Desenterrando (Unearthing), is an ongoing installation composed of multiple artworks with video projections, metal-wire sculptures, ceramics and drawings. Through ritualized performances, I seek to unearth recollection for my grandmother, Maritza de la Coromoto, and make connections with my matriarchal lineage. Resulting in a reflection of the traditional hierarchical structure of Venezuelan culture, the woman as the central figure. Throughout the space, there is a repetition of these female figures made with ceramics, prints, candle wax, coffee grounds and sand.
The meditative process of the intimate rituals I have documented with my body to the sound of tambores, using sage stick, candle wax, white and red chalk, in scrolls of paper for Conversación Series #2 and #3, reveal answers from my ancestors and translate forms with materials of the past and present from the U.S. and Venezuela. The result comes from my disconnection with the ground, ocean, and air of this country. I begin to question what it means to not be able to go back, and the only source of feeling close to home is to reterritorialize U.S. materials into Venezuelan portals and objects.
READING ROOM
• Ascencio, Michaelle. De que vuelan, vuelan. Imaginarios religiosos venezolanos. Caracas, Venezuela: Editorial Alfa, 2012.
• Pollak-Eltz, Angelina. María Lionza Mito y Culto Venezolano. Caracas, Venezuela: Universidad Católica Andres Bello, 1985.
• Salas, Yolanda. “UNA BIOGRAFÍA DE LOS ‘ESPÍRITUS’ EN LA HISTORIA POPULAR VENEZOLANA.” INTI, no. 45 (1997): 163–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23290311.
• Placer, David. Los brujos de Chávez. La magia como prolongación de la política. Economía Digital, S.L., 2015.
• Blocker, Jane. “Ana Mendieta and the Politics of the Venus Negra.” Cultural Studies 12, no. 1 (January 1998): 31–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/095023898335609.
• Muñoz, José Esteban. “Vitalism’s after-Burn: The Sense of Ana Mendieta.” Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 21, no. 2 (July 2011): 191–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/0740770x.2011.607596.
• Viso, Olga M. Ana Mendieta: Earth Body: Sculpture and Performance, 1972-1985. Washington, DC: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Hatje Cantz, 2004.
