at school, I found out I wasn’t white! I was so young these are things you don’t really think about, unless you are put in a specific situation where you stick out or something. I remember that day thinking about me not being white and there being a difference between us, the kids at school who decided that play tag and separate the kids through phenotype. I remember being chased by a sea of brown- and blond-haired kids and it was me and I don’t know if they were Mexican, they might have been Salvadorian, you know what I mean? From what I remember as a kid, it was me, four Mexicans and two Black kids being chased around and I remember from that day on, thinking I was Mexican until my mother informed me I wasn’t Mexican.
I was growing up in a Mexican rich environment, nowadays I hear a lot of push, specifically from the Chicano environment, for more inclusivity in the arts. The thing is, I am looking in the prism of what people call, Latinidad, a “Latin” art world. And I’m seeing that not within the scope of I’m looking at not needing more of a voice. I want to see more Guatemalan art, I want to see more art from Haiti, I want to see more art from these other places that aren’t getting recognition.
Turning it to the conversation about Cheech Marin and his collection which I understand is mostly a Chicano collection and I'm seeing institutions like El Museo del Barrio having to change their focus from a Puerto Rican institution to now looking at this incredibly large ocean of what they call Latinidad, and even they are confused. They're using, “Latin American” or “Caribbean”, they need to put out a bunch of words to cover and meanwhile, I would argue they don't have the budget to cover this, you know what I'm saying? It's a small institution so in a way, they're biting off more than they could chew.
But you have an institution like the Riverside Museum being started with the cornerstone of Chicano art in a Chicano area. Is that really serving Latinidad or is it serving a group that has 65 million residents in this country? And what I mean by that is, look around who's the director of museums or director of the Smithsonian Latino Center. I hate this doesn't come off as being xenophobic somewhat. Chicanos have been in this country for a very long time. Matter of fact, half of this country used to be Mexico and they’ve been in academia for longer than a lot of other groups. But along with that comes a certain privilege that we are very easily able to identify when it comes to white privilege.
ZM:
You mentioned museum directors, the people who are constructing the art narrative. For example, Alfred Baar was the first director of MoMA and in doing some research I found that MoMA has a Latin American collection. In constructing this idea of Latin American art in the United States, he [Baar] had created this fund to send [collectors] to Latin America who focused more on Mexico because there was a greater connection between Mexico and Europe, that you had a lot of artists going back and forth that resulted in overlooking artists from other Latin American countries and groups.
As you were saying, Chicano/x art is more dominant or the associations we have with Latinidad is [synonymous] with Mexico.
CD:
And that has to do with the rest of Latin America. Most of Latin America, if we’re going to use that term, grew up on looking at Mexican culture through T.V.: El chavo del ocho, Cantinflas. I learned about Santa Anna in school, I’ve visited places in Texas when I was younger where, you know,
“Where you from?”
“I’m Dominican.”
“Where in Mexico is that?”
You know what I mean! It’s this side note. I would like to expand the conversation and I don’t think that the conversation is really being expanded. I want to see more Mexican art from Veracruz, I want to see some Black Mexican art. I’m tired of Frida Kahlo.
ZM:
For me, not using the Latin American catch word, what word would you use?
CD:
Well, that’s when we get into specifications. I’m an educator, I make art about what I edumacate about. So, I use funny terms that I think I try to get across the message.
So, for instance, I call United States people, United Statesian because I don’t like the fact that they kind of bogard the term American. Me, myself, I always ask that question after I go through this rant about the word Latinx or Latinidad or whatever. And they ask, “well, what do you use?” I joke that I call myself Carlos, but I’m comfortable with Caribbean-United Statesian. And I’m being silly, but I think I get the point across, right? The Caribbean is already in the Americas and I’m a product of growing up in the United States and being born in the United States.
I think there’s some specificity there because the Caribbean is a region. And yes, Mexico, Colombia and all of that have regions of their country that belong to that, and they are more Afro-descendant because there’s a history of Black people being pushed to the margins of their country, normally to the oceans. So, when we go to these countries, we’re going to see much more of a Caribbean vibe, much more of a Caribbean culture where you’ll see the music’s have similar beats to the Caribbean. I see the much stronger similarities in terms of me identifying as a Caribbean person.
Another way I phrase it is Spanish imposed. Unified through language which I think is somewhat silly especially when you think about how we were given these languages. But a lot of us are comfortable identifying through language. If that’s the case and that’s what you understand, I use the term Spanish imposed.
I don’t expect people to take those seriously. I expect serious people that do this ethnographic, professorial work and all that to come up with a better term for us to argue about and maybe adopt. But it definitely is not Latinidad.
ZM:
El Museo del Barrio started off as a Puerto Rican centered museum and has now expanded from focusing on one demographic and have opened up their mission to include all people from Latin America. Now the Puerto Rican community whose origins came with the museum feel like that’s a betrayal to the original mission. Do you see something similar happening to the Cheech Marin Collection?
CD:
I could definitely see that because it’s happened a lot. Just to specify, Jack Agüeros was the first director of El Museo to open [its mission] up to other nationalities and peoples. Supposedly the story goes it was two Argentinians that have always been around New York in terms of the arts, but it’s interesting to me that it wasn’t another group that had a large demographic in New York.
I’m not accusing Jack Agüeros, may he rest in peace in doing that, but my mind automatically goes to the fact that we like to align ourselves with whiteness or to what’s most popular. What we look up to. I think there’s a lot of power in that artistic canon being so relevant. If I can give a small anecdotal story, one of our [El Museo del Barrio’s] major collectors in the Dominican Republic, Juan Luis Guerra collects art. Supposedly, he doesn’t collect Dominican art. He collects Mexican art because he claims Dominican art isn’t at the same level. I see in Latinidad the same kind of thought process that certain groups haven’t risen to the standards of having an art history that encompasses a Diego Rivera and the Muralism Movement to Frida Kahlo and the going back to Mayan times in terms of artifacts, but we’re not using equity to view the art through different lenses.
Maybe Frida Kahlo and these Mexican artists were getting that from the European art world at their time, and maybe that’s even still going on, but within the bubble of art and museums and education that I transverse, that is what I see as the case. That certain people’s origins aren’t elevated to that level because of whatever criteria isn’t being met.
ZM:
Right, the dangers of comparing other cultures art to that of “high” European art.
CD:
A lot of what I see working for the last ten years in New York, but also paying attention to the country in general, we elevate Argentinian art, we fetishize Cuban art even thought they have a history of putting a lot of resources into their art. I wish the Dominican Republic kept their art in temperature-controlled rooms in their museums, but unfortunately there’s other issues, but once again I’m talking about what’s going on here in New York. And for a place with a million Dominicans and a very healthy dose of students, art students specifically, coming from the Dominican Republic to Parsons and other schools and us not getting that equivalent attention or display in the art world, I think is problematic.
ZM:
You raised a point about who was doing the collecting, what was being shown, what artwork was being bought. Riverside Assembly Member, Jose Medina said “Latinos have been overlooked in the arts, The Cheech will help bring the real stories and rich history of the Latino community to all Californians.”
CD:
It’s a true and deceiving statement to a certain degree. It is Latino art if you’re going to classify Latinidad like most people do, right? It’s Latino art. It’s Latinx art. Is it going to show the full breadth of Latinidad or is it just going to stay to a certain section of Latinidad, a major group of the United States that being Chicano and people of Mexican descent? Like the last Smithsonian Printing the Revolution (2021) was this show about Chicano printmaking in the United States, I have a couple of friends that are Dominican whose portfolios were added.
For instance, my boy Pepe Coronado was trained under Sam Coronado, no relation, but he was a very famous and legendary printmaker in Austin, Texas. Here’s this Dominican dude from the Dominican Republic and he has this part in this Chicano printmaking movement that encompasses lots of other people. Once again, that’s sometimes how I see us, in general, added into white subjects. You know what I mean? It’s like a sprinkling of people.
For instance, I know this badass Salvadorian printmaker, Carlos Barrera, and by looking at his prints I can learn all about Mexican and Chicano history. I don’t know nothing about Salvadorian history through his prints. Everything is like a pancho villa or a this and that. I think he’s a product of growing up in a Mexican rich environment where sometimes your own identity gets a little drowned out.
You kinda adapt to everything else around you whether its natural or malicious or whatever it may be, it happens. Those stories get minimized, so yeah, I think we need to do a better job.
Look, it’s hard to talk about individuality all the time, but I think we need to do a better job at specifications and really spreading the wealth so to speak. And what I mean by being specific is, instead of opening a museum that’s mostly going to cater to a Chicano clientele in terms of funding, demographics of the area, collections and all of that then maybe you’re being more genuine saying that this is a Chicano museum instead of calling it a Latino museum because you’re using these catch words to say you’re diverse when in a way you’re not.
Now, do I think that there should be more institutions that just concentrate on Chicano art, yes, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that I also think there should be attention paid to other groups like we always can’t pay attention to the individual but what about these smaller communities and paying them homage.
ZM:
And you use the phrase of these catch words being a Trojan Horse when it comes to history, race or gender that it ends up doing more harm in the long run. In your experience working in El Museo have you seen any changes over the years to the community that lives in that neighborhood?
CD:
Yes and no. I have a love-hate relationship with El Museo. I work there at the moment; I’m going to be a little ginger on how I talk about it. But I can make some other comments that you can directly correlate with what’s happening with El Museo and other institutions.
So, for instance, if I was to tell you there are only two Puerto Rican restaurants in East Harlem. And somebody goes,
“What are you talking about? There’s mad Latino food in East Harlem.”
And I go, “Yeah I said there’s no Puerto Rican food in East Harlem. There are no restaurants left.”
There are plenty of Dominican restaurants and plenty of Mexican restaurants, but there are no Puerto Rican restaurants. It’s a way to get around it. I made the joke earlier about like, “our staff is all Latino” and then you look at the staff and they’re all blond and blue-eyed. Is that really diversity? Is that really different from MoMA because you have white women from the Midwest teaching people and we have white women from Chile teaching people that are there because they can afford to do an unpaid internship and they’re not taking people from the neighborhood that can’t afford being at an unpaid internship because they need to work two jobs or whatever, whatever. We use it [diversity] as some kind of defense.
“I’m not racist, I’m Dominican!”
What does your nationality have to do with your race, religion, and all of that?! We use it as a Trojan Horse to kind of exhibit diversity. “We’re not that, we’re Latino.” Meanwhile the countries we come from can be just as racist or have a longer history of racism. Univision and Telemundo are a way more white than some of the main network-English speaking channels I look at. They’re whiter!
I just see a lot of the same things going on just translated to our issues. The same things we complain about in terms of the larger artworld I see happening in this bubble that we’re interested in.
You’re at The Hispanic Society for instance, I’ve always been interested but never had the opportunity too much to learn that much about the collection and all that, but I know some of the collection is problematic. Some people don’t understand the mission of it so I’m ready to give The Hispanic Society more of a break than I am MoMA or El Museo or any of these other places because sometimes people don’t understand these catch phrases or these terms.
The Hispanic Society back in the day, when the Dominican community started getting larger in Washington Heights in the 60s but really in the 80s-90s and we started to become the majority. Some of the activists in the neighborhood pin-pointed The Hispanic Society and they were like, “We want inclusion, this place is called The Hispanic Society.” Which I think is hilarious because, to me I’ve never really identified with that word, to a lot of people that word Hispanic is part of this subgroup who identify under our colonial parents therefor you deserve being included in this museum. At the moment they have a want, and I will once again bring it back to George Floyd and this renewed movement to bring equity into our everyday lives, again, this is in cycles but what I have noticed recently especially with Black Panther and all that is that we’re talking about this in the arts.
The Hispanic Society was never a place I thought I belonged, but I have a suspicion now with this movement or this accountability being held towards institutions and this institution, even though it has a reach outside this community they want more inclusion in the neighborhood in terms of their public programs and so on. So, I don’t know what that’s going to mean. Does that mean they’re going to expand their collection to include more artists from different races that can technically fit in their overall mission? Like there has been Black and Indigenous artists in these colonies that made work, is that going to be the push? It’s an open-ended question I’m asking. But they weren’t started in the Civil Rights Movement, it was a white dude who was like, “Yo, I like Iberian art” and it has nothing to do with Dominicans and all that stuff.
Now, a lot of these other institutions like The Studio Museum and CCADI and El Museo del Barrio and a lot of other institutions were specifically started through the Civil Rights Movement. They were started through the movements in the 60s and 70s to give voice to communities that didn’t have these voices. So, for me, it’s an extra slap on the face that they would go the way of sometimes whiteness or elitism. Because you also have the same criticisms on The Studio Museum in Harlem being a recycling bin for Yale artists in terms of residencies and all that.
ZM:
The founder of The Hispanic Society was a white male who was able to travel and had this mission to collect literature and artwork of Spanish-Iberian history and culture and some of that did include art from colonized territories in Latin America. Now I’m curious, because the Cheech Marin Collection is Cheech’s own collection, he is privileged, and he is a celebrity, do you think that the collection could have an aspect that follow in the same category that The Hispanic Society is?
CD:
Let me make a statement about myself. I’m Dominican and I’m Puerto Rican and I view myself as a light-skinned, privileged within the context of the Dominican Republic white enough man. Chicano’s, especially Chicano’s at the stature he’s at represent the white man in the world I’m talking about even though we can definitely point towards the Bauhaus Movement and Argentina and actual white Latinidad, you know what I mean? But I’m talking about in terms of power, in terms of population, and in terms of stories being told, and being heard. I don’t think we’re clamoring and miss seeing a Mexican film director getting an award.
You are somewhat profiting off of a larger community and my question is are you going to be fair to the larger community or will this be a Chicano art museum? If it is a Chicano art museum, by you profiting off of this larger community, I’m saying that you’re using the words like Latino like there’s specific money out there being shelved for Latino stuff. Whether it’s the Mellon Foundation or the Ford Foundation they ear mark money like, “These are the people we’re going to give this to.” Is that money going to Latinidad, is it going to a Salvadorian community in Washington D.C. or is it just going to the places that we think about the center of our canon being in terms of the bubble I keep referring to. And that’s Chicano art and Chicano education in terms of the canon of academia and the starting of these departments.
A lot of the people I admire and that have been around for a while are people that come from that Chicano movement in the 60s and 70s. Just like the Civil Rights Movement, this gave birth to a lot of these old school professors we have nowadays.
ZM:
That was a good clarification, he [Cheech Marin] is going to profit off of this. It’s his private collection he’s loaning, and people are going to have to pay admissions to see his collection.
CD:
I didn’t know that!
ZM:
Yeah, that the museum is expected to make $3 million annually based off of the attendance the museum already has. I assume there is going to be some language in that contract that says, he gets a percentage–
CD:
Maybe I think better of him, but I don’t even think it’s about that. I think its about him wanting him to, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt obviously, expand the story of his culture and that’s a dope endeavor but a lot of us don’t have the same opportunity.
Whether he’s profiting in that way you’re talking about, I have no idea. I actually think that his intensions are well, they’re just limited and when we’re talking about this, I want to be a little more specific as to who it’s going to benefit or spotlight. And internationally speaking I’d argue that the culture I come from needs more representation in terms of our contributions to this country, our demographics in terms of this country, our history and so on.
I’ll bring up the ones they never hear of like Ecuador was the third largest group of Spanish speakers up until about ten years ago when the Mexican population in terms of numbers overtook the Ecuadorians. Now, you would’ve never know that by looking at art in museums in New York, by looking at curriculum in art in classrooms, you wouldn’t know Ecuadorians were so relevant to New York culture in terms of numbers. But we know that about Mexicans even though Mexicans are one of the latest growing diaspora in New York, but you would think by going to museums that Mexico’s this old school ethnic group in New York.
So, I want to learn more about Guatemalan art. I want to learn about these other groups that don’t get shine and a lot of the times it’s because they’re poorer and smaller. Where’s the equity in us viewing that art through a different lens and not always comparing it to the Frida Kahlo’s and Diego Rivera’s.
ZM:
I’m remembering the Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 (2018) exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. It was supposed to be this massive survey, but there wasn’t that much representation of Dominican or Afro-Latina women. Is that another form of a Trojan Horse but with gender?
CD:
No, I think it’s exactly the same and I remember that Radical Women show, and I can’t say I remember the show exactly, but I remember specifically Dr. Marta Moreno Vega who was the second director of El Museo del Barrio and she also started the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute. She was included in that show and there was a piece that she made.
Now, she’ll tell you herself, she didn’t even think that thing existed anymore [in the collections]. She was never an artist; it was something she was doing as kicks in some public program thing where she made a drawing of herself. And they [the curators] looked for that! I’m just talking shit now, I don’t know this specifically, but the thing is, things like this happen.
Let me break for a second, I used to work at Museum of Arts and Design, and they did this survey of 70s clothing and stuff like that. They bought a dashiki on Esty and included it in the show. Why do you think they did that? Because they didn’t have anything! I think they got some pretty cool dashiki just to give them a little credit, but this is ridiculous! And the reason why I know was because it was fessed up to us. I was an educator there that used to do the walk arounds. I don’t work there anymore, I don’t care, but that institution was racist and it started with the docents. Those old ladies that would give money to the museum and they would look at me up and down, I hated it!
Anyway, they [MAD Museum] told us like, “Yeah there’s not a lot of Black stuff in this show, we tried to add Black stuff, so this is what we did.” And they were saying it like it was some kind of good thing they did and a couple of us were like, “Oh God, this is so cringe worthy.” I suspect they looked for that Marta Moreno Vega piece. I’m no curator but trying to find different identities and play that game sometimes you do it badly, sometimes you do it good.
But we’re in a position where you do something and something’s missing there’s going to be somebody that says, “What about this identity or what about that identity?” To a certain degree that’s what I’m doing here, but I suspect that they kind of looked very hard to find a Black woman that they can add to this show because the show was very Chicano. And it goes back, and I can’t say this with any clarity, but the Radical Women show is a product of who was collecting and then who curated the show. What are they pulling from and what history do they come from?
We’re humans, we come with these instilled things so that gets back to the fact that a lot of academia in terms of passing down like your mentor might be this older professor and at a certain point in time, the main crux of Latino educators in high education were Chicano. You see this trickle down and the more I talk about it in a way there’s nothing wrong with that I think we just need to do a better job at naming things for what they are and being more diverse. And being brave like, “Ok Mexicans, we’re here too.” You know what I mean, it’s multilayered.
I brought up Cuba before. I think there’s this fetishization of their art because of the forbidden fruit thing. They’ve been so isolated, and we’ve had this separation between the countries that there’s this mystique almost and that’s definitely been fetishized especially by white people. It turns into an advantage in terms of art sales, representation in shows, and collections and blah, blah, blah.
ZM:
You said that academia is prized, like that’s what accepted. People who get hired have to have an education and a master’s or PhD degree. As someone who is also pursuing a master’s, what can I do as someone who is interested in museum studies to do better by the community for people who don’t have that education background? You said yourself, you entered into this space but through a side door and you sometimes have imposter syndrome, like how can I connect with you?
CD:
You’re doing it right now by giving me a platform to talk on and listening to me, like that’s number one, and getting in a position where you can do more than what you are doing right now. And to keep an open mind towards looking in the direction that are seldom looked in is dope.
Specifically, about me I do think that there is a segment somewhat of like art, like I’m hip-hop. I was able to choose something, right, I had no choice in being Dominican or Puerto Rican you’re just born that. When I came to age, I had a decision on what music I listened to, what kind of history I wanted to learn about, things like that. I’m very much hip-hop and when it comes to graffiti, an aesthetic that I come from let’s say, there has been a little bit more room for us to come in with less formal education, but it's also fetishized, right? Like you know, “un tigre that dude from the street”, you know what I mean? Of course, he's not going to have an education, even though at this point there are more educated people that are working in academia that come from hip-hop especially at first like a lot of people were entering without that. And I know some people that have been able to be given honorary degrees and so on. But, you know, even beyond that, like when it comes to teaching artist gigs, I'm always one of the few, if not the only, matter of fact I'll stick to the only to be honest with you, artist that has no formal education except for dropping out of LaGuardia Music and Art in my case working in the places that I'm working at.
The thing is, I know so many people that are able to offer more and it goes beyond, like, I know people that are able to write curriculums that are dope because they have close to a fucking doctorate, but can they perform that in the classroom? No! But they can write it really good. But I can do that in the classroom. I just can't write it well. And I would like to see a breakdown more in terms of, you know, and it's hard because some of us are really busting our ass to do this, right? Like, you know, I have a mom that has three master’s degrees and busted her ass and went to school, so I understand some people being like, “Ah, fuck Carlos. I've never shown at this place” you know what I mean? And that's a different conversation altogether, but I think there's a lot of people out there that through lived experience and the art that they're making and not only that but the community they come from and their experience and their connections to the community should be in a lot of these positions. If you're ever in the position to hire somebody like me, to look in the direction of somebody like me instead of that ultra-overachiever that did all the right things academically.
Or they're stuck in these universities writing about the hoods that surround the universities but not being in the hood. It's like poverty porn to a different degree.
ZM:
One other subject I want to talk about is the colorism that exists within Latinidad. Now you have all these museums and exhibitions that have been kind of creeping up every once in a while, that talk about the survey of Latin American art but don’t show the breath of collections.
CD:
I wonder, you know, once again, I'll do this in a story. Marta Morena Vega, to go back to her, when she was the second director of El Museo del Barrio she put together this show about Loíza in Puerto Rico. Loíza, for those that might not know, is an Afro Boricua corridor in San Juan. It's a place where the culture, but also like physically people are kind of located in this impoverished area right by the water and it's like part of San Juan, but it's almost like going into a different community altogether.
She put together a show about that and she talks about how Puerto Ricans were coming in angry talking about, “This isn’t Puerto Rico!” It was Black faces and that's what I'm arguing I want to see more of. I wonder if Riverside will have that moment where maybe you know their third show will be once again to bring up a place like Veracruz, Mexico where they have a Black history, right? All of Mexico has a Black history, but in terms of concentration it's one of the blacker areas in terms of that history, will they spotlight these things? Will they give attention, spotlight, and talk about these things or will it be the popular canon?
Or, you know, even if it's Chicano, forget about it why am I talking about Mexico, right? Are we going to talk about Black Mexicans and the history of Black Mexicans in Los Angeles, for instance, that's a history right there. Are they going to do a study on something like that and then do like an exhibit? Those are the kind of things I want to see more of, but you tell me, you know, you're going to see more Chicano printmaking, ok, I seen a lot and every time El Museo does some kind of retrospective or something there's always Chicano prints in this Puerto Rican institution.
I know a lot about Chicano printmaking just by working at El Museo del Barrio. I don't know if that answers the question, but yeah, I just wonder if it's going to be the normal canon or if they're going to dig deep into these identities that aren't talked about a lot.
But I'm a troll, I always want to hear things like that. I'm like that dude like, “Yeah, man, I'm down, let's talk about immigration but I also want to know how Guatemalans are treated in Mexico.” I'm just that dude that asks those questions and want to talk about it. So maybe that's just my personality. I don't know.
ZM:
I definitely want to see that too. As you said, the canon is to show what's familiar for white audience. Well, do you have any final thoughts?
CD:
I think I rambled most of the things that I'm thinking about, to be honest with you. I think it's a great conversation to have because I think we need to dig deeper in terms of pressuring these institutions and stuff on who they're going to collect.
When somebody says I have Latino artist, well, where these Latino artists from? That's a Trojan Horse. That's saying nothing in a way. That’s saying that them or their parents might speak a romance language. That's it. That doesn't go any further to talk about inclusivity in terms of race, gender, thought process, you know what I mean?
Episode 4: Spatial Concepts
Today, I am sitting down with Chicago based artist, Gabriel Soto. Soto is a painter with an interest in psychedelic imagery, history, and esoteric spiritual practices. He graduated from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with a BFA in 2017. Primarily focused on oil painting, Soto currently resides in Chicago, IL.
APR 1, 2021-
To learn more about Gabriel Soto, visit their website.
Episode 3: By Thread, I Walk
Today, I am sitting down with Maryland based artist, Inga Bragadottir. Inga is a fiber artist with an emphasis on material and experimentation. Her work spans from performance to photography, textile and sculpture and often explores identity and the body in relation to its environment.
NOV 27, 2020-
To learn more about Inga Bragadottir, visit their website.
Episode 2: Family, Mormonism, and Whiteness
Today, I am sitting down with New Mexico based artist, Nicholas B. Jacobsen. Jacobsen is 8th generation Mormon whose work seeks to unsettle the Mormon assumptions of masculinity, white supremacy, and capitalism, i.e. the foundations of U.S. culture.
JUL 19, 2020-
To learn more about Nicholas B. Jacobsen, visit their website.
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Zoë Elena Moldenhauer:
Thank you for joining me! This is our first podcast; we’re excited to be making this happen. Can you briefly introduce yourself?
Nicholas B. Jacobsen:
My name is Nicholas B. Jacobsen. I was born and raised in Utah, I call the southwest corner of Utah, which is Washington county or Saint George Utah, my home. That area is Nuwu territory and so that is where I was raised among the red sandstone cliffs and the blackolothic mountain on the See’veets eng bands traditional homelands. Currently I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico where I attended the Art and Ecology program at UNM and here I am on Tiwa territory.
Through this project I have learned to do land acknowledgements that are more than just the mention of the name and so I generally talk about how the fact I have access to these places and how they are literally part of my body and the fact that I drink Rio Grande water from my tap that the only reason I have access to these places and experiences is because of the history of genocide and imperial white supremacist violence of the U.S.
ZM:
Your art talks about your upbringing in the Mormon church. What led you to break away from the church? Can you talk about your experiences?
NJ:
Every Mormon male is commanded to go on a proselytizing mission when they are 18 or 19. That was when I started to question, because I wanted to be 100% sure in my beliefs before I went and told other people they should believe these things. And before that, because of the small city I grew up in, in Utah, pretty much everyone I knew was Mormon, nearly every person. So, there was nothing to question because that’s what you did, it’s what my friends did, it’s what my family did, that’s what everyone I knew did.
In starting to question the unquestionable, is when I started to think about – so Mormonism has their temples where you have to perform these rites and rituals in order to attain eternal salvation, or at least the highest degree of it. And knowing there are many people in my congregation who I didn’t think were very Christ-like, or were a little more self-righteous than Christ-like, were going to attain this highest level of heaven whereas some of the people I had been meeting by starting college were really Christ-like people, but weren’t going to get this level of salvation just because they hadn’t performed the right rituals or showed up to the right church building.
Which felt wrong to me, given that I was taught that God is an omnipotent and all loving being and so it seemed like an omnipotent and all living being would more look inside someone’s heart than at the paperwork of the rituals that they’ve completed. That is the crucial thing that made me start looking elsewhere for meaning and purpose in cosmology.
ZM:
The way you talk about your work, and the way you piece text with your work, it’s interesting that you’re talking about the contract part of Mormonism, of language, in the Book of Mormon. Can you expand on those ideas?
NJ:
As a teen and a child, I didn’t actually read these scriptures. It was more of a cultural belief. And I think I cling to the words because they are a very concrete things for making the arguments I wanted to make, whereas, it’s a lot harder to make arguments with cultural references.
So, I use a lot of imagery also from Mormon culture that I grew up with, but I feel like not a lot of people have a visual literacy as strong as they do in textual literacy. For example, there are so many of these images that exist that aren’t seen the way I would see them because of one historical analysis that I had learned and developed. Also, we don’t tend to look that deeply into things which is why I think advertisement works because we don’t look at how it’s doing, just what it’s doing.
So, I stick to text because I feel that’s a very democratic space that is accessible to many people, also because that’s where a lot of contradictions come in. You need this paper trail to get to a space that I feel like probably exists beyond language, so those contradictions in that Mormonism and Christianity as a whole, and many of the major religions, are dependent on a text. Whereas the spiritual traditions that I have started to lean more toward, which are Daoist and Buddhist, which though they have text I feel like the daily practice, at least in the traditions I have studied and looked into, the daily practice is a lot more important than the language used to teach and illustrate that daily practice.
ZM:
Religion is a very complicated subject matter and making art about it is difficult. You’re talking about yourself and your identity and how those relationships manifest outside of that. Was it studying art that led to the separating from the Mormon church or the separating from the Church that led to the art?
NJ:
I never thought about that connection before. I was not studying art at the time. I did draw and write poetry, but they weren’t connected. In thinking about leaving the religion started my art path, I think is true which I never thought about before, but the center of my art practice is questioning the baseline ideologies of my upbringing, like, the things that we don’t question that are too sacred or too important to be questioned.
Currently I branched that out to the dominant U.S. culture I was also a part of as well as the general culture of being in the land west of the Rocky Mountains. I think it did start what I now do as art which is just investigate and question the things I never would have questioned before. I like that question because I guess so, it didn’t start my visual art practice, but it started the research/conceptual/cerebral side of my art.
ZM:
Was reflection part of the research?
NJ:
Yeah, that self- reflection and the investigating and learning new ways of thinking and new ways of being. At first it was a necessity because there was this major part of my life that was the center of family life, of friend life, of community, of church and school because nearly everyone is so it was central.
Once that started to fall through, then I needed to find new ways of being and that, for me, became an embodied practice of walking generally in preserves that are set aside for the endangered desert tortoise that lives all around my hometown. So, that walking practice became the way that I would think through all these new ideas that I never tried on before. Which is still how the majority of the research as far as time goes, was spent in and around Saint George and Washington County doing in place, embodied experiences of trying to practice place.
ZM:
Were there any outside influences that helped you on your journey to question the religion itself?
NJ:
Early on I’m not sure where those influences would have come from. Maybe music because I listened to a lot of music and know the poetry of lyrics heavily influenced me at that age and still does. I know for certain that when I was working on this project and the last ten years of my life when I started to learn more of the social justice sides of my work were heavily influenced by others. My current partner, when we met, was the first time I started to learn about intersectional feminism, and they started to talk about their experiences. Something that really blew me away, because of the privileges I carry being in the body I’m in, is that they never feel comfortable walking around town because every time they do, they’re harassed or possibly assaulted.
So much of my life, even at that time, I didn’t go outside of the city to do my walking I just did it in the city because of where I was in Omaha. It blew me away because so much of my daily life and practice involved just being able to walk and being able to get lost in the walk which you can’t do if you’re being vigilant about your safety the whole time. From there, the friends I started to develop through knowing Laura that then I started to learn more about racial justice, then moving to Albuquerque, the culture here and the history of indigenous resistance to colonialism and white supremacy is so strong and so present that I know for sure that I wouldn’t have started this project if I weren’t here or at least a place like this because I feel like you don’t get to live here and not be aware of settler colonialism and its violence and its ongoing impact on indigenous peoples.
I did the Land Arts of the American West program and one of our stops on it was in the northwest corner of New Mexico where there is a whole lot of fracking going on, on the Navajo Nation. And through listening to the tour guide of this experience, his name is Daniel Soh, we’re listening to him, and his colleagues talk about the generational responsibility that they feel for this land. That their parents literally told them, “This is yours.” “Yours” in this really deep and profound way, and “you need to take care of it and pass it on to your children”. That’s just something that in the way I was raised and what I see as U.S white culture, you don’t really have that tied to place, because you’re almost supposed to grow up where you grow up and then you move on and do something else. And so, through the experiences that are this place and this land I started to really look into what my relationship to my land is and what are the underlying ideas and ideologies that create my concept of home and place and land.
ZM:
So really a deconstruction. Then would it be fair to say adopting a holistic view of the land you now live in and working in New Mexico and in Utah?
NJ:
Yeah, I think that’s fair. Especially, to tie it into the moment we’re in right now, is thinking about people who are really upset about their history being destroyed in thinking about confederate monuments or where I’m from the town is nicknamed ‘Dixie’ because the Mormon church wanted to start growing cotton just before the civil war as a way of hopefully bringing economic stability to the area and as well as being self-sufficient as when they saw the U.S. as potentially falling apart.
And so, former human traffickers and enslavers were sent there to start growing cotton because they had experience overseeing cotton plantations and they brought that name ‘Dixie’ with them. And so, Saint George now has a lot of people that are really upset about people wanting that name to change.
I think it makes sense that it’s a holistic view because that’s what I now know the whole truth of the history of where I am from. And I have a more holistic relationship with the land because I am more viscerally aware of the fact that my flesh didn’t evolve with this place that the language I have didn’t come from the land itself. All of these things are imported. The food that grows in this place aren’t the foods that my people’s flesh evolved with.
ZM:
What are the influences that you have with some of the tribes you are working with in your area? Have you connected with them, shown them any of your work, or had a dialogue in any way?
NJ:
I guess in a couple parts, as I’ve said, the relationships that I’ve developed here in Albuquerque through students that I went to school with and the kind of conversations we’d have in crits and they’d talk about in their own work, I was definitely influenced by them and by the way the U.S is understood by more people in this area then I experienced, especially to when I was growing up.
I don’t know that I could say that I was influenced even growing up by Nuwu culture because honestly, they’re literally and geo-physically marginalized where I grew up, like their reservation is out on the edge of town. The See’veets eng woman I reached out to and have been in relationship with, she says that when she’d go into town people would ask her if she were Mexican because people in Saint George are fully unaware of where they are, whose land they’re on, and the fact that the Nuwu people still live there. And I would’ve been the same, I probably would have just thought they were Latinx and have been fully unaware because it’s just not talked about at school. The way I was taught about it is that classic thing that they were here, and they are no longer. It’s relegated to this ancient history that also somehow is now European history because we call petroglyph sites that say, “Preserve your history!” Weeell, it’s not “yours”, but okay.
But I have reached out to Shenandoah M. Anderson and I sent the publication, “Land of My Breadth, People of My Flesh” to her along with imagery from before the exhibition was put up or made public and before the publication was made public, I sent everything to her and asked her to look it over and make sure I was being respectful about the land, about the people, and that I was also being accurate to what her people’s history is because for the most part I was focusing on myself and then my own people’s history to make sure that I wasn’t speaking for anyone else. But because that history intersects and overlaps with Nuwu history then those stories came in and I wanted to make sure that they were aligned in a respectful way.
In exchange for her doing that labor for me, I then offered to do digital design work for her, for these different projects that she’s working on. So, we did that back-and forth for a little while and then Covid got more serious and so she’s become too busy, so we haven’t worked together for a little while, but there are ongoing plans. She’s working on a book that her dad started, basically translating petroglyphs using indigenous sign language and petroglyphs to read these signs. A lot of people call them rock art, but what she’s working on is showing that these were language, instructions, directions, history, and storytelling. So, she’s basically building a dictionary of his notes and needs them all digitized.
ZM:
You've identified certain texts in the Book of Mormon that say that if you are an indigenous person, and if you accept the Mormon faith, you then become white and pure. I'm curious about sort of like the education of Mormonism, but also kind of like the education that you're now kind of trying to undo in some way.
NJ:
Yeah, so almost – really everything about indigeneity and Mormonism I did not know until I started this work. Like in my church group that was majority white, I would estimate like at least 90% white, they don't really talk about it, probably because it would be a difficult thing to explain without the racism of it showing up.
But when I started this work, there's a Diné person who I went to school with who is a potter and ex-Mormon, and in his upbringing in the church, it was a regular thing, like it, it was talked about often and often in insulting ways. Because – so the Book of Mormon has an ideology and a race theory that indigenous peoples here are descendants of ancient Israelites who were white and immigrated with God's help to the Americans, which at that time, they suggest was kind of an empty land because the flood of Noah cleaned this land and purified it, and then God separated it from a supercontinent.
And so, it was basically leaving it in hold for some special people who he could give it to later, and they'd have their own land to be good white Christians in. But then some of these people rebelled and are cursed with, the quote is “a skin of blackness”. And so, there's this sort of abject position where they are a cursed people, but they're also descendants of God’s chosen people who Mormons believe are hereditarily like, basically, cousins with British people which is part of a – I can't remember the name for that 10 tribes of Israel, British Israeli theory.
So yeah, he would get people telling him that like, “Oh, you're a chosen people and it's going be so special when, you know, you're lifted up and you're purified and whitened again.” Like, really insulting things. But yeah, these things weren't talked to me growing up in church. Like, I wasn't really even aware that the Book of Mormon was about the history of the “Americas.” And that stuff really stuck to me later, and maybe I wouldn't have thought anything other because also as a child I wouldn't have like thought that it's weird that white people decided to retell and remake up as history of the U.S. when there are, you know, hundreds and thousands of histories of what this land is already in existence and they generally don't line up with the Book of Mormon.
So, my unlearning of mythologies about the U.S. went hand in hand with doing this project because Mormonism is a very U.S. religion. It was made here, it's headquartered here, it's about their, you know, their central text is supposedly a history of this land. And just like U.S., it's founded in white supremacy, anti-blackness, and anti-indigeneity as it's like you know core identities that it's shaped itself around.
ZM:
Right, it’s also ingrained within your family, and you identified it as an identity. Religion then becomes –
NJ:
Yeah and really explicitly. I've read in my Danish ancestors in, in their histories, and their journals and stuff, they talk about how – so, when they joined at the church in Denmark, one of my great, great, great, whatever, however many great grandfather. He gets baptized in the middle of the night, like they're trying to hide it and be sneaky, and he shows up to the work next day and he has a pink slip. And they're like, “Look, if you leave the church, you can come back, but if you want to be Mormon, you can't work here.”
And so, sort of through that kind of oppression and prejudice, all of my ancestors, when they move to Utah, they became Mormons and they became – I wouldn't even say they would call themselves like U.S. Americans because that point the church had a very tense relationship with the U.S. But they literally talk about how they gave up their culture of being Danish so that they could be Mormon. And so, I really have hereditarily and ancestrally, have no connection to my European ancestry because they intentionally erased it.
ZM:
That’s interesting. So, now in your stage and after reflection in creating this work, have you found a community of artists or former members of the church where you now have an open dialogue that allows you to ask questions and have more reflection?
NJ:
Yeah, this is an interesting question because throughout doing this work and a lot of the work, sort of the research I was – I don't know if publishing is the right word but posting it on social media as I was doing the research. And through that I've had several people reach out to me to thank me for what I was doing and often they are ex-Mormons. Some of them are still Mormons and are trying to, you know, figure out how to reconcile the things that they're learning from, you know, from me and hopefully that they continue to research on their own. But for the most part, they have been ex-Mormons that reach out.
But I don't know that I've actually developed community with them because as I’ve thought on this question, I was like, I just, I don't think I'm interested in like building an ex-Mormon community because I've been ex-Mormon for as long as I was Mormon now. And I think it's just kind of something that I'm just not – like obviously I'm interested in this history, but I'm not so interested in sort of maintaining the connections to it through community. But the focus on settler-coloniality and white supremacy and the history of the U.S. and its relationship to white supremacy has led to me developing community with others who are also engaged in anti-racist work and examining their own relationships to settler-coloniality and whiteness.
So, I've joined an activist group called Surge which is a national group that formed as a response to Black Lives Matter leaders basically saying, like, white people, you need organize your own people and you need to work in your own communities because this issue doesn't get resolved until whiteness is – or not resolved, but this issue doesn't get addressed until white people are also addressing it in their own homes and in their own communities.
So yeah, but I've definitely been seeing way more ex-Mormon art that is doing similar things. Sort of investigating their history and culture and the lasting parts of themselves and parts of their identity that came from that and sort of wrestling with the complications of still carrying things that you know are foundationally white supremacist and violent and patriarchal and sexist and all the great -ists and -isms.
ZM:
Right, the vindication of your work that some people have reached out to you and thank you for that. Has there been any other response that you are getting a better reception of Mormon community in if there is any about the work that you're doing?
NJ:
I have had like three people engage with me online, who I know are still Mormon. Which is really exciting, because honestly that like continually through this work, I was like, I almost wish I was still Mormon because I feel like my voice would carry farther if I were, but Mormons because of their history and sort of who they are, that they intentionally isolated themselves early on in their in their formation. If you're not in the church, the things you're saying kind of don't carry weight for them. So, it has been exciting when I've seen a contemporary Mormons engaged with it.
I did have like one of my old friends reach out to me because the way he was seeing the work that I was doing was basically like, “I hate Mormons and I hate Utah and I hate my ancestors”. And I was like, “No, absolutely not!” And it's like kind of heartbreaking because like that was something that throughout the project I was like, I don't want anyone to be able to see this work and walk away going like, “Geez, those Mormons.” Because to me, this is like, this is about whiteness, this is about U.S., this is about all of us. And yes, I'm focusing in on my own experience of my ancestors becoming U.S.-Americans and my ancestors contributing to Manifest Destiny and settler-coloniality, but that's not – we're just an isolated example of it not, you know, that's part of a much bigger project than Mormonism.
And also, because like this project to me is founded in love. Like that, I love the place that I'm from. And that's a complicated thing for me now because what does it mean to be in love with the place and to have found spiritual connection in a place where the only reason I'm there is because my ancestors contributed in massacres and genocides of indigenous peoples who have been tending the very land that I'm in love with for time and memorial. And also, that, you know, I have met a lot of indigenous people who are from Utah or in, you know, the Diné reservation that's right by Utah, or the Navajo Nation. And so, to me is, you know, it's about love for those people and doing the work that needs to be done.
And so it was, it was hard to hear that some people were seeing it as like a one sided thing because also I wanted to hold like respect because obviously like who I am also came from my ancestors. My positives and the things I need to unlearn and the things that gave me the ability to unlearn and to question that sort of strength and perseverance and like doing really difficult things because it's important and because it matters and because it means something bigger than you like that also came from them. And so, to me, I wanted to be able to have a place that holds those complications and finally, or at least finally from my experience, tells that bigger story or the rest of the story.
Also, my mom, who when I started this project, I think thought that I was using this research to push a liberal agenda, which was like I don't know, that was hard. It just took some long conversations where, you know, we talked about how I don't support the Democratic Party either because it's, you know, it's two hands of the same monster that creates these ongoing violence’s. And so, through conversations, I think she started to see where I'm coming from and why this is so important to me. And it's starting to understand those things for herself, not just understand why they're important to me, but maybe why they're important overall. So that's kind of that, that one sort of like for me, the most exciting thing is that for the first time in 18 years, my mom and I have been able to talk about my beliefs, which we kind of did a, you know, don't ask, don't tell, because it always led to fights early on when I was leaving the church. So, it finally opened that door and has changed the way my mom sees the world because she doesn't, you know, like I was saying they intentionally isolated themselves and they still are. Like Saint George, I think a 70 to 80% white community so you just you can't understand things like what's happening with the Black Lives Matter Movement because you have no experience with the issues that are being addressed by these movements.
ZM:
I think also with mainstream media there has been such negative but also dramatized – that people really don't have that much information and so they fill in the blanks with this fictional narrative that then becomes very harmful. So, it is sort of understandable to see that that a community can say, you know, maybe what you're doing like kind of feed into that.
NJ:
I’d just like to say that it was negative! What I was focusing on, like I recently had someone on the Internet really mad at me because I was sharing the parts of history that he didn't want to hear and he was like, “You're evil. You focus on evil.” And I was like, yeah, you’re kind of right because this part of the story never gets told. I never heard it. I've never learned it. I'm still to this day learning things about U.S. that were never taught to me in the – I have a Master’s degree, so whatever years of school that is. And so that's, you know, like that, I don't know. I guess to acknowledge that like I am focusing on negative things, that's true. And I understand how that's like, painful to see. It's painful to go through. Like its not fun, but it's necessary work if we're going to be responsible for the realities that we've created collectively.
ZM:
I've mentioned to you before, but what's your youth perception? Like if you have any? You have a social media presence and does that draws a youth-based crowd?
NJ:
Yeah, I think I mean because as it happens, you know, younger people are the ones to challenge the sort of baseline of their parents’ generation. And so, it's been received a lot better, especially because people who are my age that are following me on my social media accounts are the friends that I had when I still held transphobic beliefs and homophobic beliefs and still was unaware of the white supremacist beliefs that I carried. And so that they have a harder time receiving it because a lot of them never left Saint George and just got to keep living their life and are still surrounded by sort of the Good Ol’ Boys in the Old Guard who's still perpetuate, protect the mythologies that are harmful to so many people, but they, you know, younger people don't have that problem as much as well as the younger people who follow me are friends that I've since I've started my journey of unlearning unreal learning.
I guess kind of also just a different demographic ideologically that are younger and follow me. And so, I've gotten kind of very little pushback from any of them. It would be more the people my own age and older.
ZM:
So, I guess that leads to one of our last questions. What are you working on now?
NJ:
Currently I am starting to dig deeper and research more on the history of anti-blackness in the Mormon Church. For example, in 1978 the Mormon Church first allowed Black people access to eternal salvation and sort of spiritual power within the church, which they have a thing called priesthood, which is, you know, males after their 12 and on receive different levels of priesthood power. And it's what allows you to hold like a sort of authoritarian position within the church. It's what allows you to enter their temples and do these rites and rituals that guarantee you eternal salvation.
And Black people up until 1978 had no access to these things. They couldn't get married in the temple. They would never have an internal family. They wouldn't have access to becoming a God and starting your own planet and spirit children, which is part of a Mormon cosmology, and in fact the 2nd president of the Mormon Church, said that the only way that Black people would get into heaven is as servants. So, there's a very long history of anti-blackness that the Church likes to quickly and nicely make go away now. So, I've started that work to sort of round out that triad of U.S. ideology, Mormon ideology of anti-blackness, anti-indigeneity, and white supremacy.
And also because of the work I've been doing more recently online since the uprisings have started I've noticed that a lot of my old friends, like the people I'm saying that are my age that I grew up with, seem to not have a very good understanding of whiteness and white supremacy. For example, it feels like when I talk about white supremacy, they think I'm saying that all of the people who do this are white supremacists rather than understanding that every person who's been educated in the U.S. public education system or watches movies produced in the U.S. or TV or listens to the news, or you know, like if you live in the U.S., you have absorbed white supremacist ideologies. And so just that difference between carrying white supremacy and being an active white supremacist. So, I'm starting a podcast directed at white people about whiteness that all of the sort of people who will be featured on it are white or have white family or our invested in learning about whiteness. So, it's kind of like an extension of that work that white people need to need to actively be engaged in understanding and acknowledging and reckoning with white supremacy in themselves and their families and their own bodies. So, I've just started those sort of two projects as far as what this stuff will end up being it's hard to say because everything so much harder to say where will be in in a month, in five years, in ten.
ZM:
Yeah. Well, I do want to say that your exhibit has a tender quality to it, which is interesting. You do see like the delicate of whiteness, but also kind of how it sort of is slowly being uncovered and you begin digging. Slowly started realizing this heavy, dark crater that it is created, and I think it's very powerful and I'm incredibly grateful that you were willing to partner with us and to future work on our site. So, we thank you for that!
NJ:
Thank you. I'm really glad that I got to keep living because yeah, my exhibition opened the weekend that toilet paper was disappearing from shelves. So, we're eating food that was made in my kitchen that we were able to just go to the grocery store and buy without waiting in line, you know everyone's joking about toilet paper saving you from a virus and then like four days later, New Mexico had to shut down order. So, it's like there on the precipice. So, I'm really grateful that it was able to keep living in this time where things are uncertain and it's, you know, it really can't leave any gallery anymore and being public at the same time. So, I'm really grateful that you all picked it up because it also feels like a really important thing to be part of the conversations in this moment, because – like something else that I think been really important about it and, like, speaks to this moment, is the overlap of Mormon scriptures, where they conflate purity and whiteness together.
And the way we talk about so if white as pure, purity is cleanliness and cleanliness is next to godliness then we start to build this idea that you're seeing really publicly in the reopen rallies, terrorist attacks that you're seeing how much Jesus is brought up in these things that Jesus is going to protect them. And to me, this is a playing out of the white Christian-American identity that has protected these people for all of their history, and they are now believing that it's going to protect them from the virus that you know it doesn't care and that the fact that these reopen rallies, the early ones, started right after it started coming out that Covid-19 is disproportionately impacting indigenous and black communities.
And then suddenly all of these white people are showing up armed with their signs, like demanding to get back to work because they now believe it's not going to harm them because of who they are and, in a way, you know, it's not absolutely true, but like the health care system is built to protect you and not so much to protect indigenous and black bodies. So yeah, thinking through that that like I was there doing this performance where I was purifying the Book of Mormon by making it pure white with a can of paint that was – the color is called Ultra Pure White. And so, I'm sitting there in my white coveralls wearing an N95 mask and I've got my, you know, Mr. Clean gloves that – the brand name of them is Bliss and just like that, like I was doing these things and using bleach spray to purify my artificial white roses, because that's another metaphor that “indigenous people were blossom as the rose they receive Mormonism as their own history and spirituality.”
And so just these layers of whiteness and antibacterial and the microbial genocide of those cleaning products where they kill 99.9%. And then tying that to Manifest Destiny teaching that, you know, within 100 years of Columbus’ arrival, 90% of the population of this land was killed through viral pandemics and physical violence, settler-colonial violence, and so that the land was – they literally say that it was cleaned and cleared and purified for the white Christian-European immigrant to come and, you know, make the land a chosen plan for democracy and freedom of their religion. And then tying that back even further that the Mormon Church believes that this land was purified and cleaned via the flood of Noah, which was again a genocide of 99.9%.
And so just tying these ideologies that – I'm not suggesting that it’s white supremacist to use hand sanitizer, but just the way that we've developed culture that performs erasure, like complete obliteration rather than taking a nuanced and just sort of more of a caretaking approach, we purify with bleach instead. And so just seeing both that sort of messy amoeba of ideologies being made really clear in the reopen rallies, that people are protesting police brutality in the police are meeting it with more police brutality. And yeah, just this way that that violence is taught through Christianity, that to me, it's like it's no wonder that we're such a war mongering nation when one of the foundational beliefs we have is that when God wanted to deal with the problem, he just wiped them all out rather than, you know, transformative justice or something else, instead.
Being an omnipotent and all powerful being I feel like there were other ways you could have dealt with that problem, so that, yeah, I guess just that sort of weird mix of purity as something that means you don't have a disease and it also means that you're white and the way that we form massacres as cleaning rituals. It's just strange seeing something that I thought about a lot suddenly becomes something that I never thought about.
ZM:
And I'm thinking now, you household imagery like Aunt Jemima, I think it's the butter with the Native American –
NJ:
Oh yeah, the Land O’Lakes.
ZM:
And how massive corporations are now doing a quick erasure of, you know, their mistakes that been ingrained.
NJ:
Yeah, without any actual change. I mean it's helpful, because, yeah, like these things mean something and they say something that most of us are unaware they're even being said by these images. So, it's still important but – like I saw a joke online that the Land O’Lakes, you know, the butter packaging especially, they took off the “Indian” but they kept the land. Like, hmm, this story has occurred.
ZM:
Very on the nose on that one. I saw that too. Well, thank you for being the first feature of our podcast. Is there any reflections or thoughts that you have to wrap things up?
NJ:
I guess just gratitude. I’m really grateful to you, The Aerogramme Center for allowing this work to keep living and to kind of grow and change and hopefully reach more people that can have this conversation and can keep it growing. Also, to thank my partner Laura for all of the work that they've done that's helped me, you know, be able to do this kind of work. My friend Angela Drakeford has kind of been like a constant presence through this project and helping me think through these things and also a person who constantly like kept me in check of reminding me that the importance of kindness in this project because, you know, I got angry several times throughout it. And when I start doing works that were coming out of that anger, I was recreating the violence is that I was trying to address. I was making more of the thing I was saying we don't need more of this so, a lot of gratitude for her patience and kindness.
And for my mom in engaging in this work with me and having really difficult conversation with me that is, you know, a direct challenge to her identity because she is Mormon. So, I can't imagine these words, you know, it's not really something you want to go toward it so I'm grateful for her for being with me through that. And Shenandoah M. Anderson for, one that she has this three-hour oral history interview which is where the majority of the knowledge that I got about the specific relationship between Washington County and St Church City and the See’veets eng came from her. And then for, you know, doing the labor of looking over this traumatizing story that, to me, can be sort of disembodied more than I think it could be for her. You know, my people did the erasing, which carries its own form of visceral embodied violence, but not really the same kind that comes from your people’s history being erased.
And then also I want to express gratitude to the land here in New Mexico to the Tiwa territory where literally my body has been sustained to be able to do this work because of this land and because of because of the people who took care of it for millennia. And then lastly grateful for the See’veets eng land and Nuwu territory that I grew up in in southwestern Utah because that place literally saved me. And knowing that the relationship that indigenous people have to land and how that's the source of their cultures, that maybe I was able to glean some of that by being in that land.
I guess not to say to indigenize myself, but to express the agency that I see in the land, that it taught me, like, I learned things from that place. And so, I'm grateful to that land and to the people who tend to it.
ZM:
Well, thank you. It was really amazing to get to hear more about your work and your thinking process and definitely having this opportunity to sit down with you. We wish you the best with your work and your future endeavors!
Episode 1: Hello, Hi, Hey!
Welcome to “A Guide to Art, Activism, & Culture”. I am your host Zoë Elena.
This podcast is an extension of The Aerogramme Center for Arts and Culture. As we continue to build an archive of today’s creativity, we also believe it is important to hear the voices behind the art.
Today’s episode, Introductions!
So who are we, why are we, what are we? Hopefully all will be answered.
JUN 16, 2020-
Zoë Elena Moldenhauer (b. 1996, Guatemala) graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in May 2019 with a BFA in Painting, Art History and Curatorial Practices. She is the Founder and Curator of The Aerogramme Center for Arts and Culture - aiming to provide opportunities during the pandemic closures. Zoë currently resides in New York where she is obtaining a master’s from the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies with an advanced certificate in Museum Studies at New York University.
Instagram: @_zoeelena_
Website: www.zoeelena.net
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Well, hello everyone!
Welcome to “A Guide to Art, Activism, & Culture”. This is our first official podcast. I am incredibly excited to be your host for this series.
So, who are we? Why are we? What are we?
Hopefully, all of that will be answered shortly.
My name is Zoë Elena. I am the Founder and Curator of The Aerogramme Center for Arts and Culture. I wanted to create this podcast to be an extension of The Aerogramme Center, to hear the voices of artists, activists, and everyone in between.
Introductions are awkward, so bear with me.
I had just graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore City and didn’t know what to do with myself. I stayed in Baltimore and in September of 2019, developed the idea of The Aerogramme Center.
For me, The Center would act as a bridge for young artists who needed community and resources to share, create, and show.
I personally found it hard to discipline myself and realized how easy it is to fall back into a passive state – and then feel sorry for myself. Which led me to create three core values for The Center.
1. We believe in support. Supporting emerging and mid-career artists and their practice.
2. We believe in community. Sharing resources and opportunities to fuel that creativity.
3. And we believe equity. Make all forms of art accessible, weather you have formal training or not.
It wasn’t until April 2020, when The Center launched to the public during a monumental time when the world shut down. I didn’t know what to expect and had just announced an open call for artists.
But slowly, I gained social media followings and began to reach an international audience. Something I never expected.
In the time from April to now late July, I have had the opportunity to work with amazing artists who’ve supported The Center.
We are incredibly excited to have partnered with New Mexico based artist, Nicholas B. Jacobsen who will be joining me next episode.
Jacobsen is 8th generation Mormon whose work seeks to unsettle the Mormon assumptions of masculinity, white supremacy, and capitalism i.e., the foundations of U.S. culture. Their exhibit *from* is on view through August 3, 2020, so be sure to check out the online exhibit by going to our website at www.aerogramme.org.
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