Welcome to session #2 of the online space Migratory Times, “Silhouettes.”
Silhouettes are made by amateurs, artists, alike, and even cast as a shadow in the everyday. A silhouette is a shadow, profile, miniature cuttings, shadow portrait, illuminating a relationship between light and dark. Utilized by artists and activists alike, the mobilization of the silhouette in the visual has, as described by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, the capability to image race and “otherness.” Some silhouettes are iconic – where the relationship between the light and dark have captured local and global imaginaries. Kara Walker’s paper silhouettes tell a story of the US south as one shaped by violence, both sexual and racial. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, an association formed in the 1970s, drew awareness to the disappearances occurring during the Argentinian dictatorship (1976 – 1983). Through shadows, the place with light and dark, outlines, silhouettes speak. As this session illuminates, silhouettes manifest in intentional and unintentional actions by artists, community members, scholars, and producers. The image that is created through the interplay and production of light and dark, speaks to coloniality and oppression. As described by Maria Lugones, “Given the coloniality of power, I think we can also say that having a dark and a light side is characteristic of the co-construction of the coloniality of power and the colonial/modern gender system” (2007).
This session includes events that occurred since 2017. It includes a Salon of the Institute of (Im)Possible Subjects with Pedro Pablo Gomez, that occurred in March 2017 – transcripts and audio of the salon are featured. This session also features pedagogical conversation, a Salon with the Institute of (Im)Possible Subjects – Silhouettes: Migration, (Un)Documented, and Pedagogies, where IiS members Fukushima and Benfield facilitated discussions surrounding the work of Sonia Guiñansaca and artist and muralist Ruby Chacón, and invited Crystal Baik, Jose Manuel Cortez, Cindy Cruz, Marie Sarita Gaytan and Juan Herrera. Silhouettes include the contributions of the artist Kakyoung Lee and her work from the “Barbed Wire Series” which consists of a series of prints, multi-channel moving-image installation, and a cat’s cradle shadow installation. Stills from Kiri Dalena’s Arrays of Evidence Installation, are showcased, in which this project was also contributor to the Migratory Times Project. Also included are images and the video, “Christmas in our Hearts” by RESBAK (RESpond and Break the silence Against the Killings), a collective of artists, media practitioners, and cultural workers that unite to condemn in the strongest possible terms the Duterte regime’s brutal war on drugs. In the Spirit of Itzpaplotl, Venceremos, introduces a feminist collaboration between artist and painter, Ruby Chacón, photographs by Flor Olivo, and feminist scholarly research by Dr. Sonya Alemán. Additionally, featured video and images produced through “Women in Migration” (2017) which consisted of a collaboration between the Institute of (Im)Possible Subjects (IiS) with the University of Utah Museum of Fine Arts A.C.M.E. session featuring IiS members Dalida Maria Benfield, Damali Abrams, and Annie Isabel Fukushima, and collaborations with UMFA Jorge Rojas and Emily Izzo and Utah community members Romeo Jackson, Maria, Yehemy, Veronica, Alejandra, Ashley, Jean, Alex, Akiva, Kylee, Andrew, and Christina. Therefore, Silhouettes is an invitation to scholars, artists, visual producers, the everyday person, to submit works that speak to the coloniality and oppression through the silhouette.
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Session #2
Session #2: Silhouettes
Amor Bilingue
We are saddened by Alanna Lockward’s passing. We met Alanna Lockward participating in the conference ‘Decolonising the museum, at Museu d’art Contemporani Barcelona in 2014. It was inspiring to hear her speak: her work on creating networks and archives for feminist and black art practices in the context of western Europe was trailblazing.
Going through the work posted here is like wandering through a mind-map of our conversations and questions during 2016-2017. It is amazing to revisit so many projects and writing that we realise now so informed our own work during this period.
El artista vive aquí / The artist lives here
In the salon conversation we connected with a group of artists trying to find a common vocabulary for addressing the nebulous links between gentrification and colonialism. The way the conversation focused on creating cartographies of displacement not just witnessed but also experienced, enabled us to think about art as a tool of analysis and resistance to historical structures of displacement – from the coloniality of knowledge to evictions and forced migrations. We remember the many comments speculating on the role of the artist not as a benevolent figure ‘intervening’ in communities, but as a member of those communities and how the incredible network building practices of those who have experienced exclusion are rarely understood to be ‘artistic’ – pointing to a further hierarchizing of knowledge. It was inspiring in this regard to see the actions and research conducted by At Lands Edge, which we encountered through Edgar Fabián Frías’ work and the video documentation of the At Land’s Edge conference.
Amor bilingüe
It was also great to meet the researcher and translator Jennifer (Antena Los Angeles) during the salon and hear about her work facilitating bilingual spaces. Learning about the techniques she uses motivated us to imagine how we might contribute and convene such spaces in the future.
One thing we connected with across Migratory Times projects is a transversal focus on questions of translation – from participating in the bilingual working spaces to encountering Rolando Vasquez’s incredible text on epistemic violence, translation and erasure via the online flash reads. These encounters cultivated questions for us around translation as a network that dissolves borders – a web of commitments, locations, spaces of visibility and opacity, moments of resistance and silence as well as the right to not be translated.