Between Nepantla, my own practices and the Coyolxauhqui imperative
For Gloria Anzaldúa, writing is a gesture of the body that brings into consideration corporeal realities in order to avoid incorporeal abstractions when reflecting and theorizing. She insists on engaging with the making so through this engagement, finding that what begins to be written is the ‘being with’ opposite of just thinking ‘about’.
The with-ness gives consistence to what is written while the about-ness implicitly creates a distance subject-object.
At the core of my practice lies the importance of personal experiences and stories as material for creation. I consider that I am the subject from which I know the most and from which I can theorize with, generating proposals that come from a very personal interest but that doesn’t stay in the self-referenced realm. One example is YOGGATON, it definitely comes from the personal need of widening the frames of action that culturally, socially and even artistically I was somehow destined to fit in. Is really a concern to me facing a world that still wants to label people for being able to read easily and that is again linked with who has the power to define what is what and who is who; subject and the Other and the construction of identity.
For going further into the theorization of the construction of the identity, I’d like to bring the notion of the Coyolxauhqui* imperative. Anzaldúa defines it as the will for becoming undone and then reconstruct yourself anew. Quoting Anzaldúa: ‘Coyolxauhqui represents the psychic and creative process of tearing apart and pulling together (deconstructing/constructing). She represents imperfection, incompleteness as well as integration and wholeness.
By constantly reflecting on myself and my work I apply this imperative. I have the will to build but also to tear apart for analyzing what other possibilities I can have if I choose to rebuild differently. I feel like the ‘ORACULAR CREATURE’ I imagined to be is not the one I want to make right now. ¿What are the inputs that will be found during the creative process? ¿How much am I able to give space for materials, reflections to appear?
The Coyolxauhqui imperative brings me to Nepantla and vice versa. Nepantla, as I shortly introduced in the previous post, is a Náhuatl word that means no-place place or place in-between. Quoting Anzaldúa: ‘Nepantla is the space in-between, the locus and sign of transition’. It is a place where realities clash and authority figures from different groups demand contradictory commitments for this liminal space to exist. This place that constitutes a point of contact between worlds, human and non human.
I completely find my practices there, because of the concept of Nepantlera, which is a person that inhabits Nepantla. I bridge concepts, points of view, perspectives, and different kinds of awareness from one culture, aesthetic, artistic practice to the other and not fully identifying with any, but considering that all of those ‘contradictions’ contribute to widening the understanding. ¿Why do I want to carry so many things with me?
