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Alicia, I love this ongoing connection to nature I've seen in so many of your reflections. I think it's especially interesting that here it's in the context of religion, though not in the way I was almost expecting it to be. And, of course, the political side of things being brought into religion always gives me pause, though that's nearly expected these days. I'm glad the whale songs brought you joy!
Lili

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Cata, thank you for sharing this story with us. As the years pass I become more aware of mortality and how it touches us, and this has only been intensified by the pandemic. Even still, I remember telling my aunt on New Years that when we speak of my late great-grandfather (her grandfather), I still choke up, no matter that it's been over ten years now since he passed. It's fascinating to think of the way these literal tensions still live in the body - the way my voice fails, or I feel tears form. It's comforting to think they stem from a place of love that cannot be contained by my body alone. These loved ones are carried within us in so many ways, whether they be through memory or the physical resemblances we see in our own faces, and I know I almost take comfort in the aches that this sometimes inspires. The connections are forever present.
-Lili

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My foray with religion only lasted a few months in the early 1970s when my areligious parents thought it may be a good idea to find a Protestant church in New Jersey where we lived. We tried a Presbyterian church, then a Methodist or Baptist one, and then a Unitarian Church. The last one, the Unitarian Church, was the best and may have made me religious had we stayed there more than a couple Sundays. While the adults were in the church hearing a sermon and criticisms of President Nixon, us kids were in the Sunday school section in a carpeted room, sitting on carpeted steps, in the dark, listening to whales singing. Now that was cool and something that I really enjoyed. But we left the Unitarians because of their anti-Nixon stance. My father loved Nixon because he was anti-Castro.

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Cata, when you and Lili were talking about Catholicism last time we met I felt outside of that conversation because I couldn't relate. I was not brought up with Catholicism or any religion. i never felt that I was lacking of something important in my life that so many people across the world have held dear. But in hearing how important Catholicism is to Lili and the comfort that it gives her made me wonder if I indeed missed out on something good and comforting. Actually, I don't think I did, because I am comfortable in my belief system. But I appreciated learning about how Catholic rituals are more than just ritual , and, rather, are connections with God and the divine. To have such a connection and certainty about God is quite amazing and something that has always eluded me.

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Cata, I love the image of Mamayita as a wrinkled flower with each wrinkle, each petal a story. Beautiful....this spring as a Mamayita flower blooms and memories of her come to you, perhaps next spring another Mamayita flower will bloom with more memories and new stories that grow from the memories.

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Cata, this is such a beautiful tribute to your Mamyita, She is forever blooming inside you and giving you love.

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In this isolating time of Covid it seems that we all need to fortify and strengthen our internal architectures and could really use lots of tension creatures and other creatures to wrap ourselves with.

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Today, a year ago, mi abuelita Ligia died. We called her Mamaya...Mamayita, for even more fervent love.
Mamayita spent the last two months of her life only with a nurse. Because of COVID, nobody could go and see her. Luckly, the day she died, her 4 children still living in Bogota were with her.
Mamayita was born in Palmira, a town by Colombia's Pacific coast. Her parents were campesinos. She migrated to the city, and became upper middle class through my grandpa's  (Lucio/ Papayita) work as Engineer.
Mamayita taught me strength.
Mamayita taught me also "good girl" behavior.
Mamayita taught me to be humble and caring.
Mamayita, also carried with her the racism-classism of our society.
Today, Mamayita's home town and region is bleeding with racist violence, and right wing "subtle" paramilitary.
I wonder, every day, what would Mamayita think of this violence in her town... I wonder how her love, faith, and disappointment for our country would collide.

I love Mamyita dearly. Her eyes, her smile, her nose, her tenacity, are entangled with mine.

I made this simple piece  last year, in early April, when we knew Mamayita was dying, and we were only waiting, from distance.

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Alicia, these nesting dolls are such a magnificent figure to our conversations of all of the layers and histories that our bodies hold... the bodies that inhabit us...
However unlike these dolls, there may not be cleanly delineated contours separating our bodies and shapes from others....
And yes! you describe this doll as object, as talisman!

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Catalina, when you were tracing your home and sharing your space and then when you shared about the violence that was/is happening in Colombia and how you are troubled by it, juxtaposed with what you describe as your small home that is smaller than you'd like, made me think that although you feel your home is too small, far from family and friends, and not all that you want, there seems to be a comfort in your home that you have created. You have made it a home to the best of your abilities and you can get comfort from that.

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thinking of our conversation about objects of connections that hold meaning in our lives, and containers that we carry with us and add to as we move through life, made me think of the nesting dolls that we had at our home growing up. i don't remember where my mother got the nesting russian dolls, but I was always intrigued by them and enjoyed taking them apart and making them grow. later I got my own nesting lions but they didn't have as many smaller and smaller lions as my mother's russian dolls had. they are like a metaphor for life and the wonder of life, both the known and the unknown.....inside one doll there is a smaller doll, and then another smaller one, and then yet another smaller one....they look the same, but they are different...and as Lili and Cata expressed, things and space hold meaning and we are attached to things, spaces, and time....things, spaces, and time come before and and come after we pass through life

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Cata,
Thank you for sharing this tracing with us! I'm thinking that it's very significant that we've shown each other not just the "things" we are linking but the actual attachments ourselves - we spoke a bit about objects and attachments we may or may not have to them, and I think it's that emotional side of things, the attachment itself (and whatever that attachment means) that's most significant here. I remember we talked about space and place and how one becomes the other, and it all just feels very relevant to how we understand our own belonging (or place!) in the literal spaces we inhabit.
- Lili

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This is just an opening.... simple gesture I was able to do in 10 minutes. I feel I would need much more time to expand on the exploration on how to trace marks of the points of connection I hold with others...
How else can I trace, mark, gather? Can I find it in my body as Lili did with her gesture of the cross?
How else, can I tell that I am not alone in the world? How can you?

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Catalina walking you through some objects that carry/are filled with her life.

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This makes me think about LIli's exploration of the gesture of the cross... the parts of our family that we carry...
Here I see you body tracing, inhabiting the shadow of your plants that are pieces of place.. of the place that is a gravitational pull, home?, family... histories and genealogies.

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How would you teach us to experiment what you just did here?

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I enjoyed the "ganchitos" you used to extend the yarn... as you mentioned, they seem as anchor points, or places of support...or surfaces that emerge thanks to your tracing of your movement through space.. or the "energy lines" that are usually activated as you dwell in your place

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Holding together. Conversations, confusion and disorientation, anchors, roots, energy lines, loops, points of connection, weighted support, abrazos, peso,  expanded spatial-temporal meetings.

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Thank you for sharing this Tacia...
Are you experiencing and naming your shaving rituals as part of your internal architecture? Internal, or intimate, or.... yours only?
I loved that Tiger was giving you a serenade as you were enacting this ritual and I am thinking about gender as a sturcture of power, a force to immobilize us and that you are--in this shaving ritual, wrapped by the creature--using tat force as leverage to enact this powerful performance of against the one-directional force of gender...
You are a force pulling towards your own direction... thank you, thank you thank you

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our conversations have made think a lot about what it means to trace the parts of our family that we carry

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playing with resistance and tension and the creature friend has made me think about the support systems that we have within (as Catalina puts it) our internal architecture. My little fabric friend held me as I shaved that day and moved in and out of thoughts and daily rituals

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Alicia, this is so potent. You inspired me to engage in a similar exploration with the entanglements between the difficult story I have with my father, my current relationship with gender, and even the unexpected difficulties and tensions I found with my maternal family related with racial and class-based inequities.
Being able to turn to the arts and using these objects, and also having this space with you, is a way for me to step aside or refuse that part of my lineage to engage in other forms of kinship and solidarity with people, mujeres, creatures, like you.

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My immediate response when seeing these amazing images + videos

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My immediate response when seeing these amazing images + videos

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I plan to engage with this creature more, but the first thing I did when I unboxed the object was put it on!! Now I see how interesting it looks stretched and placed outdoors :-)
- Victoria

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outdoors is peace, tranquility, growth, release, new beginnings

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coming home….a joyful dance con la familia de alla

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coming home….a joyful dance con la familia de alla

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Migration, loss, struggle, trauma……Papi, was the adjustment to a different life—a life where you continually struggled to prove your value amidst the racism, where you traveled so much for your job that you didn’t know what family is and could be when you returned home, where you felt guilt for having left la patria y mamá—so hard that you had to take it out on tus hijos, tu sangre?

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String Figuring... An invitation to explore Space/Place, Tension, Entanglement and Refusal

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Opposing forces and movement--an octopus

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Opposing forces and movement--an octopus

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(These stamps were drawn, developed by my friend and collaborator, Natalia Espinel., as part of our shared research-creation around tension.
I extend this drawing to you as an invitation to think about how to engage with the tension that constitutes our bodies, movements, and histories)

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Download them as pdf here

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I invite you to re-experience what we have explored so far with these lenses that are conceptual/kinesthetic.