This
art show thing is turning into something very interesting. In my limited
experience, art shows are usually where you hang your paintings on the wall,
drink wine at the reception, and chit chat with visitors trying to get them to
drink enough wine that they’ll buy your paintings. Showing at a Casa de
Cultura, a government institute in Mexico, is a whole other deal. It’s more
educational than commercial, and there is a certain freedom of creation and
expression when you’re not under pressure to sell anything. And I get to speak
about the work in front of a whole seated audience in way I can’t imagine ever
happening in a commercial gallery. March 23 marked the inauguration of stop 2
on my itinerant exhibit that began in Otumba and is now in residence at the
Casa de Cultura in Temascalapa, about 35 minutes away, ok, 20 when you’re in a
hurry like we were to make it to the reception at 6 p.m. My husband’s skills as
race car driver on windy roads in the back hills are to be admired! Here is the
story and why it was so important to me.
March
21 is the big day when everybody usually comes to celebrate Spring Equinox in
Teotihuacan, dressing in white and loading up on energy at high noon in front
of the pyramid of the sun. I spent the day loading up new installation elements
for my art exhibit, and heading off to a town I’d never been to, Temascalapa.
The show has been made “itinerant,” meaning it’s a traveling show now, moving
from one Casa de Cultura to another around the region. We had to follow the
director from Otumba to Temascalapa because we had to idea where it was, so we
turned off the highway onto a little rural road behind his car and snaked our
way over the hills through bone dry farm land dotted by the occasional cactus.
As we wound our way back down into the valley behind the broad mass of Cerro
Gordo, through a little village where the biggest store sold only cowboy hats,
and back out into vast open farmland, we passed a giant plot terrain notable
for its size and its imposing solid white fencing, hiding whatever was inside
from view. There was a small guard station at the gate and a tiny sign stating
“Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares.” Well, that’s peculiar, and
we made a note to write down the name on the way back home.
We
arrived at Temascalapa’s Casa de Cultura, a beautiful open plan structure with
lots of airy space and light, perfect setting for my exhibit. I hung my red and
gold fabric Quetzalcoatl from the ceiling again, his flower print tongue once
again draped into the center of a four petaled flower I make out of beans and
corn. This time I added an homage to water, extending out on the floor in front
of it. Here I incorporated one of the Teotihuacano symbols for water, rows of
eyes, indicating that water is alive. Water has consciousness. I placed glasses
full of water on the runner surrounded by beans and corn again, carefully
arranged in reverence to this basic element that gives us life. Installation
was quick and soon we were on our way home, slowing to read the sign on the
fence again … National Institute of Nuclear Investigation … what could they be
investigating out here in the middle of nowhere? We were spooked to think about
the possibilities.
The
next day, I got on the internet and googled it and the worst possibilities
showed up as reality. The place we’d passed turned out to be a nuclear waste
dump. It has been there for 40 years, opening in 1970, although to this day it
continues to be deemed “temporary,” and official documents based on studies of
the site claim it only suitable for temporary storage, and yet it is obviously
in full use these many years later. It covers 40 acres of land, and is almost
at capacity apparently. Beyond a huge dumping of waste from a nuclear
contamination disaster in the 1980’s, nobody knows exactly what is dumped there
because things are taken in under military cover at night. The people of the
area have staged huge protests, shutting down a federal highway for a month in
the 80’s, only to be threatened and shut down by military might. Villagers have
gone to the National House of Representatives, desperate to get anyone to hear
their case, to shut down the dump, but nobody has ever responded. Nothing has
ever been done. Meanwhile, everybody in the area dies of cancer. A villager
interviewed in the article said, “We don’t ask anymore what they died of. It’s
always cancer. Now we just say, they died, period.” The current mayor promised
to take it to the State. The governor promised to do something. Nobody has done
anything. The site is in a remote arid corner of the state, as far from the
state capitol as can be. They need experts to come in and do proper medical
tests to measure the relationship between the dump and the rampant cancer,
miscarriages, and birth defects in the local population. Nothing has been done.
We can only imagine the contamination in the air, the soil, and the ground
water. We live only a half hour away, on the other side of Cerro Gordo, and our
subterranean water flows from the direction of the dump site. Wind blows from
the Northeast on regular basis. I asked around town here in San Sebastian:
“Hey, did you know there is a nuclear waste dump only 30 minutes away from us?”
Nobody here had the slightest idea about it. I am deeply concerned at this
point. And I am thinking my show opens tomorrow, and they told me the mayor of
Temascalapa might come. And I might get the chance to speak like I did at the
reception in Otumba. What will I say? The responsibility of using my opportunity
to speak in the right way laid heavily on my mind.
I
thought about it all day on Friday before the show. I posted requests for
prayers on my Facebook page, commenting on my nervousness. Friends and sisters
from various spiritual communities answered the call, promising to send me
their prayers at 6 p.m. at the hour of the reception. I prayed that I find
words that would be graceful and healing, not conflictive, but creating
awareness and unity. We worked all day, and ran out of the house at about 5:20
p.m. way too late to make it over the winding hills in a calm manner. We
arrived at 5:40 p.m. after aforementioned wild car race, and everything was set
up beautifully. The director of Temascalapa’s Casa de Cultura asked me for my
bio to introduce me, which stumped me for a second, because if you’ve ever
written a bio for a formal event, it’s not something you whip out in 2 minutes,
in a foreign language. Luckily the director from Otumba showed up just then,
and he had remembered to bring my bio and a whole nice thing he’d written up
from the previous presentation. He calls me a “Conceptual Expressionist” in it
– I love that! Suddenly a bunch of people arrived for the reception and took
seats in the open area of the gallery. The mayor didn’t come, but his wife did
– here the mayor’s wife is always automatically given the job of president of
the local D.I.F, sort of equivalent of Dept. of Social Services, so she was
there. The mayor’s sister was also present, as were a number of community
members, teachers and students who had trekked out from town to this Casa de
Cultura set way out in the middle of unpopulated land. This is the moment when
I really noticed that the dark clouds that had followed us over the hill were
closing in over the gallery, just as the first drops of rain started to ping on
the skylights.
By
the time Otumba’s director made his brief introduction of me at 6 p.m. sharp
and handed me the microphone, a massive torrential diluvial downpour was
underway. The rain was beating so hard that I was thankful for the microphone
to be heard over the crashing sound of water. The rain almost immediately began
to seep through some invisible line in the paned glass of the skylights and
drip directly onto the audience members. The water was so determined to make
its way inside to us that it seeped through the sheetrock drop-ceiling and
workers ran around trying to find enough buckets to catch the stream, even as
the water pooled and trickled across the floor to my “homage to water” installation.
It was fascinating. I pointed out to the audience that the exhibit’s title is
“Cuando Se Abre El Cielo.” – When the Heavens Open. That can mean many things.
Some interpret it as the sky falling, negative, everything coming down on them,
and we are torn away in the torrential downpour, the flood. Others interpret it
as something divine, such as when the heavens open to us and we have a
connection to the divine, the celestial, and the angelic. The sky opens and the
sun comes out and we see everything in the light. And then, finally, what we
were experiencing, the heavens opening with their great blessing of life-giving
water … Tlaloc, the water god, looking favorably upon us in that moment,
raining heavily upon that dry land that hadn’t seen water in months. In the moment
that I recognized and expressed all those connections, I realized that
everybody whom I had asked to pray with me that day had prayed. The rain at 6
p.m., the heavens opening, was my affirmation.
As
I talked on about the symbolism of the show’s title, and of individual pieces,
my homage to Quetzalcoatl as the dream of heaven on earth, of the corn and
beans and water, of the importance of caring for the earth, of our
responsibility to step up to this care, of awakening, I found the words, gently
and subtly, to remind the inhabitants of Temascalapa of what they are very
aware they have in their backyard: a nuclear waste dump. They squirmed a bit,
some nodded, and all listened as I encouraged them to not give up in the face
of the lack of response by the government (the mayor’s wife looked very uneasy
at this point), but I invited them to use the opportunity of being together in
this art exhibit to begin to awaken to the fact that they are all in this
together. I reminded them that the earth and the water are alive. Their
Teotihuacano ancestors knew that the earth and the water are alive just as we
are, that we are all connected, so how could we have forgotten our ancestor’s
teachings? I invited them to remember, and to bring honor to their lives again
by remembering that they are part of life. I shared the following teaching with
them, that I just that day had received from a sacred lodge sister on the
Navajo Reservation in Arizona, and which I translated into Spanish for the
audience in Temascalapa. This teaching is from the Northern Native American
tradition, but I felt these instructions could have been given by the
Teotihuacano ancestors for our benefit as well:
Sacred Instructions
Given By the Creator to Native People At the Time of Creation:
Treat the Earth and
all that dwell thereon with respect.
Remain Close to the
Great Spirit.
Show great respect
for your fellow beings.
Work together for
the benefit of all Mankind.
Give assistance and
kindness wherever needed.
Do what you know to
be right.
Look after the well
being of mind and body.
Dedicate a share of
your efforts to the greater good.
Be truthful and
honest at all times.
Take full
responsibility for your actions.
I emphasized this last part, take full responsibility for
your actions, once again inviting the people to view themselves as part of
life, not separate from it, as inextricably linked to all of life. I was
humbled by their presence in sharing in the viewing of my artwork, and as I cut
the ribbon to inaugurate the exhibit together with the mayor’s wife, I thought,
well, however she received it, she was here and she received it. They received
everything I sent to them, all my words, my prayers, my images, with all my
love and respect. I gave all I could toward the healing of the land, water, and
people here, and they received it.
Then something highly unusual happened. The director of
the Casa de Cultura there in Temascalapa asked me to accompany the people,
mayor’s wife and sister included, from painting to painting to explain their
meaning. At first, I was sort of taken aback, you know, “everybody has their
own interpretation,” and all those standard art show lines one is often
inclined to feed to viewers. But then I thought, heck, these people trekked out
here in the rain and want to know what the paintings mean, so let’s go for it!
I’ve never had such an engaged audience in my life. They really listened to
every word, as I moved from piece to piece talking about the symbolism of
Quetzalcoatl, of experiencing divinity right here on Earth, in your own heart. I
talked about Venus as the Morning Star offering the promise of the return of
the Light. I talked about portals and how whenever you come to a doorway,
literal or figurative, you have the opportunity to walk through it to something
new in your life. I talked about how something that seems dead can be revived
when you “breathe into it,” (i.e. gift it with your respiration, inspiration,
being of “spirit”) just as you soften a dry dead-seeming bean in water, this
holy substance, and a tiny germinated sprout unfolds from it. All of these
lessons apply to your lives, I told them. What seems dead can be given new
life. I talked about the hummingbird in the presence of prayer, how joy arises
in the presence of attending to sacred life. I talked about the urgency of
preserving native corn and standing up against toxicity, pesticides, and GMO’s.
I talked about the 4 petaled flower on the Virgin of Guadalupe’s pregnant
belly, a symbol for new life. At this point the mayor’s wife had to leave to
attend another function, but still stopped for a photo with me in front of a
painting of a little angel that I had painted long ago for my son. When she
left, the mayor’s sister engaged completely with me, sharing that her father
had been a farmer, and that she still works those fields, and that she was very
much in accord with what I was talking about, caring for the earth in wholesome
traditional natural ways.
We passed by my painting of a monarch butterfly and I
talked about transformation, finding our wings to fly. When we finished the
entire tour of 25 paintings, we sat down to wine, snacks and to listen to some
fabulous live music compliments of the Otumba director’s wife and her beautiful
voice. A local woman came and shyly sat down next to me, saying that she had a
very “insignificant” gift for me. No gift is insignificant, I responded. She
held out her hand to me, and in it was a cocoon. She said she works making
tortillas and always has her hands in lime which is very damaging. So she heals
them by going into the hills, and finding these old cocoons in the trees, where
the caterpillar is dried up, and she brings them home, opens them and slips
them onto her cracked fingers at night, and in the morning, the fingers are
healed from the silk. I took the beautiful cocoon, the dried caterpillar
rattling inside like a jingle bell, into my hands, struck by the strength of
the interlaced fibers on its papery surface. Then she very shyly added “because
you talked about transformation and dead things being alive…,” her voice
trailing off into her own thoughts. I thought, what a beautiful person, who in
her peculiar village Spanish says I hope we “watch” each other again, instead
of see each other again. What a beautiful person, who makes tortillas, collects
cocoons, and comes to art exhibits. What a beautiful person to watch.
As we said good-bye to all the lovely people who came to
share, who followed the invitation, who asked questions, who responded so
lovingly, who nodded their heads in agreement, who lit up with new light at the
thought of being an inherent part of life, who believed for a moment that truly
we are not separate, who thought about the earth, who thought about the rain
falling from the sky in blessings, I thanked all the powers that be that made
the evening possible. I thanked all those who prayed and put their energy into
the bowl of nourishment that I was able to offer to the people and the land.
And as we were ducking under our umbrellas, dodging rain drops into the car,
the mayor’s sister came traipsing through the puddles, her hair and clothes
drenched and dripping, and waved us to follow her in her car to town, that she
had a small gift for us as well. My husband and I looked at each other with a
“is she serious?” So we drove off after her down the slick dark road, wind shield
wipers slapping as we wondered if we’d ever find our way back over the hill in
the rainy night now that we were going the opposite direction.
After about 10 minutes of splashing through puddles and
flooded streets in a large village, we pulled up to a tiny grocery store. I got
out of my car and followed Doña Mari (as we had heard her called) into her shop
where she introduced me to her adult children. Her son pointed at his shirt, a
logo from his uncle’s political party on it, and announced gleefully, shouting,
that he was working. He pointed at his cap, with a sheriff’s star on it, and
guffawed, laughing, that he was working. Doña Mari spoke to the obvious, that
this was her “special needs son” as I invited him to come visit us at the
pyramids. Her incredibly thoughtful gift to us was a bag of fresh nopales from
her fields, and two cups of xoconostle (a fruit from the nopal cactus)
preserves that she herself made. I’ll probably never know, but I wondered if
her son and her harvest are why she went to the House of Representatives to
protest all those years ago, and why she still has an angry hope that made her
listen to me so fiercely, so lovingly, as I talk about her people and her land.
I said to her, political parties, religious beliefs, none of that matters here.
We are human beings, together, all on the same colorful piece of alive planet
flying through the universe. We must approach this together. We must work
together. Maybe I sounded like a politician, but I was speaking from my
artist’s heart.
On our way home, I held the chilled cups of xoconostle in
my hands, and wondered if it was safe to eat, or if it was contaminated by
radioactivity from the fields here. I wondered if this invisible poison was
even at that moment seeping through the plastic and into my skin. They’re still
sitting in my fridge. We drove silently back the way we’d come, back past the
dark Casa de Cultura, shut down for the night, back through rows of dark
villages, all the street lights burned out. We drove past the dark dump, just
its white fence reflecting our head lights. We drove up the backside of Cerro
Gordo, the ridges looking like black paper cut-outs. The clouds drifted apart
and the hint of distant stars peeked through the gaps, tiny blurry lights in
the sky. It was a new moon, and I gave thanks again into the darkness, praying
that whatever seeds I had managed to plant grow strong and blossom, that these
tiny specks of light would grow and grow, that the harvest someday would be
safe and vibrant and abundant. Ometeotl!
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