International Murals
Miracle Project
2017@ Hua Quan Village. YinTan City, Jiangxi Province, China
Cacibajagua & Hombre-isla
In these two murals we approach the body in comparisons and contrasts with nature. Our island is a paradise that has experienced trauma on different scales. This trauma penetrates and continues to transcend the centuries of our coloniality. We know that our history is one of conquest, one time upon another, and we denounce it as a patriarchal ideal. Because of this, we visually articulate our interactions with, and our experiences in, our environment by including diverse landscapes in the scenes we construct. The human figure is intertwined with the landscape.
Cacibajagua
How does a society flourish? When? Mother earth in labor. The colony is labor more than a state.
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Cacibajagua is a Taíno word that refers to the name of the caves from which the Taíno emerged as a people. The Taínxs were animists, and within that worldview Kiskeya (Hispaniola) was their mother island. Cacibajagua were the vaginal cavities of the island, where the Taínxs are born.
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The Cacibajagua mural plays with various concepts and the relationships between them: land and territory, work and labor, state and colony. The earth is presented as a mother, and she is giving birth to a colony of ants. The figure lies on the 'mother rock' and in the background the different layers of the earth can be seen. The ideas of gestation and childbirth also intertwine with the blooming of the Lady of the Night, a flower that blooms twice a year, for a single night. This process is depicted as stages, similar to gestation and the phases of the moon.
Hombre-isla
Hombre-isla also plays with concepts. This mural is the postpartum of Cacibajagua. The man is an island adrift. The ants have built it and are floating thanks to their ability to work together. They are capable of rising above the sea, creating a huge living entity. It evokes the identity struggle of Puerto Ricans. An isolated man tries to stay afloat while ants build new structures, serving as a metaphor for the work of decolonization. Thus, we rethink structures. We question the colony beyond a state, but rather we begin to see it as an organism. We articulate the need to seek collectivity. Does the man sink? We reflect and debate about the colony, isolation and masculinity in patriarchy.
Pit of the Belly
2019 Sheffield Mural Fest@ Sheffield, Tasmania, Australia
Pit of the belly alludes to the image of man surrounded by water, just like an island. He lies dying and in his heart a mechanical clock keeps time with him. He is burdened by time and a mechanistic approach to life. Butterflies and light spring from his belly. From the center, life comes from within and around us.
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This image evokes sensibility and vulnerability. Here, we re-visit the image of the fragmented man as in our first mural, A Una bocanada de mariposas (A Mouthful of Butterflies), for SEL4 in 2013. Again, we can make new inter´retations of how patriarchy represses sensitibility in masculine identities. So our men end up full of feelings that need to come out.
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When the feelings come out, is it a sunrise or a sunset?
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At the bottom of the water, seeds lay, with all the potential in the world to germinate and grow.
Will the water drown them or give them life?