Latin American Youth Center, Washington D.C. Photo 1
The opening night of the exhibit in Long Island was quietly stressful. It was the first time myself or my teammate, Julie, had done anything like this before. We were running late to put the finishing touches on the space with a little under an hour until it would open to the public. We pulled into the parking lot and lugged bags of pushpins, magnets, and photographs past the waiting room on the first floor and up the stairs. The light outside was fading quickly and a group of young people practiced a cheerleading routine in the parking lot. I felt sick from the stress but equally excited. This thing that had been in my head for two years was finally going to be tangible and real. How would it be received?
I've been working on a transnational multimedia exhibit for the last two years that looks at the legacy of the Salvadoran Civil War (1980 - 1992.) Re: Construcción is an interactive multimedia exhibit. The work focuses on the legacy and impact of the Salvadoran Civil War as well as transnational identity, intergenerational knowledge, and the societal effects of conflict. The exhibit is a transnational collaboration between individual artists, collectives, and community organizations that work with Salvadorans in the United States and El Salvador.
It’s is a three part project. The first part is a series of tables, 'Las Mesas', dedicated to the stories of six individuals and families. Each table contains numbered household objects and photographs. Each number corresponds to a piece of audio interview or ambient sound. Viewers are guided through the interviewee’s stories by mp3 players. Their stories can be listened to linearly or the viewer can pick and choose which object they want to listen to.
Part two of the project is an interactive wall that we are asking the Salvadoran community to come and add their own objects, drawings, writings, and perspectives on the impact on the war for themselves or the Salvadoran community at large. The idea is that as the exhibit travels across the United States and El Salvador the wall will gain new perspectives in every exhibit location.
The third part of the exhibition is an art exhibition that brings together artists living in the country as well as those living in the diaspora. These artists are Danny Zavaleta, Oscar Diaz, Veronica Vides, Carmen Elena Trigueros, Ricardo Patricio Majano, Mauricio Esquivel, The Fire Theory, Fred Ramos, Jose Cabezas, and Melissa Guevara.
I grew up not knowing my mother or father’s families. I knew that my grandparents had migrated from El Salvador during the late 1970’s to San Francisco and that it had something to do with a war that had happened there. The emptiness that comes with having no historical links to the world is difficult to explain to those who have never experienced it themselves. All of the questions that began to emerge during my teenage years about who I was and where I belonged were complicated by the fact that was no set blueprint, no particular narrative line to follow. So, when I first started this project it was mostly to try and understand the place my family had come from. I felt that this moment in history had a lot to do with how my family had ended up in San Francisco, California in the 1980's and in turn led to me being brought into the world. While this investigation wouldn't satisfy the hunger to understand who I was, it would provide me with a sense of the world that I could have been a part of had life not separated me from history.
I had done plenty of academic research but understanding this point in time meant listening to the stories of others and understanding what their lives had looked like before, during, and after the war. Over the course of two years we collaborated with two artist collectives out of the country, received a grant and managed to collect enough funds to take the work on the road. I chose to take the exhibit to areas where there are still large Salvadoran communities, places that families and individuals fled to during the war: Long Island, Washington DC, Maryland, and Los Angeles.
The following essay will unpack some of the philosophies and realities of occupying, creating, and sharing spaces around the subject of the conflict.
The work has gone through many drafts and iterations. Originally it was going to be a website. Then it was going to be a set of walls with objects and photographs. Then it became a series of tables and a collaborative exhibit with 10 other artists. Then it became a travelling exhibit
in community spaces that serve the Salvadoran community across the US and El Salvador. These changes, however drastic they may seem, were intentional in that they were made with the philosophy of the project in mind. Every transformation was meant to serve our purpose:
to explore the past and present of the Salvadoran community in the country and across the diaspora.
The decision to host the work in community spaces added a lot of logistical considerations. How would we move the work? How would it be presented? What equipment, funds, or resources did we need to mount it all? Every space would be, physically speaking, different. How would we
accommodate the programming and services that were already happening in these spaces. For example, the first stop of our summer tour was in the Consulate of El Salvador and the
work was to be presented in a room that was essentially a waiting room for those going to have their papers processed. We would have to think about how to respect the practical uses of the space while also encouraging visitors to interact with the work.
The realities of existing in those spaces were in some ways unpredictable as hundreds of Salvadorans of all ages, with their own experiences and understandings of the conflict would be walking through the doors of the Consulate every day. What was within our control was primarily how we would situate ourselves in every space. Below are some photograph examples of the work in the Salvadoran Consulate in Brentwood, Long Island vs the Mayday Community Space in Brooklyn, New York.
The Consulate of El Salvador, Brentwood, Long Island NY (Photo 2)
Consulate of El Salvador, Brentwood, Long Island NY. (Photo 3)
In every space we had to consider lighting. For instance, the space in Brentwood had several large windows with plenty of natural light. The whole wall was essentially occupied by the windows so we had to be creative about what we would display there. In Photo 3 you can see the work of photojournalist Jose Cabezas is framed above. We also had to think about how the works were in conversation with one another. Cabezas presented portraits of ex-soldiers from the war. Alongside it was Carmen Elena Trigueros’s ‘Lavandera’, a performance piece in which she washes the national flag on the steps of the Salvador del Mundo monument. What message were we presenting? It was important for us to consider the ways in which layed out the work, trying to understand how our viewers might move about the space.
A shot from Carmen Elena Triguero’s, ‘Lavandera’
After Long Island, we headed to Brooklyn. We were lucky enough to have access to the classroom area of Mayday Space. Mayday is an organizing space whose value and mission we felt was well-aligned with ours. Their website describes them as, “a neighborhood resource and a citywide destination for engaging programming, a home for radical thought and debate, and a welcoming gathering place for people to work, learn, drink, dance and build together.”
The floor we were in had three rooms: main room (picture 1), the classroom (picture 2), and the library (not pictured.) The main room was used for everything from AA meetings to trainings or conference breakout rooms. As a result we had to make the exhibit easily-moveable. Something we learned quickly was that adaptability was equally as important as aesthetic.
Mayday Space, Brooklyn NY. (Photo 4)
Mayday Space, Brookyn, NY (Photo 5)
These challenges recurred across spaces. We had to be ready to adapt at all moments and to accommodate programming that was not our own.
Realities: Making Space, Giving Space
When I was rushing to put the finishing touches on the exhibit in Long Island nearly two months ago I had asked myself, how would this be received? Now nearing the end of our US exhibit I realize that there is no way of knowing. We could only control what the physical space looked like, nothing more.
One of the most important things we eventually recognized was that making space for stories often meant giving space. While my first instinct when people walked in was often to want to explain the work or engage in conversation I slowly realized that each person was carrying their own trauma and experience. Rather than making assumptions about people’s experiences with the topic we waited for them to approach us to speak. Our job was to guide viewers through the work and to make the layouts intuitive.
We could not control how people reacted or their readiness to share their experiences. On one of our last days in Washington, DC a young woman quietly approached the exhibit, looking over each of the pieces quietly and carefully. As she turned back to me I realized she had tears in her eyes. She had lost her father to violence in El Salvador as a child, well after the war. We had a long conversation about what the war had meant and what was still occurring in El Salvador and across the U.S. She told me that even though the exhibit made her sad, she was glad it was there because it meant others would perhaps have the opportunity to understand what herself and others had experienced. That understanding, I see now, comes in many forms. Sometimes it can be verbalized and sometimes it can’t. But to create spaces, however temporary, in which we feel recognized and understood can be powerful beyond measure.
LEARN MORE: www.reconstruccionproject.com
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