DR: Through self-portraiture, video, and performance, I introduced the emergence of an ancestral figure using the metaphor Rio Abajo Rio: River Beneath the River; a subconscious place from which the wild woman crone, dealing with both death and re-creation, illusively navigates both inner and outer worlds dispersing remembrances of the pre-colonial landscapes and sources of life. I created a pathway from the San Antonio River to the deserts of New Mexico’s Rio Grande and into the purified Blue Lake waters of Taos Pueblo, performing ritual and cross-pollinating the basic elements of maize and agua del rio as a way to merge an ancient cleansing practice into modern awareness of our land and water, specifically the unnatural and commercialized state of the San Antonio River.
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"As someone who continues to recover from a history of abuse, these discoveries in self-expression through body and image were crucial to my need to be heard and seen." |
How tourism could be an unjust way of selling facades of stolen natural landscapes and manufactured cultural emblems. These actions have been and continue to be detrimental to the welfare of indigenous and/or longtime inhabitants of this predominantly Mexican-American city because it is easy to see that their culture is simply being used for capital. I always say that San Antonio provided a space for me to find my true voice because of its deep cultural knowingness, and this remains true. Additionally, it’s opened me up to regarding a place as my own, and along with that, a need to protect it. This has infiltrated all of my work. In many ways, I fight and heal and try to understand our position as San Antonio through my work.
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Don't Let Me Forget La Loba, 2015 (from the series Being and Becoming)
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CZ: Does your use of bodies relate to biopolitics?
DR: In some ways, yes. Unfortunately, in our society, women often reach a point where they need to undergo a rigorous process of regaining ownership over their bodies. Through the media, body image propaganda has a way of stealing women from themselves, from self-acceptance, and from viewing their bodies as blessed vessels. Self-portraiture started off as a way of doing this. The camera also gave me a platform for me to tell my stories in a way that couldn’t be ignored. As someone who continues to recover from a history of abuse, these discoveries in self-expression through body and image were crucial to my need to be heard and seen. Just as the advent of the camera served women in the feminist movement during the 20th century, it also served me in the same way.
"The humanity is |