Meysen Fitan

"Living Woman" Curated and Written by Myles Bowen

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Vrethimli (My Home): Statement from the Curator

Sen is the root for time in the language and by calling upon her I harken back to the time it took to create myself, manifesting my powers to touch and mold my being much like the clay from which humans were formed in many creation myths. I spoke and she was. 

Now my focus on self is not out of narcissistic tendency, but an intentional engagement with solitude and loneliness as praxes in lieu of conditions. This is not to say, they are completely separate and desconocidas to each other, but it is a nod to the utility of the two when discussing Black femme intimacy, specifically, considering our intimacy with self. The thoughts that I swim through in quotidian life, the images that flash through my mind as models of being are included in loneliness and the infinite possibilities that lie in the meningeal riverbeds of my skull. The sacredness of self-reflection is the purest form of intimacy, because one touches the haptic histories of living. There are no layers one has to chip away to reach the core of existence but in the archive of the mind, where many memories, moments, and feelings meet oblivion leaping from synapse to synapse, one can will access to their roots.

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1. “Island” (2018 Acrylic) Calida Garcia Rawles

2. “Transcend” (2018 Acrylic) Calida Garcia Rawles

The liquid rinses my eyes so that I can bare witness to creation. The very pieces of life I have intentionally layered one on top of the other until my form was perceptible. 

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1. “Echo my Moonlight” (2020 Acrylic) Calida Garcia Rawles

At dawn my ripples will be all that’s left, but before the moonfall fades I’ll dance to the levity of my decisions.   

[wecaitiyefecait]

1. “Untitled” (2019) - Hillary D. Wilson 

2. “Untitled” (2018) - Hillary D. Wilson

3. “Untitled” (2020-2021) - Hillary D. Wilson

4. “Calling the Flames” (2020) - Hillary D. Wilson

A fire is singular, solitary. With each breath it expands, deepens, opens space for renewal. I could never call a fire lonely. Maybe a stray flame could be personified in a such away, dying in the underbrush of a forest’s edge. But a fire... it simply can’t be. 

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“Stigmata” (2020) - Harmonia Rosales [Miss Education: Reclaiming Our Identities @ Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts]

Statement from the artist:

“Eve bares these horrific markings as a sign of our ancestral sacrifice and perseverance. She reminds us not only how far we have come but how much further we can go if we continue her legacy.”

¿Podemos llamar lo que has hecho un sacrificio? A mí, me parece como una contradicción. Decir que tuviste una opción, lleva la admisión que elegiste las circunstancias y la violencia dirigidas a tí. Esta declaración sirve como una fantasía ridícula que borra la realidad de tu vida. Quizás no quisieras ser una santa ni una abstracción del fuerzo de la mujer negra, pero así te hemos puesto... como un pilar de tiniebla envuelta en luz opaca con tus cicatrices expuestas como una camisa real. ¿Rosales dice que tú representas el pasado y el futuro de nuestra gente pero puedes llevar nuestra esperanza y nuestra tristeza? Debes hacer eso? Eres humana también, no?  

Espero que no tengas que ser mi salvadora ni tengas que ser mi diosa porque esa identidad requiere que te quedas sola y separada de la humanidad por la divinidad que te atribuimos. 

Can we call what you have done a sacrifice? To me that seems like a contradiction. Saying that you had a choice carries the admission that you chose the circumstances and violence directed at you. This assertion serves as a ridiculous fantasy that erases the reality of your life. Maybe you wouldn’t have wanted to be a saint nor an abstraction of Black femme power; however, that is how we have positioned you... like a pillar of darkness shrouded in dull light with your scars exposed like a royal shirt. Rosales says that you represent the past and the future of our people but can you carry both our hope and sadness? Should you? You are human as well, no?

I hope that you do not have to be my savior nor my goddess because that identity requires that you remain alone and separated from humanity by the divinity that we have ascribed to you.   

[wecaitiyefecait]

1. “Yemaya’s Ascension into The Waters” (2019) Oil on linen 24″ x 24″ - Harmonia Rosales (@honeiee on Instagram)

2. “Waves” (2019) Hillary D. Wilson (@hillarydwilsonart on Instagram)

3. “Sea Storm” (2019) Hillary D. Wilson (@hillarydwilsonart on Instagram)

4. “The Space In Which We Travel” (2019) Acrylic on Canvas 84″ x 144″ - Calida Garcia Rawles

I rest when and where I want. Yes! That rest extends to my waking life. Yes! Even in the midst of my storms I breathe and rest. 

How is my attention to self not divine? I’m unraveling the bandages of wounds left on my spirit. I am in contact with the most sacred-- a dialogue with being.

No! She is not dead nor is she in submission. She is napping, crying, dancing, living and making life, breathing onto her creation that which only she can produce. She is me and I am them. Wherever we choose to be, sanctity is. Because captured in the folds of my body, meninges of the physical form, is a Sacred Spirit that generates and animates. 

With a thought, a spark across the space of my mind, my form becomes infinite, consuming and absorbing the world around her like a hurricane. Listen to my stillness and dance to the rhythm of my shape and you’ll graze the surface of futurity. 

P.S.: No! I cannot magically take you there. Ask your mama!       

[wecaitiyefecait]

“Infinite from Root to Tip” (2020 Acrylic) Calida Garcia Rawles

Like a mythic calling I stay diving for relics. Maybe I’ll find your whispers, scent, name hoarded within the nooks of the coral. I search for you to know myself, see myself, understand what life is and can be. Something about you pulls me deeper until the drop off is no longer visible and my only choice is to tread water until I too become a home for polyps.     

But when I surface for a breath you radiate from me, painted on the waves and ripples I break. Your infinity marks my existence. The fruits you bear are the roots within me, as foundational and branching as my capillaries.