Is there rope or net or direction for falling?

It is lace it is landscape it is the undulations of our bodies. I am continuously moved by the ability of artists to invoke the body so viscerally without actually picturing it. I recently read a conversation with artists Ernesto Neto and Fernanda Gomes in BOMB magazine (winter 2008). Neto says: “Maybe that’s why people dance, as a way to be outside themselves; maybe not to be is more comfortable than to be—.” I am thinking dance is the place where we are completely embodied, so much so that we are able to be in irresistible connection with the spiritual, the sound, the lights, the sweat, the ether, where our bodies are synced with the communal body, so much so that it indeed feels like a leaving of self, a letting go of the individual. Is this what he means by not?

But now, of the being. I am looking at this work-in-progress from artist Lisa C. Soto’s Rodinia series. Rodinia, from the Russian родина for motherland, a supercontinent hovering on the surface of our spherish world, but before, in the beginning as we know it geologically, rodinia, rodinia, it lingers in the mouth like being in love, a supercontinent indeed, this graphite on mylar. Lace, necklace, the forest. Stones in a river. And so many islands. Or an almost dress, this new pangaea. Her fingers must be stained black from the making, from the stitching of country to country. And so many. There are 192 or 193 or 195 depending on how you count and who counts. And measures. Soto includes territories as well and perhaps other land masses unclaimed. (Are there?) Her project feels unending…that the line of her work may extend into outerspace one day…taking map-like notes on the ever-colonized stratosphere and beyond. The tracing on mylar and the cutting will likely be a forever part of her artistic process.

I love the blackening of materials. The rubbing of graphite into plastic. To proclaim territories and understandings and non-nation nations Palestines Kosovos Puerto Ricos the Lakota Sioux. Though rooted in land, Soto’s Rodinia describes a landlessness as well, where these shadow nations are primary, where darkness is everything, the blackening divine.

There is a whole set of questions I want to ask the artist, a whole set of imaginations that I want to have embodied and explained. Can she tell me how this flesh and bones will look when rome falls, when the disintegration of borders takes hold, when the sea no longer eats us? Is there a motherland even after the first? And will we be whole when we see her? Are we shapeshifted enough? Or not? Is there rope or net or direction for falling? Should we slow and linger? Or disco nap? But I already have…

And is this what we do to remember? That Pluto is not a planet? Pluto, that smallest and coldest and once-farthest from the sun...now you feel? Hear the shadow? This looking is dancing, you know.

***

And then there is into

I visited Annette Lawrence’s studio to view her recent installation entitled Free Paper. The artist saved her junk mail for 13 months from November 2005 through November 2006. She tore the stacks of paper into two-inch wide strips which she then stacked on top of each other. Each month of free paper stands on a small table-high shelf. Lawrence speaks of the 11 years it took her to feel comfortable with the horizontal orientation of work, having moved from New York to Texas where, as everyone knows, the sky is bigger. These works spread out along their shelves like faded horizon lines stacked upon each other. Simultaneously, they stand high like architectural models, quiet skyscrapers pushing up against the white sky of the studio walls.

Evidence of marks and their maker. The strips of newspapers, glossy inserts and hard coupons speak of the internal as well—into earth and body. There is up down, the four directions, inside outside. And there is into. This invocation of the geological suggests a contemporary sedimentation: greys, reds, so many reds, an orange edge, but not quite. Strata of capitalism. Made beautiful. The weight of the thin strips of paper makes the stack curve fall at the edges, as the horizon line always bends in our peripheral vision. We should always remember the curvature of the earth.

These were once trees, this free paper. Lawrence has created rings of age, movement and breath. I can imagine the artist’s hands holding the metal straight-edge against small stacks of paper, then ripping, the sound hypnotic. I am looking at evidence of 13 months in a small room—November through November, an almost-lunar counting system. The overlap of months makes me think of a spiral. And infinity. Though they measure a specific beginning and end, there is really none to speak of. Though unintended, there is a lovely reference to the Jamaican saying “free-paper burn”. When free paper (a slave’s pass or documents of freedom) burn, our vacation is over, we must return to work. But here I imagine free paper could again become earth, trees, ash, air, breath.

I walk closer to these forms, remains and want to breathe them in, smell them, want them to smell like wet earth and clay, something alive. They are curiously absent of scent. I peer around the edges and am reminded of what exactly this is, this free paper: a Target logo, the blonde hair of a department store model, a coupon for 10% off. Must sacred always require the profane? And the liminal the ordinary?

I am in love with these bodies these forms and their spines—the squarish spaces that run through the middle of the stacks, devoid of color, that place in the fold of the newspaper the ink cannot touch. They are crooked vertebrae. Her body, my body, the neighbor, the mail carrier, whose free papers, whose bodies. They are all of us and absolutely gorgeous. I am again convinced that we live in a time of artists. Who else can transform junk into such beauty and reverence. I am reminded of Paul Chan’s My birds... trash... the future, a two channel digital projection that occupies two sides of a flat screen, all futures are possible.


2004. Two channel digital projection installation, front view. 17 minutes.


And they can indeed emerge un-apocalyptically.

It is humbling to stand before a work that makes me want to move slower, to savor and embrace my own actions, the rise and fall of my own breathing and voice. I am so moved by the what remains. It is photographic. Pre-photographic. Ancient as fossils. Rectangles of colored light that reflect up against the wall, a field of red or purple or blue. A kind of camera obscura, as if the light will remember the piece after the paper’s disintegration. (I think of Rothko here. Is it possible that works of art speak to each other regardless of our presence before them? Is the sound between works something we cannot hear? Does it surface as light? Is it the space before—in front of—the painting?)

I have been thinking about what constitutes an aesthetics of bravery. Is it the into? The vulnerability of the dirty, the truest truth of junk, trash, books, bibles, ships at sea, returning and returned, free paper burning. Not because of endings and apocalypse. Perhaps bravery is a future, a red light on a wall that is only sometimes there. A spiral. A chapel...I haven’t even spoken of the boxes that Lawrence builds for mailing these works, perfectly fitted for each month’s variations, rarely to be used, but waiting. More layers in the strata, crossroads become mathematical, between boxes and stacks, between shore and ocean, free and burn, between quick and linger there is into.

***

What happens at the crossroads if you allow yourself to linger?

thinking about Ana Mendieta

as I begin a new set of drawings…

Nok terracotta sculptures, 290 BC, 7 inches high


How does the artifact occupy the space of the paper: can its power be invoked by the drawing itself, so that we may understand it more fully through the act of drawing, by embedding the image in paper with thread, by tracing our own forms into the page as well, as a way to dialogue with the mask that is now hundreds of years old? What does that invocation look like? How does it sound? (Is the sound present in the performances I make with my own body? Is this how the sound of a drawing emerges, in the space of breath and movement?)

How does the drawing allow us to visit the historical record itself, to return to Nok civilization (in the Jos Plateau region of Nigeria) and actually try on a terracotta sculpture as if it were a mask, as if it were a familiar face, as if an ancestor during ceremony, as if I were the ancestor, as if it were my own face that I was able to try on hundreds of years into this future, as if I were the sculptor, as if I were the one who pulled clay from earth sometime between 500 B.C. and 200 A.D., as if dates and time didn’t matter, as if the inevitability of beauty and connection could change everything and all that was asked of us was the deep vulnerability that pencil to paper requires…

Nok terracotta sculptures, 810-511 BC, height 19 inches

questions

What does the line of a drawing invoke?

What is the significance of the collective process? Talk about collective deep knowledge.

Is that collective working process important for your work to grow, expand?

What is the significance of scale in your work? What is monumental, epic? What is the poem? How do you combine the poem and the epic?

What role does the camera play and why? Dancer, participant, witness?

Why is the video necessary at all? Is it documentation? Or, as Pato Hebert asks, is it as important as the performance/ritual/gesture? (Pato Hebert)

What is the significance of place? Is it specific, diasporic, liminal?

What is the significance of time in your work? (filmic, Hopi concepts of time as cyclical, ancestral, etc)

What is the significance of the body, what does it represent, stand in for, site, nation, collective?

Why this body? As Samiya Bashir says, whose body is this?

What is the role of sound in the performance/video work? Silence? How does that affect aesthetics, form?

What is the movement between silence and the infiniphonic? How is silence infiniphonic? What is your relationship to extended versions? (Fela)

What happens at the crossroads? 'This river was once a road' (Ben Okri…this road was once a river)

How do you picture parallel dancers?

What would it look like to dance in an earth skirt?

What are your tools and offerings?

Who are your gods? (asks Sharon Bridgforth)

What is the significance of the story?

What does the story change? And how?

What is the line back to the body?

What does the camera witness?

What does it mean to wrap your head with fathoms? When would this be necessary?

The wrapping of feet, the walking in the dry riverbed.

How do the dancers unwind from the camera? Return to the camera.

How is the camera the 8th dancer, multiple dancers?

How do the dancers make sacred space in which to dance?

What do the spirits see if they are watching us dance? Where do they watch from? The trees, the altar, the river bed?

If the dance were sound, how would you mix it?

How would you play the off-key?

What is the weight of lovers (in fathoms)? (Felix Gonzalez-Torres)

Describe the color of your deepest power?

What is your flesh offering? (Sundance)

How is the prayer sent?

What is the place of sacrifice in the work coming to life?

Do you believe in sacrifice?

What are your primary gestures and rituals?

What are the gestures (of the body) that demonstrate the expression of your power? What does it look like to make them over an extended period of time? What does it look like when a group makes them over an extended period of time? What is invoked, remembered, released, forgotten, conjured, healed, explained, started, stopped, created?

What is it to wrap your head in fathoms?

Whose eyes?

What is the slow motion dance?

How do you take the sweet road? (Sharon Bridgforth)

What do you want to say about the crossroads?

Describe the lines from there to here.

What do you want to talk about?

What do you know?

Describe how time functions, what is your concept of time in the work?

What is the presence of sound, how is the visual full of sound?

What does the work want?

What wants to happen?

What are you scared of?

What do you need to surrender?

What are the resources that this work already has, what has it shown you?

What rituals do you need to do for yourself in order for the work to happen?

What do you observe when you observe your artmaking process? (Record the journey)

how does that sound look?

still from performance video marks (2007)

(writings about belongings, marks, and other new video works):

They’re first about land and the body, my relationship to land. What the land gives and what our bodies know (both being full of deep knowledge). There is also how we make marks, how we mark our existence in this world. I was thinking a lot about migration and immigration as well. Crossings. Of borders and seas. What is it to cross an ocean? Does the water remember our existence? And how? And how are our own bodies marked with the crossings of people we don’t know. People who we know could be us. Are us.

What is the rhythm of our presence in this world? When we walk does the sound reverberate infinitely, endlessly? How does that sound look?

And the masquerade. I am forever interested in the mask and where that takes us. The space between the body and the spirit. Covering and opening. And what it feels like for the earth to put a mask on.

***

I saw the "Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary" show at the Met recently. As I walked through the exhibit I kept thinking, I must not be remembering the definition of reliquary. We are walking through wooden statues dripping with oil, ancestor figures sculpted in metal, stitched dolls that are consulted for important community matters. From the museum catalogue:

“Yet another distinctive genre consists of Bwende and Bembe soft sculptures from the Republic of Congo, with their emphasis on a vibrant red palette, strategic use of contrasting textile patterns, and grand cosmic gestures that announce their role as active intermediaries with the divine. Among the most spectacular and rare examples is a life-size Female Figure by the Bwende master Makosa of Kingoyi that was collected by the Swedish missionary Efraim Andersson in 1938 (Museum of World Culture).”

Female Figure by the Bwende master Makosa of Kingoyi

Soft sculpture? Okay. With the bones of an ancestor inside. The figure, measuring well over 7 feet high is put into the earth during a burial ceremony.

And the un-burying? How does one ‘collect’ the body of another’s dead? What does it take to excavate something so large—both physically and spiritually. Is it excruciating? Does it require amnesia? Or the leaving of one’s own body? Complex like reparations and repatriation.

So, excavation. What do we excavate? And when and why? And how? Can anger be removed from the body? Cut out and photographed? Does it emerge lovingly? Makes me think of Ogun, the Yoruba god of iron and war. He also has a big heart. So while he is fierce and independent, he is very loving, sensitive. Thinking of creating a dance for Ogun.

(Must we undergo constant excavation? And taking, even after the body. Perhaps this is one of the roots that explains my mixed emotions when I come upon the works of Kara Walker and Wangechi Mutu and even Ghada Amer. What would you do without the oppressor? Or must we always be broken or breaking?)

***

I am deeply interested in how we, as artists, create, discover our own language. And how these languages become creoles. The crossings are the creoles that we speak. And so to Sun Ra and Maya Deren:

Sun Ra, from Space is the Place (1974)

Maya Deren, from Meshes of the Afternoon

***

That should really be the measure of success: if you can be in your body.

Nigerian Egungun Dancers

The Lovely Willie Ninja

New York City Breakers featured on Graffiti Rock

Ugandan Marimba Dancing

Ag'ya, Martinique's Combat Dance, 1936, filmed by Katherine Dunham

Katherine Dunham Dancing with Talley Beatty

***

She thought the sea.

She began.

Ogun jí (Ogun wakes up.)

He visioned songbirds.

He stopped a war. He opened ceremony.

She thought the sea.

She moved the road.

She danced.

***

The floor of ceremony

still from earth puts on a mask (2007)

Maya Deren created a film with the dancer Talley Beatty in 1945. She first called it: ‘A study in choreography for the camera’, but renamed it ‘Pas de deux’ (step of two) because she considered the camera to be a partner in the dance:



This is the form I have always been interested in, camera as partner. As crossroads, as the floor of ceremony, full of traces and tracings. As colored people we have such complicated relationships to the camera. The taking, the shooting, the cataloguing. Tracking and surveillance.

I first began my journey as an artist as a photographer. I was interested in how to make photographs of people who lived before 1839 (the discovery of photography), how to photograph ancestral memory and deep knowledge.

from Woman who thinks she is Bird Woman (1999)

All begins with the body. The place where everything is infinitely embedded, the history of the world, politics, geography, crossings and returns. I was making glass negatives of spirits and stories, a kind of evidence, a way to talk about my visions, a way to mark history as I know it.

from Crossroads/Blood Diary/Medicine Bag (1999)

So I return to the camera, my partner, my dancer, my floor. Here are four works made in Spain and Austin (‘the return’ and 'infinite return'). (Of course, I stitched as well, but more on that soon!)


belongings and marks





earth puts on a mask




infinite return (bird on the sun)





And the sketches/poems that gave birth to the films, entitled:

456 fathoms the color of the horizon line
611 fathoms the color of the sea at night
with 305 fathoms the color of brown bodies
80 fathoms of Ogun’s colors
97 fathoms the reflection of clouds in water
92 my grandmother’s sunset
435 blood and the earth on the island of Santo Domingo
539 red sun


1
hold them
hold them
hold them
hold them
it is the sea it is mountains it is the sea
fathoms of black bodies
and two suns
i am carrying two
our world has two
i have drawn them this way
like that hold them hold them
hold them
them
drawings them sea them
mountains now crawling
am drawing
is moving
black bodies on the page
i cannot even imagine the falling
fathoms
but your drawing
brings spirits into the room
and they
is moving
hold them hold them hold them
while suns are rising
while these bundles explode
you feel that drawing on your face?
it is the sea it is mountains it is the sea
it is your drawing we are dancing
this drawing
am drawing
am sea
am mountains
and we are wrapping
these two suns
hold them
hold them hold them


2
my belly drags
i have been pulling
across foothills
but the mountain is too close
my son so close
and where the horizon
covered by a woman on the street
shouting these people these people
this is how they are that is how they smell
how loud how dark how pushing
never want to wait in line
how they move they move
they move
this message in my hand
i am watching the horizon for my son
for a boat on the line of purple
it’s the wood of a boat
folded on the horizon
no it didn’t look like him in the paper
it’s a bird on the horizon
it didn’t look like him
a folded bird
folded crumpled in my hand
black and smelling
it is the wood of boatmakers
wood rotting
folded like that in the paper


3
flies incessantly cross my body
they tasting my sweat
dirt removed anoche
a big red ant is coming for me
bites edges of chancletas
skin is skin
she is coming for me
this ancestor is angry
she wants to tear my flesh
and spit it out
to rid me of ghosts i am carrying
she keeps asking why how
how whoever who
finds you crossing that desert
who whoever
has told you we haven’t made crossings already and who

back back drummers

who whoever
h’reg
h’reg
h’reg
and you don’t
cruzamos como siempre
cruzamos como porque
ese dictador ya esta muerto
and and
we have made cities of people
of people
and people
who whoever

these flies will not leave my skin
grandma
and i am crossing
he burned but i am crossing
porque es lo mio
mi cuerpo
es lo mio lo que moscas
mark traverse forget
es lo mio
sudando quemando sudando

am sea sea
am hands
am threads am earth against earth
am drawings am women
how i always how this
how black my ghosts my drummers
on and on
one palomita ay
palomita ay palomita
vida
tell
these flies
these why
are
are
witnesses
are born
but the flies
incessant

and her question?
¿com es diu això en català?
¿on li fa mal?
no it doesn’t hurt
she asked how is your work sacred
y te dijé

am sea sea
am hands am mountains
threads drawings
how this how black my drummers
volando volando
there are thorns and flies in catalunya
and las canarias and gibraltar and and
and
and serrated mountains and
and

incessant witnesses are coming for me
there are drummers coming for me




***

This is a cake, this is a nation, this is a body, this is infiniphonic

I’m off to Barcelona, then to the Can Serrat artist residency in El Bruc, land of the Black Madonna. One of my first stops in Barcelona will be Fundación Tàpies. It's the absolute best to be able to see the actual work. And I always find myself smelling paintings--as if they were books. I have decided to bring my ‘Converses amb Antoni Tàpies’ book, just in case I meet the artist. He is one of my favorite artists and deepest inspirations.

Antoni Tàpies

Cardboard and string, 1959

I am in the midst of packing, figuring out how much thread (can you ever have enough), what paper and how much. I am thinking large-scale drawings will be part of my daily ritual. Drawing is still so scary to me, and beautiful, and a change of scale seems a necessary path to explore. And then there’s performance.

I recently started making a series of performance pieces entitled:

Chronicles
of the black female nude
as told by herself

Still from Preparing for the Masquerade
(Chronicles of the black female nude as told by herself)

I use my body and bundles of thread, measured in fathoms, to talk about our movements, history, memory. I have been thinking a lot about how to encode history in materials. So the colors of the thread hold historical and memorical references:

354 fathoms the color of the deep sea
196 fathoms the color of the water off the coast of Santo Domingo
38 fathoms the color of a memory of blood in water

Thread Palettes

...Thinking of Threads and Ladders...
Artist Youmna Chlala and I have been developing a project entitled:

El movimiento del punto más cerca
The movement of the closest point
Le mouvement du point le plus proche

It is to take place in Southern Spain and Morocco, specifically looking at the Strait of Gibraltar and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla which are contested Spanish enclaves located in Morocco. The Strait of Gibraltar is important for many reasons. At its shortest distance it measures only 8 miles and is a place where many refugees—both from Africa and the Middle East attempt to enter Europe. The cities of Ceuta and Melilla are a way to enter Europe without crossing the Strait, though the high walls, fences and armed soldiers are just as dangerous as these waters. This negotiation of borders and bodies is reflected across the globe: Mexico and the United States, Israel and Palestine, Dominican Republic and Haiti, the list goes on.

Youmna began this project in California at Headlands Center for the Arts, located on cliffs above the bay:

Youmna Chlala

Some of us are made of bone (1)

I used to think that our relationship to land determined everything. Being able to touch or return to ancestral lands, the process of creating homelands, walking on earth, our relationship to food and the dirt. Now I am thinking about our movements. I think of the work of artist Lisa C. Soto. Her work is cartographies of moving lines. She records the globe opening and closing, breathing. And countries in constant motion. In her drawings, the boundaries of countries are always speaking of their own creation and demise. Perspective moves from the microscopic to the infiniphonic* and back again.

*A brief note on the INFINIPHONIC: this just came to me recently (mad props to AL, SB, KH, and a dimly lit car outside of Austin’s Victory Grill). Infiniphonic describes the sensation of listening to multiple sounds, music, stories, to what is heard and yet to be played, it is hyperbolic notes and a playlist of voices and all the beauty and possibility that that implies. You know it when you hear it. SNAP!*

The visual may also be infiniphonic:

Lisa C. Soto

Moth, Hummingbird, Pathways

Lisa C. Soto
Untitled

Lisa C. Soto

Untitled II

Youmna tells me that the city is becoming the new nation. Rather than talk about countries, people refer to the metropolis as the center. So you live in Day Effé or London or Sao Paulo or Bangkok or Austin (does that count?!). The country itself dissipates and hovers while the metropolis grows.

Youmna Chlala
This is a cake, not a city

And then there’s the body.

I am thinking that perhaps it is the body that is the new nation. It is a place of borders, histories, politics, landscape, spirit. It is sometimes all that we have and all that we bring. And, if the body is the new nation: where does it move, who are its allies, what is its architecture, landscape and geography? How does that nation express desire? How does it survive and is its survival important?

Is it in our bodies where the fall of the nation-state will happen?
Is that where change happens--through our movements and journies and landings?

I find myself pulled to these stories of where we are not allowed to go or not supposed to go.
And go.

Still from Shoes (Chronicles of the black female nude as told by herself)



***

Bird Woman

I was recently asked about the inspiration for the piece bird woman (see below...it is the first image):

I had been sketching birds in my studio, as a way to begin the day. The connection to birds is spiritual in the sense that i have found bird feathers (owls, blue jays, flicker--it's like a woodpecker) for many years. This has also been possible because of my deep connection to land and the forest-- i spend a lot of time hiking and listening. I am also fascinated with the way birds seem to be both physical and spiritual--flying and singing--how incredible, that really is the ultimate. The bird sketches are also ways for me to look at gestures, significant gestures and then to translate those onto figures. So, for example, dancing/fighting birds and rituals of courtship. Or the shape of flying--towards the sky or towards the sea. With this piece I wanted the woman to more directly embody the gesture/the bird. She becomes, the bird becomes. And they are both divine.

...this was a really hard piece for me. When I made it I had such a hard studio day, nothing was flowing and I was actually going to put it away in a pile of mistakes that i have. But then a friend entered my studio and really loved it and that gave me new eyes. And then, as you know, I thought I would sew the entire piece, but the white of the sketch really grew on me. And I began to really understand the importance of the sketch, and the partly-stitched image, the way that it allowed for movements and openings in the work. The piece became very significant to me--it is a legend of sorts for other work. I still feel I have a lot to learn from it. Oh, and it is also about vulnerability, being open to being a vessel, to change, to being physically embodied, to being divine. All that is about vulnerability I think.

birds, women, conversations with elegua, and a list of the impossible

These are my winter to spring stitches, along with a short film of me sewing:





And a favorite question from my sketch journal this time around: what
is impossible? what would it look and sound like? write about it,
then do it.

The question makes me think of Elegua, the orisa of the
crossroads—choices and destinies, and also equinoxes and eclipses.
Rules and their breaking. I keep having this conversation with the
road about the impossibility of drawing. So I am following this
instruction from my drawing teacher. When you draw a face, or a body,
or anything really, try not to name it or think about it in words,
instead think about shapes, curves, shadows, lines, movement. So you
can get to know it without saying what it is, without limiting what it
will become. It's amazing to be able to engage in something so
difficult, to feel the near impossibility of that translation from eye
to body to pencil to page—and then, says my teacher, eventually you
become fluent in drawing the way YOU draw. Words of the divine
trickster I think.

so here is my short list:
running five miles a day
enemies loving each other (i am thinking a lot about laylah ali's work here)
me, a dj
and sometimes drawing

The sky is earthbloodorange

I have just returned to Austin from New York and am waking up with a book about Tàpies called Witness of Silence by Alexandre Cirici (1972). There is such a freedom in the work of Tàpies that I hope to achieve in my own one day, a kind of trust for the unknown which I believe every artist should embody, walk from, live with. And then there are the colors in his work which move me so deeply. The oranges that speak of something pungent, internal, like blood or love, and also earth. I am staring at this piece called Painting.

Painting, 1954

There are artists that I come back to that I feel somehow related to—artistic ancestors—we have some kind of shared elemental connection—these include Antoni Tàpies, Ana Mendieta and (recently) María Magdalena Campos-Pons. We see their work and think ‘these are my people.’ It makes me think about this idea (this message I heard) that ‘there is no imagination without the ancestors and where we come from.’ And I am thinking of ancestors in all possible forms: blood relations and artistic ancestors as well as place and land.

¿Como Andas?, 2003

While in NY I had this amazing conversation with a friend of mine, Ayano Ohmi, who is a clay artist. She uses clay from all over the world and makes totems with that clay that she often installs outdoors in the same places where the clay was found. The clay comes out of the earth to find a home on top of the earth. How beautiful. So we had this amazing conversation about travel and art and Ayano said something that I keep thinking about: “Clay, fiber and glass are age-old materials, so I feel they should be together, must be together to make something very important.”

And we continued to talk about this elemental connection that we have to materials. The materials know us. We know them, but they have known us longer. Think about that. That the materials have sought us out. So our connection to the materials we use as visual artists stems from something very deep. Ancestral, elemental, fundamental. And so for our work to be powerful form must embody content. The form is history is our past, present and future.

And our deep love and excitement and breathlessness about seeing the color earthbloodorange used on a painting may indeed come from the fact that one of our ancestors was impressed by that color as it painted the sky with the setting sun hundreds or thousands of years ago. We must be incredibly old to be artists.

The birth of mythical birds

Sea Bird (2007), Thread on paper, 10 x 9 inches

Hummingbird (2007), Thread on paper, 10 x 8 inches

Hummingbird, Ruby throated (2007), Thread on paper, 10 x 8 inches



Bird (2006), Thread on paper, 9¾ x 8 inches

I recently began a daily ritual of stitching as a way to enter my studio and begin work for the day. I have been sewing a series of birds, mostly mythical birds (related--and not--to the phoenix, quetzalcoatl, sankofa, thunderbird...i’m sure there are more...) that have become the palettes for my other stitched pieces (Monuments) as my hand learns about gestures, movements, colors, and the meanings and language of different stitch lengths. The daily sewing is like a prayer which sometimes happens quite quickly (well, for sewing...1-2 hours) or can take much, much longer (like most of the day).

It’s amazing how the sketches, the prayers, these birds become the work itself—the sketches have a kind of opening and vulnerability to them—they seem to speak so easily about what it is that I’m working towards, their language flows without being self-conscious. So they are not only reference points for larger work, but I have become very interested in the visual language of the birds themselves and the stories they tell. The writer Ana Lara recently asked me if I consider the stitches to be poems—they are in many ways, certainly a language I am trying to learn, trying to speak, sometimes broken, sometimes fluent, all the while working to understand the thread and its ever-changing form and relationship to land and the body and the story.

And so I find myself in Austin, TX. Yes, Texas! A city of birds, hundreds of grackles break through the sky each night and hang heavy in the trees. Parrots stream through the sky with their bright greens, nesting in the electrical towers all over the city. A police officer told me the parrot ancestry goes back several years, that they were once pet birds that escaped. Some say they were waylaid on a journey south one year. Or maybe they weren’t lost at all, but arrived here because they had to. They had to return, remember, re-live something important and powerful. And this land is old, there are fossils every where you step—over 300 million year-old fossils that you can hold in your hands. It’s incredible. And I almost forgot to mention the wild peacocks. I actually found a peacock feather the other day. Sometimes the sky opens that way.

el 20 de septiembre
I had been feeling so undisciplined, but ana changes how I understand this concept of discipline. She talks about how discipline is a way of walking through the world, that I am incredibly committed to a particular way of being in the world, of my vision of the world and that this is a kind of discipline. This is really true and especially important for artists to understand I think. The way we experience the world is a totally different language.

el 20
I finally made a piece that I really like. It is a breakthrough. And I realize that I dreamed the piece when I first arrived.

el 21
as artists, we are really vessels. I realize the importance of allowing the work to flow through me—it doesn’t really need to stay with me for long—each piece is one in hundreds, a story, a song, a memory, a rock in the river, they have a life of their own.

each piece must move like the river. One idea, a thread, a stitch, a pencil line takes you to another piece, explains something more, opens you. Open close open close open open open.

el 23
it rained--the ants outside of my studio gather pale yellow flowers and leave them in piles around the entrances to their tunnels.

el 24, sábado
ví un búho encima del río, a small white owl flying over in the night. I haven’t seen an owl for a long time—death, birth, spiritual protection, guides. My work continues to change from what I thought it would be. It is so much about the river right now. me encanta este río. It’s so incredible, magical, greenish gold almost. I feel so connected to the river now, to the land here. We feel each other, we know things about each other. And I feel myself breathing the fragility of other people, don’t we?—we see everything and reveal everything about ourselves in every moment.

I have realized the significance of walking on our paths, of doing what we are called to do, or following our passions in life even when it seems impractical, even in the face of fear. When we don’t take responsibility for our power, our gifts, we affect other people, we involve them in our fears either intentionally or unintentionally. It’s really a huge responsibility to assume your own power. especially in those moments when you know the world does not share your vision, does not understand, does not even speak one word of your language. I feel this in my work sometimes but I also remember the power of speaking. That we affect each other, that we touch each other. even when I am struggling to speak, to explain myself in Spanish, I know that that act is beautiful, lovely, alive, powerful (and often funny) We have a huge capacity to give love even when we don’t fully understand where the other person is coming from or what they are saying.



el 26
talking with the paper, cutting out, putting in, somehow I am able to stitch these small bundles back into. the paper holds the sculpture.


el 29 de septiembre
my performance will finally happen next week. So I am thinking a lot about something Ana said to me this summer: “If you want to talk about universality, forget European humanism, let’s talk about the way people relate to land.” This was in the context of talking about the Taino Indians, the Taino mythology, creation stories, history. So the Taino’s tied stones together to stop the rain and opened them to bring the rain. People in the countryside still do this. Most cultures—with connection to land—have rain spells. There is this deep way of calling forth the rain that occurs all over the world, it is ingrained, gestural, cellular. People talk about cellular memory—and really this is more than something physical, biological. It’s a kind of spiritual communication I think, a way of exchanging information at a very deep level—and you have to be completely embodied to feel this connection, to hear. I will begin my performance with oshun, the body, our first homeland. gender, sex, desire, jealousy, love. everything, every word has a body, homeland, birthplace.

el 29
the rains have arrived. heavy pounding. They make mud of the red earth outside of my studio—I have wrapped a large sculpture with thread, rope, canvas. Stones. I cover everything in the red earth. it stains my hands. Camilo—another artist in residence—says, ‘it’s so african’—I wonder if I will find this red earth in nigeria as well.

el 1 de septiembre.
Alone on my first night here on the island so I begin with my brother Fela to open the space (Suffa, suffa, suffa, suffa, suffa, suffer for what? Now your fault be that!). My arrival at the airport was beautiful, I always love the clapping and praying and perfume spraying that happens when the airplane touches down in santo domingo. That transition from earth to sky to earth is always a bit difficult and scary and something to be thankful for. En estilo dominicano, we deplane directly on the tarmac…this is how famous people arrive, isn’t it? I have a big, cheesy grin on my face, like when I moved to new york and was in love with the skyscrapers. We are all laughing, as we walk down the stairs and see the guagua waiting in the distance. This is better than I could have imagined. We are loading all this luggage into the guagua that will take us to the terminal. “Me quedo aqui,” a woman jokes. Everything about my arrival is fabulous, it’s warm, sunny and I happily sip my shot of Brugal on my way to the customs agent. After that I go to meet my driver—who will be carrying a sign with my name on it—I always thought that would be the most embarrassing thing in the world. And somehow I am the first one out with my luggage and there is a huge mass of people on either side of me waiting to meet their people. At first I think, ‘oh, shit, everyone is starring at me’, but then I get over myself and smile my cheesiest and find the huge ‘Wura Ogunji’ sign in the distance.

I have a ton of visions on the drive from the airport. I see watermelons on the street and machetes stuck into the pavement and the ocean seems to come right up to the edge of the road. I see men emerge from bushes and wonder if they are ghosts. And someone says, ‘this horse walks on water.’ We drive by so many places where the river meets the ocean. I have to make offerings.

My apartment is filled with students’ artwork. They are amazing illustrators. I hope to be this good one day. Their hands understand light. Charcoal drawings are very much sketches for paintings—they are beautiful, though I am pulled to the line of drawings—tentative and certain at the same time. Lines of drawings are so truthful, complete, like desire.

The fridge is stocked with food—the basics that I will need until I find my way into La Romana to go shopping. Ham, cheese, butter, bread, hatuey crackers and of course fresh pineapple, two kinds of melon, fresh oranges, coffee, azucar. Day 5 of eating fried ham and cheese sandwiches—they’re so tasty here--and I hear Ana’s voice reminding me not to eat sandwiches every day.

As I get older I like people more. We are so fragile and powerful, to discover our power, our paths, is our life’s work, isn’t it?

el 2 de septiembre
I move into my studio today. It’s perfect. There’s a sitting area in front and a cactus with beautiful redmagenta sabras. It feels so good to be here, to be out of new york and I am remembering what it was like living here before. Culture really settles into our bones—so that when we are living in new york it is so difficult to even imagine being somewhere else fully. How can we remember fully when so much that we know about the world happens through our bodies. Our bodies store everything we know about this world. That why dance and sex are so important. Such a large part of knowing the world is about being intimate, connecting with other people. I keep thinking about how the body is our first homeland.

I am working on a performance piece about this. Recipe for homeland. Something like that. I will perform it in a couple of weeks for a class here. For a second I feel totally nervous, but then I remember that voice and movement are more powerful than fear. And necessary. I keep thinking about this question: how do we make ourselves vulnerable as artists, throughout the artistic process? this is critical, allows for openings in the work.

el 8 de septiembre
when I am drawing, I am never drawing feet, hands, face, a body. It is a language that is only spoken with the pencil, the eye, the paper. That is what I am speaking in the moment. and it requires so much of the eye. So much discipline and hand strength, it’s so hard for me.

el 9 de septiembre
i am realizing that my bad days may reveal beauty. this morning I woke up late, bumped my head, broke a plate. It’s almost like my body is fighting what I know I have to do—I come to my studio, procrastinate and finally I make myself draw. i have to make endless sketches in order to bring forth beautiful lines. And today everything I am doing is out of compulsion. Trying all these new ways of working, completely changing an image I had planned for days and finally I poke holes in the paper—not knowing if I will fill these with thread or if they will be a grand mistake, a wasted piece of paper. or maybe magic.

el 10 de septiembre
estoy mas interesado en como la gente experiencen (?) la trabajo mas que como ellos lo leen.

el 10 de septiembre
it’s evening now. El sábado. the rain smells lovely, frogs are beginning to sing, the air is cooled for a minute. too bad the mosquitos love my sangre so much.

el 12 de septiembre
i drink my first refajo. (beer and coca cola)

Red Dress by Wura-Natasha Ogunji