Art and Nonbeing

In the zone of Nonbeing that borders force us into, it is art that asserts our humanity and the right to our bodies and their sacredness.

Monday evening I received a google drive link to a project my seven year old daughter and I had the privilege of participating in alongside other parents and their children for the Nuestras Historias exhibit at the Museo de Las Americas. Artist, Andrea Garcia Vasquez shared her heartfelt experience putting together our group’s audio letters of belonging along with the link for me to watch the video at home.

At my desk I click on the google drive link and open up the video to a 3D world of a generic North American suburb and the voice of my seven year old daughter telling me about what makes her feel like she belongs. After not being able to cry for weeks, the tears poured out of me. The audio of me reading my letter about finding belonging in my matrilineal lineage is overlayed onto a video of baby Andrea dancing in a living room with her mother and grandmother. They dance with her, pick her up and hold her over their laps, in their arms. Her grandmother and mother hold a white broom on either side and encourage Andrea to play limbo with it.

My words have come alive through Andrea’s childhood home video.

When my mother crossed the border, she took with her only what she could carry on her back and in her arms. She did not cross with any photographs of me or my brother as babies. There were no video of us, even after we settled in the United States. I do not have photographs of myself with my grandparents. What pictures I have, I hunted down on family members’ Facebook albums and the few my tia Emi sent to me on Facebook messenger. As baby Andrea dances with her grandmother and plays limbo with the matriarchs of her family a world in which my longing for my own matriarch is created, it is alive. For a moment I too am that baby dancing and playing with her mother and grandmother. A small moment of sacred connection emerges and the threads I have been tugging at finally lead me back to them.

I cry during the entire ten minutes of her beautiful work of art listening to the letters of the parents and their children telling us about home, family, and belonging. It is one of the most wonderful projects I have ever had the honor of being a part of.

If you have the privilege of being able to visit the Museo De Las Americas in Denver Colorado, I highly recommend you visit the Nuestras Historias Exhibit.

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They want us to believe that we are just bodies to forcefully disappear, by displacement, detainment, by death—by any means necessary. Bodies to profit off of, all bones and flesh and brown or black skin. Amazon Prime, but instead of packages and plastic, human bodies. To ship and move across states, to place in cages, or caskets all the same. Mobility as an exclusive privilege of whiteness.

In the zone of Nonbeing borders force us into, it is art that asserts our humanity, and the right to our bodies and their sacredness. And it is our art and the art of others that will continue to sustain us through the dark.

I am incredibly grateful for that late email from Andrea and the amazing work she is currently doing.

The video above is a collage of my daughter’s art. The audio is from the video that Andrea created for the exhibit.

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In addition to the piece we collaborated on, my children and I had the privilege of creating a digital piece about migration and reorientation for the Nuestras Historias exhibit, in which we explore my grandparent’s home, the borders my family crossed and where we settled in the U.S. via Google Earth. This project was incredibly emotional for me. It was inspired by my children after I first created this map for my kids to explain to them my place of origin and our family’s migration history during the the onslaught of ICE raids a year ago shortly after the inauguration. I credit much of my survival and sanity to creating art, and the community that offers space to this work. Enjoy this small clip of my silly kids.