In September of 2000, I carefully packed four things: a framed picture of the sky taken after hurricane George, a heart-shaped music box, a container half-filled with dirt from my parents' backyard, and a couple of underskirts that once belonged to my aunt and grandmother. As I carried those objects along with a one-way ticket to Chicago, they became constant reminders of the longing of a home that was no longer available.
Dressed as Home and Refuge began as a series of performative actions and installations with re-appropriated found objects that explored the effects of homesickness and its meaning to those close by, but also to those that remained back home. Each piece composed through monochromatic altars, which faded the origin of the object, aimed to explore the duality of assimilation and resistance that our culture is based upon.
In 2018, I began a process of restaging and curating over a decade of unedited work. As a result, I was able to re-define my work as nostalgic archeology containing memories of my predecessors as re-imagined and reflected upon. Soon after, it transformed into a lifelong process that included, for example, the revival of my grandmother’s recipes and the recollection of documents that were reminiscing about my family’s challenging past. Those items not only shaped the body of work that I created for the following years but also framed a practice and understanding the meaning of resistance and cultural preservation.
Through a process that reflects on the transnational and intergenerational effects of homesickness and nostalgia, Dressed as Home and Refuge series progresses to map the experience of Puerto Ricans that have moved from the Island to Chicago during the past 70 years. The goal is to foster a positive and critical dialogue about personal and cultural preservation of our shared history. One that is not exclusively contained by a generic cultural representation, symbolism, and aesthetics. Through exploring the power of meaning and ability for us to imagine and create new forms and interpretations as we re-imagine not only our past and the memories contained, but the resilience and hopes for a better future that all deserve but thrive for.
The Puerto Rican community of Chicago is not only the heart of almost twenty years of my work and the growth of my new family but a place that we consistently celebrate the resilience and the transformation of our people and our culture.
Bringing a piece of home was not only transformative as a healing process but an act of resistance.
It was six o'clock since yesterday's afternoon. An eight-year-old girl draped in squares and multicolored ribbons vanished with her twenty-five pounds' tote on her little shoulders. The sky masqueraded into a blue-green cosmic gallery forbidden of paper castles.
Refuge was a resin Odalisque of shared flesh and stiff drapes.
Refuge was the pillow cemetery hidden in a vacant closet.
Refuge was the missing wig made with wire, gauze, iodine, and ether.
Refuge was a mop on the head to hide her inappropriate greñas.
Refuge was an exorcism with black murky voodoo: always prieto, always cenizo, always molleto- a rechargeable desire engine.
Refuge was the intoxicated solace smell that leaked with the rain.
Refuge was the deserted wings on a coarse swing.
Refuge was the miscarried words te adoro me harás mucha falta .
Refuge was a Wonder Woman costume at a Discount Store.
Refuge was to cover up with resin, dead flowers, and reheated bedclothes.
Refuge was bonding to the end of a pot.
Refuge was enumerating the fists and stamps printed on her chest and throat.
Refuge was dusting her dozen and some half-sanctified lovers made with wood, tiny beans and pork chops pieces.
Refuge was dressing every night as a petty insect.
Refuge was bathing daily with 32 ounces of thinner, joke, 20mg of Prozac and mirth.
Refuge was the pill’s buffet, the yellow love for Fridays and the tiny little rainbows for the rest of the week.
Refuge was to swallow a whole bottle of ammonia left on a bath cabinet.
Refuge was to woman up between twenty something bottles of Clorox, Lysol, and Motrin.
Refuge was the sweet smell of his stirring frame over mi vientre.
Refuge was a Quick & Easy Menstrual Stain Remover.
Refuge was the nuptial disguise and squirm in it like a puny worm to the altar.
Refuge was to camouflage the longing.
Refuge was the desire to leave the bones attached to a ceiling.
Refuge was a charcoal plate, the sumie ink and the missed paper pieces that never touched the soil.
Refuge was the exploited hormones eternally on war.
Refuge was the first date with a lured tune trapped in a music box.
Refuge was the dust, the discretion, the cross color of my guts.
Refuge was the proposal to a Bolero.
Refuge was a pair of emptied cups left under the table.
Refuge was the node all over the chest and the hints fused on the body.
Refuge was to disjoin the smell of ashes from her feet and her mouth.
Refuge was to sew her mandible to have nothing else to swallow, digest, spew and hold up.
And how it was, vanishing in the distance with her twenty-five pound's tote mourning:
“I am your home, I am your refuge."
Chapter 1: An Intimate Map through Homesickness and Resistance
Through this first chapter of Dressed as Home and Refuge, I was able to use photography to explore recurring ideas connected to my perception of home as a non-physical space. Each image of this series aims to reconstruct a psychological and emotional space that I once knew or remembered.
It was about understanding what I once knew as home, and now is unavailable, unsafe, shattered but also filled with calmness. As visual documents created over a period of three years, they serve as the ultimate piece of comfort after the storm: an intimate portrait, forever transgressive and forever changing.
Each image of this series aims to reconstruct a psychological and emotional space that I once knew or remembered. It was about understanding what I once knew as home, and now is unavailable, unsafe, shattered but also filled with calmness. As visual documents created over three years, they serve as a piece of comfort after the storm. From the picture of the sky after hurricane George, the daisy-shaped appliques of my mother's wedding gown, the hours waiting by my grandparent's house window, all these reconstructed mindscapes, are fragments of past, present and unknown future that both existed simultaneously and resisted.
Chapter 2: DRESSED AS HOME AND REFUGE | To Amend
During her Artist Residency, Brenda Torres Figueroa remixed and re-introduced her first series of work presented in Chicago. Twenty years later, Dressed as Home and Refuge is a long-term project that examines the intergenerational and transnational impact of homesickness and nostalgia. Through an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to visual storytelling, architectural garments, and photography, this residency proposes to collectively examine how historical concepts of the feminine and the domestic have contributed to shape and question our ideas of power, belonging, tolerance, violence, grief, oppression, healing and mainly resistance. As we enter this journey at the HoneyComb Network in the heart of Paseo Boricua, we invite our community to share their stories, some that have not only survived generations but/and also survived our collective sense of displacement.
Social Context and Impact
Coming out of graduate art school in 2004 and moving back home with a challenging income and a child to raise, I was beyond overwhelmed, broken, and in true survival mode. This same predicament that lasted almost a decade informed my process of reimagining alternatives to sustainable practices in the arts, through education, but also through advocacy.
The coexistence of ephemerality, invisibility and voidness translated into my work expressively, but also in subtle ways. I continued working avidly with graphic and textile design and developing two distinct brands both focusing on visual storytelling and advocacy. Freedom Effect was born as an effort to create a scholarship fund for undocumented students in the arts. Between Rags and Dolls followed with an artisanal approach that gave a continuum to the art of doll making
Through that process, I’ve been able to produce hundreds of pieces that connected the stories I safeguarded so deeply. I dedicated myself to map and remap my past, but also my future, and also prayed.
Now, it is imperative and a priority to resurface the conversation about domestic, cultural, and collective violence, misogyny, transphobia, and anti-blackness against women and femmes. The goal of this project/residency is to facilitate inclusive, accessible, and sustainable support groups across genders and generations, that will promote cultural and social awareness. This project has a deep commitment to improving the ways we educate and teach/learn about social justice, advocacy, tolerance, and mental health intergenerationally.
1952
On July 25, 1952, after final ratification by the constitutional convention to accept the constitution as approved by the Congress, the Governor of Puerto Rico proclaimed the establishment of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico under the new constitution.
This image was taken that year in Las Croabas, in Fajardo Puerto Rico depicts my mother (the youngest) and her sister, surrounded by her mother aunts and grandmother in a casual afternoon at the beach.
Refuge
Skowhegan, Maine
Photo Credit: Wanda Raimundi Kloetz
Refuge (Enaguas) 2021
Refuge (Body Memory) 2002
Refuge (Daughter) 2021
An Ocean without Red Boats, 2001
An Ocean without Red Boats, 2021
Refuge
Installation with underskirts
2002-2021
