Just Being: Secret Identities, Ghost
Stories and Pirate Dreams.
Chapter 1: I
Was Here.
The
“first person,” in language as a concept and as a form of communication always
conveys intimate, personal experience and information and it is always a
performative act, even when it comes to us disguised in the passive attire of
the written word, delivered through the passage of time. The transfer of information and performance
are inextricably linked. The first person,
singular is the perfect metaphor for the complexities of Performance. By their very nature, speaking and writing in the “first
person” impart as much information about its author as they do of the
description of an event—they say clearly in words and in the documentation of
those words through an impression left on paper, sand, video or audiotape; “I
was here! This is what I saw!” “This is what it all meant to me.” The first
person voice, then, is also always about identity, as much as it is about
identification—it is always both a performance and an artifact left after the
events of a performance—that is why it is also art and not just a conversation—it
is a conversation taken to “the stage,” no matter what that stage may consist
of, and it has the function of both welcoming and confronting the audience at
the same time.
Performance
is always an attempt to say something—to make a point, to change some small
pocket of the world and to leave a mark. It is the "I" of the first
person and it asks, and, if lucky, answers, what have "I" been trying
to say, what am "I" struggling to say right now and what might
"I" be attempting to say in the future. It is the "I" in
"I Am." But it is also the trepidatious "I" in "Am
I?" It is an echo of Shakespeare's Iambs, with which he created Hamlet's
soliloquies signaling the mortal and universal state of existence of humans while
killing “fair Ophelia” off-stage—words made into actions—performed on and off
the stage—even the metaphorical stage.
Over
time, I have learned that whether my own performance work denies the body,
celebrates my fat, unathletic, LatinX physique, whether the work is painfully
honestly diaristic or secretive, masked, and elusive—all my work is in fact
about me and—for the most part—continues to be presented in the first
person—and hopefully will, until I shuffle off this mortal coil. This, then, is
the least perceived/perceivable distance between the author (me) and the
audience (you). Here, I speak directly to you and my body and my mind are
presented directly to you, whether I am masked or not, whether it is through
text, live or on YouTube. Here, I perform and communicate directly to you, if
not for you—though what and how much is actually communicated depends on both
of us.
Performance,
and the idea of performance as something more than just a television show, a
movie or a play at the theater, for me, began long before I even knew what any
of this meant, or even what art was. When I was still very young my parents
would take us to Chicano art galleries and the art museums in Los Angeles where
I was introduced to artists like Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys. It was there
that I watched breathlessly, films showing Jackson Pollock splashing his paints
onto canvases laying on his studio floor and where I rooted for Yoko Ono
staring down her audiences as she experimented with the darkest sides of
humanity and the frightening vision of men with scissors.
It
should not be surprising then that when I finally got to college, I practically
glommed onto feminist and queer philosophers like Butler, Wilson and Silverman,
Kristeva, Foucault, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Performative Theory, and Gender
Theory—and scoffed openly at my pro-hegemonic "Masculinities"
professors at UC Davis with their simplistic, "Iron John" self-help
psychologies.
I
particularly derided "Masculinities’" apparent inability to create a
theoretical and conceptual basis for critique, unlike their more intellectual
siblings and swore that if I ever had the opportunity to help shape an
intellectual discourse that it would reflect the complexities of feminism's
children and ignore their simplistic, modernist fathers.
In
college, I ate, drank and slept this "Postmodernist" stuff, but
only—If I'm completely honest, after a very strong—if short-lived—period of
mourning over the death of modernism. For a time, I was definitely in shock—who
wouldn't be-—-artists before Postmodernity were heroes, great big
faux-masculine gods plowing their way through life by the power of their
presumably oversized penises and their equally exaggerated imaginations—think
of artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Barnett Newman with
raging hard, abstract expressionist erections and you get the picture—but do
not think of artists like Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning or Norman
Lewis—as they were supposed to be relegated to the sidelines, the margins and
we were told they had nothing to say. Not nothing valuable to say through their
artwork—nothing at all.
As a
child, of course, I didn’t realize that I would also be placed into this
“silenced minority,” but that would change soon enough, even before I got to
school. From the point of view of the dominant culture, officially
"we" tend to ignore the fact that for people of color—the first times
we navigate race and issues of racism happen when we
are children, at a period in our development in which we don't have the
distance or ability to understand the nature of this world that we have
suddenly become a part of. I see race, issues of race, the majority's almost
schizophrenic obsessions with race, and the whole universe of ideas that center
around race and racism, as we grow up, as being almost a kind of murder
mystery—that we are forced to solve—none of us wants to believe the horror
that we are being forced to perceive—but it is real, and so we must.
We
follow these "clues" to make sense of what we have gotten ourselves
into, it is big and dark and terrifying and does not reveal itself all at once,
but rather comes out in riddles, jokes, jabs, taunts, imposed limitations and
fights—many fights—and a continuous loss of faith in everything/society as we
realize that the rules that are being set before us are not in our best
interests.
Slowly.
I began to become aware of the world that my Chicano parents were wrestling
with, aware of the turmoil that my homosexual, Mexican, favorite uncle was
going through daily. I was becoming aware of all of it—living in Montclair,
CA—in an age before guns were rampant and before gangs ruled the streets. I
think the very first time I even became aware of racism and especially the
implied threat of the mob—occurred when I was about four and my family found
ourselves in Pasadena after hours. I remember the event as though it were
yesterday, the night air was beautiful, and we were listening to a local radio
station on the A.M. car radio that was playing some Ventures, Jan and Dean and
the Beach Boys—even then, I loved the echoing guitars of the Ventures and how
they cut through the salty, humid California air. I was in the back seat and I
think my baby brother was asleep—a pretty safe bet, since during that time he
was almost always asleep. I remember that a group of very blond teens began
following us and I remember being excited—maybe they were the Beach Boys or Jan
and Dean or some famous musical group. I was overjoyed when they attempted to
pull us over and one of the men/boys walked over to the car, then I heard
clearly, "You better get your beaner ass and your Spic family out of our
town!"
There is
something that happens to a person the very first time this occurs—it’s not
something that you can describe to someone who has not experienced it as a
child—it is something akin to a falling, a letting go—a dying—in this case a
letting go of innocence and especially letting go of the faith in your fellow
man—and the safety net of society. These blond gods fell from heaven in that
moment and joined Lucifer in the netherworlds of my childhood brain. And I saw
my father, have to back down, to swallow his pride in front of his wife and
family. I don't think he said, "Yes sir." or anything that dramatic
or cinematic—but the message was the same—suck up your pride because there is
danger in the air, and it was the kind of danger that did not care if your wife
and your children were riding with you in the car. It was primal and
terrifying, and it carried with it the strength of implied threat—and most of
all—it changed everything.
I say,
everything, but it wasn’t until elementary school that I would see how racism
was tied up in society and that I would experience racism mixed with power—in
the first person.
Flash
forward a few years to Sacred Heart Academy in Southern California and another
story from my childhood. Her name was Sybil Anne Warren, she was my primary
teacher in third grade at the Catholic school. I have not changed her name, nor
the location where this happened in the hope that if she is still living that
she will possibly read this and know that she failed—that at least one person
triumphed over her covert and overt desire that the world operate by her strict
laws of racism.
She took
an immediate dislike to me. I would learn, later that she had told my parents
upon hearing that I had been in the "Mentally Gifted Minors" program
that, that was impossible—that no Mexican could be "gifted." But at
this point, I just knew that she had decided that she didn't like me and that
she was going to make my life a kind of personal hell—what follows came after
about a week of little things. For example, she accused me of mispronouncing
the word "Geyser" when I thought it was the word "Geezer"
and put me in the lower reading group as punishment—until it became clear that
I was reading so far beyond the rest of the class that she had to give me my
own reading material.
But,
later that same week it happened, I was sent out of class—which was fine by me.
We were reading Steinbeck—so I had no problem not being part of the
discussion—instead, I bought two of my favorite popsicles—the red, white and
blue one and a 50/50 Bar!" Aaaah!—that was the life. It wasn't until
recess that I would realize that I had been made the butt of a racist joke—that
joke, of course being society, history and in this case—the villain was the
very same teacher who had been a jerk to me all week! I was told by my
breathless comrades that they had been sworn to secrecy, but that she had
called Mexicans—myself included—"Beaners," "Taco Benders and
Spics" that she had said that all Mexicans were "lazy, dirty and not
very smart." One of the boys turned to me and said, "My father says
these things about Mexicans—but you aren't like that at all!" It was
agreed all-around that I was one of the "good ones," and in its own
way things were immediately made better between me and the other kids—they
understood, I think, at a very basic level that this could have happened to any
one of them—that this was purely an accident of birth—and that Ms. Warren's
madness could get any one of them at any moment. In a way I had become a
celebrity, something to rally around—a cause! Americans have never liked
bullies and mine was a spectacular case of unfair and irrational treatment and
it quickly became impossible to keep this story from reaching epic
proportions—especially after I told my parents—who had never seen a social
injustice that they wouldn't face with overwhelming force. My mom could make
even the biggest bully eviscerate himself with a highly blistering look and the
well-chosen words of someone with a community college education. And as for my
dad, he was at the height of his powers—having just run for city council and
won.
I don't
remember if they forced Ms. Warren to find a different line of work or not—but
I never had to deal with her again. At the time the one thing that struck me
was her perception of difference, her stupid, small-minded belief that someone
should be perceived as different because of something that was outside of their
control, something they were born as, some state of their being—rather than a
decision they had any control over. This pissed me off—no end.
Fast
forward to today—and I am now an adult. Ms. Warren is either very old now or
more than likely quite dead. I would like to say that her ideas are dead as
well—that people are no longer judged by their race—but we all know that that
just ain't the way that things are—even in this new millennium.
Today it
still galls me when I realize that what Sybil Warren firmly believed was that I
somehow saw the world differently than every non-"othered" white kid
in that classroom. That my ideas could be somehow impoverished because I was
born to Mexican/American parents. That I should expect less because I was born
with slightly more melanin in my skin. Now, I want you to take a moment and let
those ideas sink in a bit. Ms. Warren—a teacher, at a private school in
California—someone who was supposed to look after the children in her
class—felt that at least one of those children was inferior—simply because they
were born brown—because I was born brown.
Let me
repeat—because these things bear repeating—she believed that my view of the
world, my ability to appreciate philosophy, art, comic books,
television—someday a glass of wine, Christmas carols, snowmen, sex, my ability
to ponder the eternal verities, the shape of the universe, evolution, the scent
of cocoa pebbles, to pet a puppy, my ability to love, to listen to Electronic
Body Music or to let the beat drop—was somehow impoverished, lessened,
cheapened—inferior to a supposedly "white" person’s.
Even at 8, or however old I was at the time—I knew enough
to call bullshit on that. And that sense has not changed one scintilla to this
very day.
Chapter 2: .
As a
child, I used to daydream about my future, while I watched my father paint
murals as part of the Los Angeles Chicano Art Movement. In some of my earliest
memories, I remember tagging along to the Mechicano Art Centers where I spent
entire days mentally devouring the exciting scenes of young, brown artists—men
and women, both—working together, each one with the single-minded desire of
expressing what it meant to be a Chicano back in those heady days.
I was
born in Southern California, half-way between Hollywood and Disneyland. My
first memory was of the gentle caress of the warmth of the California sun on my
cheeks and visions of the bright blue sky overhead as the song "A Theme
From a Summer Place" played all around me in the background of the car
radio. It was perfectly cinematic and from birth when it came to telling the
difference between what was real and what was make-believe—well, I never really
stood a chance!
On many
long, California days, we used to be left alone at the Hollywood Wax Museum and
auto museum and would spend literally entire afternoons staring at the
Batmobile, Bat-cycle and full-sized wax models of old Hollywood stars and we
could never pass-up one last look inside that amazing magic shop on Hollywood
Boulevard. When we got home, we would do pretend magic tricks, make Batman and
Robin costumes and fight invisible bad guys until sundown—because no one ever
wanted to be the bad guy!
Disneyland,
too, was such a prevalent part of my childhood that I actually recall having
nightmares of the Haunted Mansion long before I even remember having been on
the ride. My father used to taunt us by saying, "You're nothing but a
nothing, you're nothing but a nothing..." which was a song from some scary
Disney cartoon about a mouse who wanted to be a bat. He would also take our
stuffed animals and trick us into believing that they were alive—though my
brother who was always much smarter than I, was never fooled.
Long
hours, days, weeks and months passed lazily as I watched my father paint
murals, all the while, daydreaming of a seemingly forever-away distant future.
On many weekends, my parents would take us up to La Brea and introduced us to
the Los Angeles Museum of Art where I first saw Warhol's Brillo Boxes,
Rauschenberg's combines and my first performance artists. Later on, in college
at the University of Nevada, Reno and even later at UCDavis my mind would be
blown away by the work of Marcel Duchamp, Andre Breton and the Surrealists,
Joseph Beuys and the Neo-Dada’s, the minimalists, conceptualists and many, many
postmodern philosophers and their critical theoretical brethren and sistren.
I do not
speak lightly when I say that my favorite artist has always been Marcel
Duchamp, the great, French artistic and philosophical hegemony-buster with the
wicked profile and the ideas that he may or may not have stolen for us, not the
man, really, but his mind and what came out of it—he took art out of the realm
of the purely retinal into the conceptual. He ended the thousand-year primacy
of the eye and handed it over, or rather, returned it to the mind—where art had
begun as the communication of our ideas—before language took away its original
function. All art that has come after Duchamp has been inflected by him—signed
by R. Mutt, so to speak.
I would
not be an artist without him. I could not be the artist that I am without him.
As I was
saying before, while UNR introduced me to a pantheon of artists and
philosophers and taught me how to think like an artist, it was at UCDavis,
still a top five art school at the time that I was there, that taught me
critical theory and ultimately, it was this that would change everything.
It was
also at university that I began to perceive a very big difference between how
my heroes made art and how I—as a young Latino artist—was expected to make art.
When a Duchamp or a Beuys made their work it was about ideas, more
specifically, it was about their ideas and it reflected the way that they saw
the world. But when anyone saw my last name, it appeared that they only wanted
to see work that met a very limited scope or it would not get shown, funded or
promoted—could get ridiculed and even worse defaced or destroyed in the name of
common decency. As long as my work was "Day of the Dead" and dealt
with Latino issues it was safe and I could expect to get tons of exposure—at
least once a year—in the month of October. A person could die from that kind of
exposure, I thought to myself.
Flashing
back to UNR—I rode high this way for a time, but I soon became dissatisfied, I
wanted more, I wanted above all to understand myself and to be given the
opportunity to explain myself through my artwork. These were the words that I
thought internally, unwilling to speak them aloud to anyone else, "Why
does no one expect Western, European artists to make work about their heritage?
Why were they celebrated for their individuality? Why were they expected to
create work out of their individual experiences instead of being perceived of
and being forced to behave as cultural revolutionaries that had to sublimate
their own lives in favor of fighting for a corporate identity called race? Why
is everyone okay with all of this? Why does no one even see that there is a
problem here?”
The
complete denial and rebuke of these expectations would one day, ultimately lead
to the series entitled, “Radical Presence—Just Being: LatinX,” but for the
moment it remained a question—a very painful question. Why did none of my
friends have to worry about their “ethnic backgrounds?” While I was expected to
be obsessed with nothing else?
No one
ever asked Marcel Duchamp to make work about his "heritage"—or to
wait for the annual Halloween exhibition in order to show it. I desperately
wanted to make art that had meaning beyond the expectations of others—art that
reflected my individual life! Yes, that is what it was coming down to, would I
leave this planet having made artwork about my own individual life or create an oeuvre based on a collective ideal? Whose
body would I leave behind!?!
I
searched unsuccessfully for proof that my work had a place, but there were no
referents—there was no history to fall back on. I asked myself, just how many
individual lives of color have been erased, lost, and ignored due to these same
cultural expectations? It was as if a veil had been lifted and I could see
something that had previously been invisible.
While
Davis, opened my mind it also taught me to question the many hegemonies that
control us, even as it was clear that conservatives were beginning to take
control of the academy and masculinities courses were picking up steam. It
became obvious to me that something was missing from my schooling, aside from a
small handful of artists there was a huge lacunae in my studies. Where were the
contemporary Latino, Hispano-American artists and aside from Guillermo
Gomez-Peña, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and their associates, where were the
performance artists, I asked myself? Where were my role models and especially
where were any postmodern brown people? That was the question that I often
asked throughout my graduate studies. I focused, then, on Queer, Feminist and
Gender Studies courses and investigated Matthew Barney's lush, CIS, white, male
performances. But that was about to change.
At this
same time, on another hand, in at least one "Chicano Studies," course
it became clear, well actually I was told point blank that I was not Chicano
enough, that my experiences were not typical of what was reflective of the norm
for a Mexican-American. I had somehow failed that bar and had an entire class
to reassure me of my absolute failure to be an accurate depiction of a
Mexican-American. I got up from my desk on the very last day that I could and
just walked out in the middle of a lesson and I never went back to that course.
I could hear the professor calling out at me as I walked out the door.
It was
clear, to me, to my mother, to those kids that taunted me at recess in second
grade, it was clear to Mrs. Warren and Mr. Rentflejsh in high school—it was
clear to everyone including the skinheads outside of Rocky Horror Picture Show
in Reno—that I was Chicano or Hispanic—a Spic—or what have you! It was often
dangerously clear! I wore it on my skin and in my hair that was always slightly
more kinky than this Goth Boy wanted it to be. Something was wrong here and the
term and its definition had just not yet been expanded to include me—to include
subtlety, to include complexity, and contradiction—that must be it! I felt a
sense of overwhelming doom and despair, how could I hope to make any headway
while people still felt as though there was a right way to be a proper
"Mexican?" This, was, of course, before LatinX and other ideas of
positive intersectionality—of complexity—not just the legal negatives of
multiple identities—but also the liberating, inclusivity of an identity opened
up to difference/differance, which could even include me, but that too, would
come in the distant future—when I would also come to realize that there simply
is no way to be a badly performed Mexican. Though, in my performances of this
era, through Putoh and in my queer, intersectional body this inclusivity was
always already there!
With all
of these realizations, I decided that I had only one course of action left to
me! I decided to make and claim art that came from my own individual
experiences. I decided that I would be my own referent and create my own
history and that I would make work that was unique to my own view/s and that
above all else it would be art that was about ideas—my ideas.
From
then on, I sought to make my own way as an individual artist, seeking to
express my own view of the universe, my own personal issues, obsessions and
desires. This was a very important stance of liberation, which in and of itself
was powerful and revolutionary, and it would prove to engender a lifetime’s
journey—a complex intellectual investigation!
As an
undergraduate, in my performances and in my sculptures, I had already chosen
personal, mundane, everyday materials, often manipulated into new forms or left
untreated, unpainted—saying their own names—a collage of sheets, books, candy,
fake flowers, tin foil and other personal items in order to tell my story. This
was an important conceptual, performative and material shift that cannot be
overstated and it brought everything together—as the Beatles would say—Over me!
This was indeed a stance of liberation, pushing the
boundaries of expectation and it dared to enunciate that an individual life of
color matters, which, in itself, was powerful and revolutionary, problematizing
racial, masculine, cultural, and identity essentialism in an intellectual
investigation that is in no way post-race.
Chapter 3: Borderland Identity.
As a
writer, mixed-media artist, and performance artist of color—I can’t help but
think that the idea of the borderland, certainly of the borderland identity—the
kind of identity that Guillermo Gomez-Peña invokes in his performances, is more
likely to read as true to us people of “colors”—as I like to refer to us. We
who grew up drinking out of “tasas” and sleeping in the “sala” in front of
reruns of "Archie Bunker" as our mothers warned us that it is
important to know our enemies, and all the while we could only think of how
much that duet piano theme song sounded and felt just like home.
We are,
of course, in fact, not only made up of borders, we are the borderlands. We who grew up without a single, unitary
identification—a simply defined identity—and because of this, we did not suffer
the great shock and loss of this particular “de-centering” postmodern bugaboo.
I am not just speaking of people of color here—rather everyone of this
generation—us/we—are a mixture of cultures, identities and ideologies—the era
of essentialized identity is over and it is now time for an infinitude of
alliances and complex, intertangled identities. Though, as a collective culture
we have been duped into thinking that there is only so much to go around and we
all still see this as a zero-sum game.
We just have to get over this collective, cultural hump.
What I
am saying is that those like me—we exist, write and theorize from a position
that has already always been post-modern—post identity, post singularity. We
know inherently, what it means to walk through/among/in several spaces at the
same time; we know what it means to wear many contradictory masks, to speak
many accents and languages. We do not recreate an essentialist, white male
desire to reconstitute identity—because it is not—and never was—part of our
history. It was never part of our story.
We do
not call for society to attempt to recreate a space of modernity—to lie to
ourselves so that we can move on. Instead, we claim a new, shifting,
non-binary, gender-complex, mobile space of many, even antagonistic
identities—which we deploy when needed. Trust me when I say that the future
will engender a new kind of multiculturalism, we will not be manipulated by
those that cry “cultural appropriation” in an inauthentic, ignoble attempt to
keep us in place—but we will celebrate diversity, interdisciplinarity and
shared, overlapping identities and the differences that come from individual
lives lived to the fullest—each of us engendering a multiplicity of
identities—individual and shared, with the knowledge that no one is lessened by
celebrating difference–creating a space in which no one is “othered,” because
we have seen through current ploys to divide us draped in the sheep’s clothing
of a language that we have been speaking for too long, one which the enemy has
learned to use against us. We are instead, reclaiming something that we have
already always known, something that was never a shock to our multi-national,
multi-ethnic, multi-vocal selves—we are all very different—just as we are all
the same and we will celebrate it all—individual lives of color—matter. That is
to say that every moment, every dream, every hope and failure of every
individual life lived “in color”—matters.
I do
suppose that if you were told for millennia that your identity was fixed, that
history was fixed, that you could drop your life into a construct made out of
generation upon generation of others who looked exactly like you, where
civilization was coursing in a predictably positive way, whereupon each
generation could applaud itself and ignore the bumps, fissures and massacres of
others that did not fit into your cozy, neat narrative, which only included
lives that you could pronounce, name and claim—that this loss would be pretty
startling. But it is not, cannot be, if you never had those expectations in the
first place.
We are
instead, reclaiming something that we have already always known, something that
was never a shock to our multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-vocal selves—as I
said before, we are all very different—just as we are all the same and we must
celebrate both of these truths.
It has become
clear that the supremacy of hegemony has been supremely overrated and the
cracks and fissures show that hegemony, is, in fact—very fragile. It is from
this conceptual semiotic fluid and “othered” similar sentiments that my performance
art and was born.
Chapter 4: I was here: Claiming
Radical Presence.
In
Radical Presence: Just Being (Latino/X) #11. Eating Ramen, I am sitting in the lunchroom
at work eating Ramen from a bowl and reading a book. At one point I pull a
half-sized sandwich out of a plastic bag, open a book and turn the page. Later,
I swirl ramen with my fork, blowing on it in order to reduce the temperature
and not burn my tongue—the nearly 7 minute video continues like this until I
finish the sandwich and take a sip of soda. In another, I take the bus from
home to work, while in still another of these short films I take a pill and follow
it down with a glass of water.
This
body of work is perhaps my most important and yet it is definitely the most
reductive and least interesting work I have ever done. Originally entitled
Just Being, then Just Being: LatinX and ultimately Radical Presence: Just Being: LatinX it is
a series of unaltered documentary recorded moments. Scenes of me just sitting or making a cup of ramen or frying an egg, they
investigate and deconstruct the idea that art by artists of color must be made
for a reason, that it must jump through programmatic hoops—defined by the
expectations of others (or more precisely those that "other" us)—that
it must be somehow revolutionary, that
it must be reactive and about being a person of color—this art series is about Just
Being—and it is sufficient.
Though,
in a turn laden with irony—merely existing may end up being the most
revolutionary of acts—deconstructing and ultimately reifying the very idea that
contemporary Latinx art deserves to exist, to be here at all and to tell our
own individual stories.
Through
performance, I have always sought to engender, enlarge and expand the
conversation of what Latina/x/o art is and what it must be. In "Just Being" I investigate the
idea of the profound act of radically just being a person of color and just
presenting a life lived—not as an overtly revolutionary act, not as a
generalized act, but just being—as is. In other words, if you learn nothing
else from me, learn this—to thine own self be true.
I truly
believe that this series may very well be my most important set of performances
of all that I have ever done—and it has taken a lifetime to get here. In a way,
this series is all found objects and finds its power in its framing as art,
like Duchamp's "Fountain," or Gilbert and George’s lives as
performance—or Hannah Wilke’s death as the same, I am putting my signature on
the most mundane moments of my life and claiming them as art—radical works of
art.
"Just
Being," and the larger, exhibition— I Was
Here: Stories of Identity and Existential Crisis is a project that presents
this Latinx artist doing the most quotidian, most mundane things like sleeping,
taking a shit, or cooking an egg—and creating multi-media sculptures using
found, common yet universal objects. This
is a series that points to the fact that individual lives of color matter and
that art made by a person of color can exist merely as a re/presentation of
self and their life experiences. This is an overturning. Just as I pointed out
at the beginning of the book you are holding in your hands; when I was a little
boy walking through the Chicano Art Center on Euclid Ave, I used to watch these
artists "doing their own thing" as they called it, and in this case,
during this time—doing your own thing" meant being a revolutionary, it
meant fighting for recognition and telling the stories of your people. I
distinctly remember that my father, during these years used to wear a brown
beret angled just right as he stood with his fist pumped right above him
exclaiming, "Chicano Power!"
Just as
Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, Jasper Johns etc., made art that was a
representation of their ideas, their hopes, their fears—so must we speak our
own names, without the guilt of a society that tells us that we must subsume
our own desires for the sake of the greater good—our work needs to be present,
in the present tense, it needs to represent our lives as we live them, now—to
celebrate our ideas and our desires—above all—especially our ideas.
The
truth is that the Subaltern has learned to speak and now that the post postmodern
cherry has been popped, the Age of Nefarious has taken hold and we have all
gotten used to the water, nothing can ever be the same and we are beginning to
hear and claim our own voices in the once chaotic din. The racist voices of the past have lost their
cogency and it is time for us to tell our own, individual stories.
Art at
its very heart is hope—it fights for what it believes in and is an expression
of humanity’s greatest desires, fears, and aspirations. If we are, in fact
going to be able to see our ways out of this era–if we are going to move out to
the stars and preserve this planet’s ability to contain us—it will be artists
of all colors who will have to envision these possibilities.
Just as
we were the ones who gave humans the first images of heaven and hell—just as we
created angels and aliens and all manners of monsters that no human eye has
ever seen—so will the tribes of poets, painters, sculptors, modelers,
filmmakers, writers—creators all—so will they show us the way out of these
turbulent times into the next great Renaissances of human development. So,
let’s do it now! Change those chips that hold each of us back, fake it ’til we
make it and start a brand-new day and a brand-effing-new Renaissance—one for
all of us!
