Karla Méndez
Karla Méndez is a Master’s candidate in American Studies at Brown University. She holds a BA from the University of Central Florida in interdisciplinary studies, from which she graduated with honors and defended her thesis concerning the interactive impact of social identities on voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election. She is a lead columnist for the advocacy organization Black Women Radicals and a contributing writer for the Brown Art Review. Her interests include examining the histories of Black and Latin American women and their representations within visual art, literature, poetry, and performance. She is interested in how women put forth representations of themselves that are accurately representative of their expansiveness and how they use these avenues to engage with topics of identity, gender, race, and the female body. She has forthcoming work in the Latinx Project’s Intervenxions and the Boston Art Review.
History As Scars: Gendered Colonialism, the Construction of Identity, and Race in the Work of Ana Mendieta and Aracelis Girmay
The journey across oceans has been made by many throughout history, at times voluntarily, others forcibly. The impetus for embarking on a passage, whether via water or air, that takes one from their native home to an unknown and foreign land could be any number of things. But for many coming from countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Peru, that catalyst has often been to seek political asylum. The actions of the governments in these countries force individuals to search for safety, at times in nations that maintain structures that perpetuate facets of the trauma they left behind. Those who have experienced that crossing due to politics, whether personally or through post-memory, have pursued creative conduits to dissect and think through these encounters that have resulted in their separation from their native countries. Among these creatives are Ana Mendieta and Aracelis Girmay, who through performance art and poetry, respectively, have worked to disentangle these histories. In their work, Mendieta and Girmay explore the effect that migration and colonialism have had on the construction of race and identity and how it has led to racial and gendered violence, and familial and cultural separation.
While there are many creatives whose work is concerned with the topics of exile, trauma, colonialism, and gender that this article could have focused on, the work of Girmay and Mendieta intersects in several ways, despite the 36 years that separate their entrance into the public. Both Mendieta and Girmay have known how significantly having to leave your native land impacts your identity, the way you view yourself and the world around you, but more specifically, the way you are viewed as you walk through the world. Although she was born into a world of privilege and a wealthy family, the light skin that had afforded her protection from racism in Cuba was suddenly a marker of “other” upon her arrival in the U.S. Additionally, the use of Spanish as her primary language further categorized her as an outsider.
Despite not experiencing exile personally like Mendieta, as a woman of Eritrean and Puerto Rican descent, Girmay has had to endure being “othered” and the generational impact of exile. She, like Mendieta, has encountered the scars left by the trauma of racism, exile, and colonialism. These metaphorical scars are those left imprinted on the body due to a continuous search for home, a loss of identity that originates from this absence, and the continued subjugation and colonization of the female body. By examining Mendieta’s Silueta Series, completed between 1973 and 1980, and Girmay’s The Black Maria, published in 2016, I aim to answer how they confront these issues and how they are in conversation with each other. I argue that the societal and cultural history of colonization within the countries they have resided in has resulted in intergenerational trauma that disproportionately impacted the female body.
The trauma resulting from being forcibly exiled from your native homeland is almost unpreventable. The physical and psychological separation one experiences when your country is inhabited and colonized is not something that can easily be peeled away. It’s something that is persistent in its need to remain a part of you deep within your psyche. The colonization of these countries has resulted in the splintering of the individual, causing fissures in the emergence of identity. The more time spent emigrating, the further you get from your motherland, both physically and emotionally. In her poem the luams, Girmay recounts a story of “dismemberment, migration, diaspora,” signaling the process of what occurs when one is disconnected from their home.[1] In discussing the trauma of those who journey across seas and countries in search of refuge, it is critical to focus on the history of colonization and oppressive governments that precipitated these migrations.
The act of colonization by larger and wealthier countries, as well as persecution and governments who abuse power, is one of intimidation. It is exemplary of a bully picking on someone smaller, with less power and ability to stand up for themselves. In both Cuba and Eritrea, there is an archive of instances during which those in power have sought to limit or eliminate the rights of citizens. In Eritrea, residents have lived amid a conflict between the country and Ethiopia for over two decades, which has resulted in a national service policy that has essentially kept them confined within the borders as they may be called to serve.[2] The enforcement of conscription, compounded with other acts of human rights violations including, but not limited to felonious detention centers that do not provide adequate food, water, and medical care, a restriction on religious freedom has led to the mass exodus of Eritreans from the country.[3] Similarly, the regime of Fidel Castrol decades earlier in Cuba, which sought to limit the rights of parents and conscript children to Communist ideologies, led to a mass exodus of Cuban children.
One can only imagine the desperation that must be felt to insulate your family from danger that leads to making that decision to escape from your native land. In her poem to be near sea is to gleam, Girmay writes of those that have had to leave Eritrea, “& flee & flee from home / toward Rome.”[4] The use of the word flee so excellently captures what those leaving Eritrea and Cuba have had to do. They have fled with the understanding that they may never have the opportunity to return. One definition of fleeing as running away from danger or evil.[5] Throughout the poems in The Black Maria, Girmay gestures to the act of fleeing Eritreans have performed to save themselves and their families. There is a despair that is present in the collection, to leave, but also a despair that is felt at the ambiguity of the future.[6]
Mendieta also explores and displays the act of fleeing in her Silueta Series, or rather yet, what is left after one has fled. Her portrayals of violence in the Silueta Series, whether rape or murder, more accurately turn their attention to the aftershock of explicit events. The absence of the body in some pieces, notably Silueta Muerta (1976) and Untitiled (Silueta Series) 1980, both of which see her silhouette burned into the ground through the use of fire and gunpowder, respectively, could be viewed as fleeing, leaving behind a trace of who you once were. (Figure 1 and Figure 2) The concept of residue is discussed by scholar Xuxa Rodriguez, who writes that in her pieces the continual act of marking her body into the earth eventually becomes abstract, “losing the details of its original source.”[7] Through these pieces from the series, it could be argued that Mendieta is also examining the violence experienced in Cuba by the citizens who were unable to leave.
It is also crucial when discussing the violence within these landscapes to acknowledge the trauma that is generated through violent encounters. It marks not only those who experience it first-hand but each generation after. I would argue that an example of how intergenerational trauma impacts is through the fragmented identities of subsequent generations due to the physical separation from the motherland and the existence within cultures.
In her poem prayer & letter to the dead, Girmay examines the violence Eritrean citizens encounter at the hands of the government, drawing a parallel to that of the Castro regime,
“But the President
& his long memory, they think they know
Better. They order the children. They cut the news & power. They decorate the country with
paper offices & send the young
to forever-service where they carry guns
& patrol the streets & Badme
& the borders cut sloppily as beginner’s cloth.”[8]
There is a focus on the children of the country and the government’s enthusiasm to conscript them. There is also a mention of the isolation imposed on the citizens, as a form of coercion for amenability. The violence depicted in Mendieta’s work and Girmay’s poetry communicate an abuse of power that can be viewed as piloting the mass exodus of these countries.
Both Mendieta and Girmay further explore the idea of marking to trace the paths they or their families have taken from their motherlands to a new nation. In her poem elelegy, Girmay relates the countries that make her, writing, “My routes: Eritrea, Puerto Rico, African American.”[9] While geographically distant, these sites have formulated a unique sense of self, one which Girmay, through her poetry, is attempting to survey. She goes on to write in to the sea (any),
“I mark, obsessively,
The route,
The family-piercing
Of the map
In place after place”[10]
Her use of piercing in conjunction with family is compelling given the definition of piercing: sharp, profound, and a physical puncturing of the skin.[11] In arranging these words together, Girmay points to the permanency and impermanency of the self within these localities. The physical body is impermanent within these spaces as it has been forced to migrate because of political persecution. Yet, while residing in these sites, the physical body and the nation formulate a symbiosis, from which permanency develops, particularly in the individual. With each succeeding place they migrate to, they bring with them aspects of their former residence. In embarking on these migratory patterns, the individual collects memories and experiences, leading to a challenge in the development of identity.
Later in the luams, Girmay writes “We find you scattered / there & here & there,” further placing emphasis on the fracturing of identity that is caused by migration and colonization. The scattering of here and there Girmay involves in the poem is tied to poet, writer, and feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldua’s concept of living within the borderlands and the process of migration many undertake. Each time one moves from one place to another, the dismemberment of a cultural identity occurs. In her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldua writes that to be caught between two or more cultures, “la mestiza undergoes a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war.”[12] For immigrants and their descendants, moving from one culture to another means feeling like an outsider and searching for a place to belong.
This exploration of the rupture of cultures and identity and existence both within and outside is something that Mendieta likewise situates at the core of her Silueta Series. Scholar Kaira M. Cabañas writes that in the work encompassing this series, Mendieta often conflated land with home, attempting to “reconstitute ties to her home and assuage the pain of exile.”[13] Mendieta was born and raised in Cuba, until 1961 when the worry by parents surrounding the Castro administration’s regulations regarding children reached its apex. Mendieta’s parents sent her and her older sister Raquelín to the US via Operation Peter Pan, a clandestine operation organized to help Cuban children escape. Her relocation to Iowa, a drastically different setting than Cuba within a society that labeled her as an ethnic other deeply informed Mendieta’s work. It is through her art that Mendieta attempts to grasp any link to Cuba.
And like the impermanency and permanency that Girmay nods to in her poem the luams, the siluetas in Mendieta’s series espouse the concept of permanently being part of a locale and only existing within it temporarily. Because Mendieta’s performances for these pieces were done without an audience in at times remote locations, the only evidence of their existence that has survived are photographs. Not only was the execution temporary, but it is crucial to note that because they were created in collaboration with the earth, there is already a sense of it being fleeting. This shifting nature of the localities in which Mendieta situated her Silueta pieces can be linked to the shifting nature of identity for those who have migrated or whose familial history is one of migration.
In her piece Untitled (Imagen de Yagul), from the Silueta Series, the viewer is presented with the image of Mendieta in what looks like a shallow grave, surrounded by dirt and stones jutting out from the earth, and covered with moss and grass. (Figure 3) There are many striking elements of the image that can be tied to Mendieta’s feeling of exile and the need and want to return to her native land. In the image, she has become one with the earth, in the process isolating herself from the world around her, almost as if by placing herself within this outline, she is being transported back to her motherland.
Much in the same way that Girmay writes of the journey of her history from Eritrea and Puerto Rico, Mendieta charts her migration from Cuba to the US, to Mexico, and to Italy. It’s crucial to note that while she did not create any of the pieces in the Silueta Series in Italy, her travels to the country were part of her attempts to return home. As scholar and professor Jane Blocker writes in Where Is Ana Mendieta, Mendieta was able to find her roots wherever she went; “she made images of home in places where she was not born and did not live.”[14] This speaks to the fluidity of Mendieta’s identity, which she had to adopt due to her exile. Given her experience in the US as a Cuban woman in the 1960s, during which she was assigned a racial identity, a concept foreign to her. In navigating this unfamiliar landscape, Mendieta in a way resigned and embraced her naming as a foreigner, and according to Rodriguez, uses “exile performatively to question the limits and fixity of identity.”[15]
A central and crucial component of the Silueta Series, and throughout much of her work, was Mendieta’s desire to return to Cuba. As written by Jennifer Brough for Artsy, Mendieta felt an overwhelming need to return to the womb, which she conflated with nature, after having been cast out; a need to “return to the maternal source.”[16] That this piece was completed in Mexico shows her continual search for a place that feels like the home she was forced to leave behind; it suggests a return to a space that holds a shard of familiarity. Being in a country that shares her language, in which she shares phenotype characteristics with the residents, and which, as Blocker references, a history that is “rich in colonial and native traditions, much like Cuba.”[17]As mentioned, Mendieta verbalized anguish of feeling like she no longer had a motherland, and this “need to join with the earth, to return to her womb.”[18] The act of lying in the earth symbolizes an enveloping, which she correlates to being in the womb. In this act, she can be reborn. While it may be in Mexico and not the US where she was exiled to, it embodies the idea of rebirth in a country that acts as a surrogate.
Girmay treats the water much in the same way that Mendieta treats the earth. They can both be viewed as regenerative, connecting us not only to that from which life springs but also to an innate connection to one another. In to be near sea is to gleam, Girmay writes of the sea as a source of hope, “to be near sea is to gleam / with dream, while still conscious of the violent history the sea holds, “though to cross / means loss.”[19] With this poem, Girmay focuses on the impact that government oppression and colonization have had on Eritrea and the consequences that citizens have had to weigh in choosing to search for political asylum.
Like Mendieta, Girmay utilizes nature to examine the history of her ancestral home and the trauma, separation, and loss of identity that colonialism and oppressive governmental regimes have placed on citizens,
“The life of the cypress rows
& the roof of the house
in a country that bled
ours dry for its peace
is also so long.”[20]
When Girmay refers to the cypress rows, writing about being in a country that is responsible for a familial history outside of her ancestral homeland, it is helpful to understand the value of cypress trees she is touching on. Its wood is often referred to as the most valuable in the world and its wood and oil have many uses, including furniture and cosmetics. Girmay is making a connection between the cypress trees and the value of the country was bled dry and the simultaneous invalidation of its citizens. A further connection can be made between Girmay’s poem and the Castro regime, particularly regarding the use of the citizens. As mentioned earlier, the impetus for Operation Peter Pan was the regime’s desire to conscript the youth of Cuba, essentially using them for their own selfish ends. This greed is exemplary of the colonization that occurred in and changed Cuba and Eritrean.
The history of colonization we generally encounter in textbooks is one that is written not by those who share a link, but individuals who are geographically, culturally, racially, and ethnically separate from these stories. More than men, women are consistently absent from and through the study of performance art, including poetry as performance, we can challenge the oft-repeated male-centered stories, ensuring they aren’t erased. It has traditionally been examined through a male perspective, focusing on the violence, loss of life, and confiscation of property and people.
This isn’t an attempt to discredit the knowledge that can be gained by studying colonialism through traditional venues like textbooks. But for many of us, creative productions have a way of influencing our understanding and learning about these often-traumatic histories. Performance art and poetry seize a part of us that isn’t commonly guided by logic, anticipating an emotional response.
We are in the habit of defining colonization very broadly, as the “subjugation of a people or area especially as an extension of state power.” We don’t often think about the colonization of the female body. If we were to apply this definition to the ways the female body, particularly those who have been “othered,” we can begin to think about the trauma, and metaphorical, sometimes real, scars women like Mendieta and Girmay have inherited and amassed.
Mendieta and Girmay were both born into bodies that colonized bodies, as women whose family histories originate in these nations, and it is through their work that they are attempting to free themselves, their history, and their futures. But more so, their work is representative of the hope and bravery that many colonized individuals possessed. They challenge the narratives within the study of colonization that focuses on loss and defeat and instead turn their attention to survival.
There is a wealth of connections that can be made between Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Series and Aracelis Girmay’s The Black Maria. While their work is separated by several decades, from their focus on the construction of identity, and familial and cultural separation to examining the impact of colonialism and undemocratic regimes, they are working parallel to one another. In the introduction to her collection, Girmay notes that although the focus of the poems is on Eritrean history, “the history of people searching for political asylum and opportunity (both is much larger than Eritrean history alone.”[21] Cuba and Eritrean may be geographically separated by large bodies of water, but the histories and experiences of those who fled and those who were left behind mirror one another, all bearing the scars of a history that extends before and after them.
End Notes
[1] Aracelis Girmay, The Black Maria. (New York, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2016), 67.
[2] “What Peace I Eritrea Means for Forced Migration,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, accessed November 30, 2022, https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-peace-eritrea-means-forced-migration.
[3] “Eritrea: Events of 2021,” Human Rights Watch, accessed November 30, 2022, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/eritrea.
[4] Girmay, The Black Maria, 42.
[5] Merriam-Webster, ed. s.v. “Flee,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flee.
[6] Girmay further explores this ambiguity in the poem prayer and letter to the dead, “with the light, anyway, of a future tense,” 25.
[7] Xuxa Rodriguez, “Listening to Ana Mendieta”, Archives of American Art Journal 60 no. 20 (2021): 51.
[8] Girmay, The Black Maria, 19.
[9] Girmay, The Black Maria, 11.
[10] Girmay, The Black Maria, 26.
[11] Merriam-Webster, ed. s.v. “Piercing,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/piercing.
[12] Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. (San Francisco, California, Aunt Lute, 1987), 84.
[13] Kaira M. Cabañas, “Ana Mendieta: “Pain of Cuba, Body I Am,” Women’s Art Journal 20 no. 1 (1999): 14.
[14] Jane Blocker, Where Is Ana Mendieta, (Durham, North Carolina, 1999), 106.
[15] Blocker, Where Is Ana Mendieta, 73.
[16] Jennifer Brough, “This Artwork Changed my Life: Ana Mendieta’s “Silueta Series,” Artsy, September 1, 2020. accessed November 30, 2022. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artwork-changed-life-ana-mendietas- silueta-series.
[17] Blocker, Where Is Ana Mendieta,103.
[18] Blocker, Where Is Ana Mendieta, 77.
[19] Girmay, The Black Maria, 42.
[20] Girmay, The Black Maria, 54.
[21] Girmay, The Black Maria, 10.