The Braid
Confluence MFA program, Interdisciplinary • Accessible • Regenerative.
14 January, 2024
Murals
17 February, 2024
A Collective Feminist Curatorial
la trenza – the braid is a project with a feminist perspective, which aims to show that curatorship is a process in which the relationship between artists and curators develops in a personal and political sphere. That is, curatorship as a practice that involves the body and a series of negotiations that constitute a layout or a network that articulates the artists’ production in a discourse that goes beyond the individual and thus allows the articulation of the different devices that are activated during an exhibition: Work, museography, curatorship, space, and socio-historical context.
Traditionally, the curatorial practices have specific guidelines, both in conceptual, theoretical, and historical relationship alongside the exhibition design. These guidelines are marked by the scientific method, which requires a distance from the object being exhibited to allow it to be exhibited or experienced “cleanly or neutrally” (traditionally) in a white cube, in which that color apparently operates as a neutral space. This assumption prioritizes the aesthetic object, leaving out the negotiations and agreements between artist and curator, without recognizing that these decision-making are political positions defining artistic objects.
la trenza – the braid arises from my life experience. I am a feminist, curator, visual artist, art historian, art critic, and archivist; I had to acquire the tools, academic degrees and experiences to exercise them. However, the reality is that I came to articulate transdisciplinary exercises due to my political and ethical positions regarding artistic practices, art history, and memory preservation devices, such as the archive. I have experienced the apparent silence that covers the negotiations and articulations in the curator-artist relationship, how corporeities perform a kind of dance to build an exhibition context in order for the work to be.
The relationships between the curator, artist, work, and exhibition space contaminate this curatorial project. The objective is to show what takes place in private spaces and to recognize how an exhibition involves political, ethical, and economic positions; that is to say, it is always an exercise of power because it establishes relationships with the body, representation, memory, and history. la trenza – the braid is not interested in showing a clean image, in which the curator is behind or above the stage, moving the strings to create a theoretical, conceptual, and formal scenography to provide a neutral experience of interpreting a work of art.
The title la trenza – the braid arises from the traditional braid that women from the Colombian Pacific made (as in many other places) during the period of slavery since they used the braid to make maps on their heads, which served as a guide to run away. la trenza – the braid that we are weaving is a decolonial map, a path to freedom, to eliminate Cartesian, patriarchal and colonial relations, and making visible that, although curatorship is an exercise of power, it is necessary to recognize the paths and the reasons why this exercise is carried out.
Yohanna M. Roa, curator
Yohanna M Roa Artist & curator
Yohanna M Roa Curtain. Book pages and grana cochineal. Textile intervention. 51 x 60 inches.
Cochineal Grana Curtain.
By Yohanna M Roa artist and curator
I proposed the first fold of the braid to Blanca de la Torre and she consequently worked with the artist Cecilia Chueca.
In emails shared with Blanca de la Torrea due to other projects and dialogue in NY, I considered it appropriate to start the braiding with my work “Cortina”. I made this work in 2018 during an artistic residency in San Pedro Actopan – Mexico City, with the Calpulli Tecalco Organization south of the city. One afternoon, Fernando Palma (artist and brother of Angélica, the organization’s director) went for a walk to Tehutli, a volcano in the area. Along the way, we found several crops of cactus; there, we took several white insects that covered the cactus, and by squeezing them with our fingers, they turned red “Cochineal Grana.” Two aspects interest me about this work: the first is historical, and the second has to do with the production process of the scarlet color.
Historical
The grana cochineal is native to what is now known as the state of Oaxaca in Mexico. Before the arrival of the Spanish, in the Nahuatl language, it was called Nocheztli, which means “nopal blood,” and in Mixtec, Ndukun, which means “blood insect.” This pigment was the most exported from New Spain during the 16th century, after gold and silver. Many paintings that currently hang in museums worldwide were painted with this pigment, just as the costumes of kings and nobles were dyed. To a large extent, this seems to me to be a great example of extractivism, not only because of the name change but because of the massive exploitation study and process that was carried out. The Spanish crown retained a monopoly on this product throughout the colonial period. To do this, he kept the secret of its nature and production, preventing the live insect from leaving New Spain. When the Spanish referred to cochineal, they always used terms that referred to agriculture so that competitors from other nations would believe it was a plant product, a fruit of a plant, or a seed.
Feminism and production
Notably, it is the female that is sacrificed to produce the dye. In general, I was attracted by the tragedy that the same color that she used to defend her made her attractive to extract her. The female of this species, whose life cycle is three months, is the one that contains carminic acid, a substance that is synthesized as a dye. The insect uses this substance to defend against predators such as ants. For its part, the male does not require this defense since his vital colic is brief; it is reduced to a week in which he fulfills his reproductive function and then dies.
Cecilia Jurado Chueca, Artist & Blanca De La torre, Curator
Cecilia Jurado Chueca Mermaids in the Basement Installation - Watercolors, Cly Dim: Variables
C.J. Chueca
From the series Mermaids in the Basement
By Blanca de La Torre, curator
The first mermaids were half bird, half woman and the first written source where they appear is in Homer’s Odyssey, where Ulysses and his crew manage to avoid the attraction of their songs. The “mermaids,” protagonists of Chueca’s work, are women who sing stories that have to do with longing, Some of the songs come from popular orality, accounting for the recovery of ancestral cosmovision and knowledge. The title of the series, taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson, also suggests a displacement from a natural place, like the sea or any of our own ecosystems, to an urban environment.
Each work is titled under a poem related to water. All Day I Hear the Noise of Waters, which leads us to James Joyce, is the sound work that is central to the whole series. In it, women from different geographies, sing stories that have to do with dispossession and lost land. The idea of a singing siren – reinforced by the idea of a bird-woman who sings and travels – is also fused here with the underwater version typical of the collective imagery.
The Water Understands, from a verse by Waldo Emerson is a sculpture consisting of two flip-flops resting on a pool ladder.The connection with water appears as the main ingredient of the ceramic technique with which they have been made, but they also refer to the abandoned footwear of the refugees, and once again connects the natural space with the urban and the artificiality of the pool that is evoked.
The canvas that bathes the wall bring us back to Dickinson: Water, is Taught by Thirst, and dialogues with the group of paintings Pools. In all of them there are ceramic tiles, a constant in the work of C.J. Chueca, paying homage to the dispossessed, marginalized and excluded. The grids allude as well to the New York City subway tiles and the ancient Greek mosaics, as well as Portuguese and Spanish ones. The artist appeals to the imagery from the colonial heritage of the Abya Yala territories (Latin America) that leads to a review of the role of colonialism in water extractivisms and the concept of climate debt to countries of the Global South.
With all of the works, Chueca, an active swimmer whose personal experience is also imprint here, continues her ongoing investigations around water, connects us with hydrofeminist ideas and transports us to a water space of methafors built with narratives of repair, resilience, and transformation.
Jelena Tomasevic, Artist & Jovana Stokic, curator
Jelena Tomasevic in collaboration with Jovana Stokic. Mixed Memories. Installation.
On Bathing and Thinking
Thin Soup of People
By Jovana Stokic, curator
She told me several memorable things she read in interviews with thoughtful people. Rem Koolhaas said about his practice of swimming in the pools, “The water feels like a very thin soup, like gruel, and with some training you can taste who has been swimming there. It’s about the relationship between your ideas and your body. It both evacuates and charges. You can influence your mind by being serious about your body – by knowing it very well.” Not sure that self-knowledge and thinking caught up as shared goals of wellness today.
Alas, the infinity pool is no way to pursue transcendence. In effect, it is a cheap illusion that can create a visual effect that is nothing more than an optical illusion of continuity, that is, water seems to merge with the horizon because it extends as if it were infinite. The well-worn trope of the leisure pool finds itself in a state of profound exhaustion, embodying both a source of recreation, status symbol, and a harbinger of death. It stands as an over-used symbol, illustrating the invasive American-style consumerism and a “resortification” of contemporary dreamscapes. This metaphor is so tired because it has been relentlessly depicted in movies, photography, painting, and popular culture that it yearns for a tranquil poolside respite. As it reclines by the pool, it unwittingly tumbles into a cascade of reflections, creating a mise-en- abyme — a complex hall of mirrors where images reflect endlessly within one another — of infinite leisure amidst repetition. Just as Yves Klein “Jump into the Void” challenged the boundaries of reality and representation, our metaphor invites us to consider the perpetual dance of relaxation and reflection within the depths of American leisure culture, echoing the need for a rejuvenating pause in cultural discourse.
The disruption of the connection with the healing practices of classical times, now replaced by the commodification of purification activities within the wellness industry, reveals a painful chasm between classical civilizational heights and our cultural approach to (well-)being. In the times of Homer, baths primarily served as a means of cleansing and rejuvenation, carrying with them a sense of hospitality, offering comfort and care to guests. Thanks to Hippocrates, bathing practices underwent a remarkable transformation. They transcended their original purpose of mere hygiene and assumed a deeper significance. Baths were recognized for their extensive health benefits, encompassing not just cleansing and tonic effects but also therapeutic properties. Baths became an integral component of a broader regimen aimed at balancing bodily humors. By employing a combination of hot and cold baths, it was believed that one could achieve harmony within the body by adjusting temperature, moisture, and dryness as needed. This therapeutic approach to bathing garnered widespread recognition and was considered beneficial for a diverse range of patients. Its endurance throughout the entire classical period can be attributed to the sheer pleasure of bathing and the accessibility of warm baths, particularly during the Roman Empire. Baths were even linked to indirect nutritive benefits, with the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen suggesting that bathing softened the body, enhancing its capacity to absorb nutrients from food. In today’s wellness industry, this profound connection of bathing practices with a praxis of balancing of mind and body is lost.
The emphasis has shifted to the commodification of wellness, where purification activities are marketed as products and consumer experiences, distancing us from the therapeutic and cultural ideals achieved in the past. Having your body pleasantly immersed in the water while engaging in deep thinking isn’t encouraged activity, despite Archimedes’s example.
Gesiye, Artist & Amy Rosenblum-Martín, Curator
Gesiye. “Now That I’m a River” 2023 Video and photographs 3:33 minutes, dimensions TBD
By Amy Rosenblum-Martín
Tattoo. Snake. River. In the context of Trinidadian Carnival, what does it mean for an artist who makes tattoos to become a snake shedding its skin, only to become, in turn, a river? Tattoos shed to heal; they scab and peel to visibly transform a person. With the artwork Now That I’m a River, Gesiye reflects on the ancestral idea of a snake shedding its skin to explore personal transformation. In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad compares the massive, winding Congo River to a serpent to evoke a sense of danger. In contrast, Gesiye’s interlacings—tattoo, snake, river, her own movement–convey the power of radical love and care. Her work embodies the ability to grow and heal oneself, others, and the earth nonlinearly. She crisscrosses references the way river water sometimes flows over rock in a braided or woven pattern of microcurrents.
This medium-artist’s thinking-feeling glistens as politics-poetics. As Lao Tzu writes, “Water is fluid, soft and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield,” in the Tao Te Ching (400 BC). Gesiye’s work resonates with Black feminist teachings that the personal is fundamentally important, methodologically, for shifting the paradigm. Here, the artist gives viewers a glimpse of her individual process of metamorphosis. She is not creating art for the viewer in the Eurocentric tradition of artistic production, but rather she downloads this performance, writing, video, photography, drawing project from dreamlike sources for herself, generously sharing her experience with the rest of us. This artwork thus represents epistemological justice unpretentiously. In other words, people have unpredictable combinations of different kinds of intelligences: corporeal-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, logical-mathematical, musical, naturalistic-spiritual, verbal-linguistic, and visual-spatial, for example. The logics at play in Now That I’m a River come across as pointedly multivalent as resistance to the normative imperative that polymaths must pick one lane and stay in it. Showing up as unapologetically whole, polymathic, and curious about the process of becoming is radical artmaking. Tina M. Campt summarizes in A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See:
“It is the frequency of Black awakening.
It is the frequency of radical Black joy.
Rebirth is necessary.”
Spiraling back to origins to begin again, Gesiye’s work can be read as a meditative conversation among skins: inking the dermis, molting, surface tension, and contextually specific corporeal intelligences. The artist’s contemporary, the curator Legacy Russell, writes as if in dialogue with Gesiye in Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, “Skin is a container. It is a peel that contains and cradles wildness. It gives shape to bodies. A break, tear, rupture, or cut in skin opens a portal and passageway. Here, too, is both a world and a wound. […] Embracing the plausibility of range–that is, fantasizing, playing, experimenting by donning different ‘skins’–becomes an active empowerment, self-discovery, and even self-care.” Stepping into our own nature has the healing power to entrance.
Indeed, Gesiye says this artwork is “rooted in Carnival in Trinidad & Tobago: a cyclical, transformative period with a relaxing of colonial regulations on what women’s bodies can look like and where we can take up space. Despite having a culture that markets sexuality and freedom during the Carnival season, Trinidad is surprisingly conservative. Rules often require women to cover their shoulders and knees to enter public spaces and to access government services. In the midst of these colonized requirements for our bodies, women are exposed to violence and assault throughout the year and are often slut-shamed and victim-blamed in the aftermath. Once a year, for two days, the roads are blocked and people flood into the streets of the city of Port of Spain, moving through them like water, dressed in costumes, bikinis or nothing at all. In a country where one in three women have experienced gender-based violence, to be able to move so freely in public and to feel safe is an incredibly empowering experience.
Now That I’m a River draws inspiration from the Orisha, kundalini mythology, Jungian dream theory and Trinidad’s folklore character Mama D’leau, a protector and healer of the river who is often depicted as part woman, part snake. This interdisciplinary installation is centered around a snake that sheds its skin and becomes a river: a metaphor for the cyclical process of celebrating femme sexuality during Carnival and violently suppressing it throughout the year.
This work engages in a process of character building and myth-making. The film includes drumming by a member of Trinidad’s Ifa community and sound bowls and chimes that resonate with the sacral chakra. I was particularly interested in the ways that dances like whining and twerking activate this chakra and function as a portal to awakening and embodying our creative and sexual energies. The ‘mas’ or costume that is worn for the performance film was handmade using twine, rope, leaves, beads, and snakeskin printed fabric. In Now That I’m a River, Carnival functions as a ritualized rebellion, as a reclamation of our agency, and as a gateway to a liberated, integrated self.”
In “la trenza–the braid,” Gesiye’s braiding and weaving of concerns and processes dance contemplatively with the entirety of this feminist exhibition. Her work reminds visitors of the sinuous nature of change. When we rebirth ourselves, time travel and other seemingly impossible phenomena are proven real and tenable. Listening to our bodies to restructure the synapses in our brains has a ripple effect in the world. Pleasure equals power. Gesiye offers visitors truth and optimism as tools of intersectional environmentalism aka freedom.
Colette Justine, Artist & Sozita Goudouna, Curator
