Director’s Notes Issue No.2
things that shine in the night
Fulgencio’s silver crown—when he snores
The moon, coin of Judas, glaring
At the smaller metals we call stars
My buckle
The tips of my boots
The stones in my kidneys
An earring
A tear on the cheek
The forked paths of a zipper
The blade of the pocketknife triggering open
The blade of the pocketknife seducing the orange
The blade of the pocketknife salivating
The blade of the pocketknife
The word Mexico
The word migra
From The Bordercrosser’s Pillowbook, by Rigoberto Gonzalez
Photo Credit: MoNA Staff
Dear MoNA Community,
Together with A Precarious Edge, on February 26, the Museum also celebrated the opening of Migrant Youth / Chicana Perspectives: Living in Multiple Spaces in the Outside In Gallery. Located upstairs, the Outside In Gallery is a MoNA gallery dedicated to creating space for inclusion and representation for the voices in our community to be heard. This space is comparatively small, and yet Migrant Youth / Chicana Perspectives: Living in Multiple Spaces reaches the goal to expand it, both in depth and breadth, as it turns it into an emotional journey of self-discovery, representation, and empowerment.
Since fall of 2020, photographer Marilyn Montúfar, the Migrant Leaders Club, and Underground Writing, a literature-based creative writing program—have been working collaboratively on a photography series focused on mentoring and photographing female migrant youth with heritage in Mexico. The beauty of the exhibition is that participating youth are mentored in art by Montúfar and in self-expression through writing by Matt Malyon, Executive Director of Underground Writing. In early 2020, when Montúfar learned that the pandemic was disproportionately impacting farm working communities, she reached out to communities in remote farm regions and learned about the work of the Migrant Leaders Club—a high school club for migrant youth—and Underground Writing. The photography created, paired with youth writing, shifts the dominant narrative about Indigenous and Latinx individuals by granting youth a platform to share their own narratives. Through the creative process of exploring identity, the youth have embraced a deeper understanding of what it means to be Mexican-American, Chicana, have Indigenous Mexican roots as well to embrace the ability to fluctuate between various languages and simultaneously challenge what it means to be a migrant existing in multiple cultural spaces.
Image: Marilyn Montufar, "Juli at the farm," 2021, archival pigment print, 30 x 30 in, courtesy of the artist.
The power of this exhibition is in its unmistakable nature of both testimonial and testament as captured in the lines of poetry, that stacked one on top of the other, lead us into the deeper thoughts, emotions, aspirations, and uncertainties of the youth. As I enter the Outside In Gallery, Juli stares back at the camera, stares back at me: the look in her eye caught between confidence and apprehension, between the intensity of focus and dull sense of fatigue. Montúfar's ability to capture liminal, multiple states of mind reaches a high point in these works. Juli's contribution to the artwork is her own words.
A Life is to Live
Time passes
Actions change
Life passes
People advance
Changes are difficult
But they are not always bad
We will miss what was
But growth is human nature
Minds will change
Alongside with people
We do not know what is coming
Perhaps they will be beautiful things
One can't know if they will be good
But they can't be all bad either
It's good to challenge fears
We can end up succeeding
As I read her poem, Juli's reference to change and the uncertainty of what is coming, "perhaps they will be beautiful things," brings me back to the artwork of two artists with whom I had the honor to work. The first is the multidisciplinary Mexican-American artist Erika Harrsch, who by employing traditional mediums along with new media and technologies, articulates the "reflection about the body and identity, sexuality, desire, the space that defines us and the one we wish for, the limits and vertiginous freedom that lead to a continuous corporeal and ideological migration." In 2011, at Bellevue Arts Museum, for the exhibition Travelers, Objects of Dream and Revelation, Harrsch created the installation Passport, in which the public was given the opportunity to apply for a passport of the United States of North America—a fictitious country joining the three NAFTA members Canada, U.S.A., and México. On specific days of the week, those who had applied were allowed to spin a wheel in the hope of winning a passport book whose look and feel could have deceived a customs officer, and whose pages were decorated with images of monarch butterflies. In the words of the artist: "Passport expands the boundaries of these individual countries, questions the concept of nation, reflects on the NAFTA treaty, and raises a conversation about immigration. The Monarch Butterfly, known for its migrations between Canada and Mexico, is an emblematic representation of a nation without borders; a linked reference with people's multi-national, multi-generational migrations that are increasing in today's global world in constant mobility."
Passport, installation, 2009. Photo: Erika Harrsch
Passport, installation, 2009. Photo: Erika Harrsch
Also featured in Travelers, was Mexican-American artist Margarita Cabrera. Her deflated-looking textile objects such as bicycles, backpacks, and cacti address issues related to border relations, labor practices, and immigration. While the bikes and backpacks are textile recreation of the objects left behind at the border and collected by the patrols, her cacti sculptures titled Nopal—a plant whose habitat spans all across the southern United States and Mexico—are cleverly constructed from discarded green border patrol uniforms. Nature can go where humans cannot. Produced through community workshops, where participants embroider the leaves with images drawn from their stories, the Nopal sculptures reference the rich traditions of indigenous Mexican textiles and pay homage to the collective labor of women.
Image: Margarita Cabrera, Bicicletas Verde (Green), 2006, Vinyl, foam, string and wire. No photo credit
Image: Margarita Cabrera, Nopal, 2010. Border patrol uniform fabric, copper wire, thread and terra cotta pot, 36 x 26 x 28 in. In Collaboration with Candelaria Cabrera. Photograph by Fredrik Nilsen
Returning to the exhibition Migrant Youth / Chicana Perspectives: Living in Multiple Spaces at MoNA, I reached out to Marilyn Montúfar and asked her to tell me more about how she approached youth from farm working communities for this project. Here’s an excerpt of our delightful conversation:
Stefano Catalani: Could you share how did the project start?
Marilyn Montúfar: When COVID started to spread, I became aware of its impact on migrant youth. I did outreach to different communities in Washington state and approached Underground Writing. After meeting with the students—an important aspect of my practice as my portraiture is based on building trust—I shared with them that I was interested in a project reflecting this moment in time working with them. That’s how the project happened.
SC: Migrant Youth / Chicana Perspectives: Living in Multiple Spaces pairs representation (photography) with agency (writing): Was this the first time you collaborated with a literary group such as Underground Writing? And how did you feel the synergy of these two art forms work for the project?
MM: This is the first time that I incorporated writing with my photography, and for this project, it was really important to include the participants’ own narratives, stories, and storytelling. The impact of seeing communities represented through the arts is huge. And for this project, I wanted to have more of a real collaboration with the youth, inviting them to participate in the final exhibition at MoNA. In terms of collaborating with Underground Writing, I should add that we are also educators: not only I am photographing the youth but I am also mentoring them in art and they receive mentorship in self-expression through writing by Underground Writing. So that in turn the youth have mentorship and agency—like in the case of the exhibition where they took the lead on every aspect of the show.
Photo credit: MoNA Staff
SC: Your focus on youth is a conscious effort to address the present through the lens of future generations. Please share with me your interest and perspective at large on working with youth.
MM: I specifically focus on working with individuals who don’t readily have access to the arts. And as this project progressed, it became an educational project so that the arts could be more accessible and available to the students.
SC: Identity and identity politics have been at the center of art for almost three decades. However, only in recent years, a new sensibility about representation and the need to decolonize the art world has taken hold. Could you speak of your work from this perspective, and how do you position Migrant Youth / Chicana Perspectives: Living in Multiple Spaces within your visual poetics?
MM: There are definitely different layers at play, and specifically with this project because it focuses on the Mexican community and brings more awareness to how these young women are at the intersection of oppression and racism not only within the USA but within Mexico as well, because many of these youths…their roots are from the indigenous community, which makes them also a target of racism in Mexico. What I would like to see in the future is what happened with this project, with the students having the agency to express themselves, having ownership to have a say in decision making—like, as I shared, for this exhibition where the whole content was decided together with them, from the color of the walls to the selection of the artwork.
SC: Thank you Marilyn! I appreciate you for taking the time to speak with me. And I couldn’t agree more. It is so important to share power. When we share power, we become stronger.
If you have not made it to the Museum of Northwest Art yet, I invite you to do so and see Migrant Youth / Chicana Perspectives: Living in Multiple Spaces in the Outside In gallery together with A Precarious Edge in the galleries downstairs, and Super Natural, A Northwest Tradition in the gallery upstairs. Thank you!
Stefano Catalani
Executive Director, Museum of Northwest Art