First Confession
Upon my return to Puerto Rico, having completed my studies at the University of Madison, I joined the faculty of the School of Fine Arts, in the State University of New York in Albany. Here I had an important experience with one of my mother’s sisters, whom I have always called aunt Ketty. In our conversation she described how one of her friends, who lived in Barrio Santo Domingo in Peñuelas, discovered a strange stone in a hole during the reconstruction of her house. After finding the mysterious stone, aunt Ketty asked her friend to give her the stone because she knew of someone who could be interested in it. During my visit, she gave me the stone and said “I have this stone for you, but you must place it near your heart, whatever comes to your mind you must do, but don’t tell me now.”
The painting Espíritu Santo was born from this experience. The concept was based in a spiritual experience related to the four elements of nature (fire, water, air, and earth) which served as theme and cosmological connection during the creation. “The universe that is out there is also in us”, was the Taoist thought that inspired me during the creative process. The central figure of the work is represented by the Taíno, who appears in front of the horizon, suggesting that such spiritual force can influence the past and the future. The red intense energy emanating from Taíno’s head is an indication of power. This altar- installation is a reminder of the primary footsteps of my family and my city.
Second Confession
One day I asked my grandmother, Paula Wiscovich if she could let me do some sketches of her altar in my notebook. She responded that I could draw all I wanted. The altar was on the backyard of the house. It was a humble but very mystic type of altar. There were many images that caught my attention many of which I worked in my notebook.
Those notes and drawings are today my book on syncretism. I started the illustrations in the Playa of Ponce, and I finished them at the Conservatory Garden in Central Park New York. Of the many images that I identified in that altar the one that caught my attention the most was the cacique. Even though it was a North American Indian, for me, it was a Taíno cacique. That image has remained in my memory forever.
After I returned from Paris, -city where I reflected upon many aspects of my spiritual life- and living in a studio in New York, I decided to do a charcoal drawing that would recapture and reinterpret that childhood cacique I had discovered in my grandmother’s altar. In this new image I incorporate several elements: the white fangs, the sign of “forbidden” that I constantly saw in the streets of Paris and the silhouette of a stone hatchet that I interpret as an element of protection. To me, the cacique is the guardian of the rivers and the spiritual energy.
Third Confession
I see the madama as a spiritual symbol, a representation of the African woman, who came to the Caribbean to be exploited by the slavery system. Since I was a boy, I lived with cloth madamas. My mother told me that they existed in real life, just as I saw them around the house with their dresses and all the elements that were used by those who represented the cloth dolls. When I arrived to Paris I confirmed their authenticity as they strolled by my studio in Rue Reuilly. On my trip to Haiti, one of the figures that impressed me the most while walking through the streets of Port-au-Prince was the coal carrier madama holding a basket filled with coal over her head.
The economic global transformation and the predominance of a post- industrial world market helped me visualize a series of elements, among them: snail shells that I use as a sign of multiple readings. The shells that the madama carries relate to the energetic force she represents as bearer of cultural, syncretic and spiritual richness. On the opposite hand, the marine pieces are a revelation of contemporary materialism since shells were used as coins in the past. These are a representation of the abundance and complexity of the spiritual world. In some rites, shells are instruments for reading the future thus beginning an exercise in clairvoyance.
Fourth Confession
In the countries I have visited, cloths, regardless of their differences, have always played a vital function in the rituals I studied and observed. The first step in the initiation of cloths is to saturate them with energy, the second is their blessing and the third is their use for the protection of souls and bodies. I was impressed to see these cloths hanging with a crucifix in my mother’s table. The sacred cloths used in the madamas’ rituals have a square cross section, in three colors: white that represents purity; red which symbolizes cleanliness and blue, a sign of spirituality. In my altar installations I integrate cloths with a horseshoe as an element of luck. My interpretation of the cloths as a sacred piece emerges from my reading of the shroud of Turin, the one that covered the body of Christ after the crucifixion. I have also been impressed by the solemnity followed in the placement of the white cloths in both scientific and popular ritual tables as well as the red cloths used in the Taoist rituals which I observed during my visit to Tapei.
The triptych Sacred Cloths that integrates the altar installation uses cloths of spiritual rites as references. The painting starts with a scene in square cross-section that incorporates the image of the madama. This quadrant expands to integrate the horseshoe as a symbol of luck and a hammock placed in the old house in La Playa de Ponce, the one that covered my body and soul since I was a child.
Fifth Confession
In relation to my syncrectic transactional experience, the madama is a reflection of my life-long experiences in temples of diverse spiritual manifestations. In the case of my family, the madama figure serves as an instrument of the mediums. These in turn function as liaison of a message that incorporates words of cosmological dimensions. Madama, in acrylic relief, done in 1986, was my first pictorial creation on this theme. It was born based on the vision that I have of the African woman as a fighter, a reflection of the conscience of African women facing ideological, racial and political conflicts. This image is the representation of feminine suffering and passion. The red and green colors in the work symbolize the liberation movement of the Afro-American women in the United States. On the other hand, the integration of the cloth madama is recurrent in my altar-installations. They serve as a spiritual pathway, for believer families and for my esthetic conceptions that have always been with me.
Sixth Confession
One morning my wife Maria, my father Diógenes, my grandmother Paula and I attended a Yamaya ritual in La Playa de Ponce. During the ritual my grandmother pleaded to the deity, and its echo transcended the dimensions of nature itself. These sounds were assimilated by each one of us. Again the sacred cloths appeared, this time in white and yellow embraced by the wind from the sea to protect the bodies of those of us who were present. At the end of the ritual we went back home and I witnessed the procession of the Virgen del Carmen, patron saint of the fishermen.
When the image of the Carmela (the virgin’s popular name) reaches the boardwalk, she is said farewell with a parade to be later welcomed by the fishermen of the area. The fishermen walk the virgin around the bay of Ponce throwing roses to the sea, a ritual celebrated in honor of the playeros’ guardian. These experiences served to broaden my spiritual world. Once again in New York, in a daily reflection I was inspired by the figure of Maria del Mar (Mary of the Sea) to create a new painting. She invites us to engage in her ritual which consists in getting close to the sea and diving three times into the water. Later, the person whips himself with a caper twig while reciting the following phrase, “Here I come to greet you Mary of the Sea”. At the end of the ritual the members of the initiation must depart without looking back leaving all negative energy behind. Once having reached land the body feels liberated.
Seventh Confession
My syncretic experiences are summarized in an artistic book. I invited my wife, María Bouncher to include her epic poem Portadora de historia y poseedora de sueños . This poem is born from a dialog between the poet and my mother. My task during the conversation was to act as interpreter. For the conceptualization of the book I used images of spiritualist altars (placed in and out of the houses), elements of the old house in La Playa (built at the end of the nineteenth century) and of the Abolition of Slavery Park in Ponce.
This book is a digital impression transferred to papyrus pages. Since in one of its parts I mention the figure of Saint Lazarus I decided the book’s cover had to be in burlap (tela de saco). The book became the experience I needed to carry out the installation of Portadora de Historia y Pooseedora de Suenos exhibited at the Center of Puerto Rican Studies in New York., and the Galería de Medianoche of PRDREAM.COM. In the first one, I made a large scale drawing that included the digital and the real book. In the second, I conceptualized an installation with a sculptural book and an ensemble of trunks of trees and drawings. From one of them the voice of the poet is heard reciting the poem of the same title. The digital projection was connected from my room in New York to the gallery. Everyday a new page from the book was illustrated as part of the project.
For the first time the real and the Internet versions coexist in one space, the Ponce Museum of History from where it is digitally transferred to multiple spaces that intercommunicate with the National Museum of Catholic Art and History in New York as a way of sharing syncretic experiences with the New York’s Diaspora Public.
Eighth Confession
My reinterpretation of the sculpture of the freed slave in the obelisk of the Abolition of Slavery Park in Ponce, a unique historical monument in the Caribbean, inspired my most recent installation as first resident artist of the Museum of History in Ponce. My doubts regarding the slave’s kneeling position with chains in his hands encouraged me to work on this new proposal.
This one suggests a heavy built slave in a standing position, whose chains instead of being tied to his hands lie on the floor as a sign of liberation.
One of my grandmother’s stories tells about the slaves that landed in Coffin Island by ship. One of them decided to jump to the sea to explore the area before his companions would reach land. For me, this action represents the liberated slave of the Caribbean who one day reached our shores and brought with him other syncretic currents. I narrate the story pictorially incorporating the sculpture of a ship which serves as testimony of the voyage the slaves made to the Caribbean. One of them jumped to the sea as a witness of the African diaspora that reached our island.
The purpose of the Ancestral Manifestation installation is to visit the past in order to conceptualize the present again thus establishing that human relations ought to be transformed from a harmonious, positive proposal rather than a hostile one.
In this illustration, several pieces from the Museum of History collection in Ponce and the Ponce Historical files are incorporated. The documents related to the trading of slaves in Ponce during the nineteenth century, in my case denote evidence of the written sources about the life of our Afro-American ancestors in Ponce, Puerto Rico. By the same token this reading is a unique learning process.
Each piece of the museum is a historical evidence of the city and my family. Such is the case of the coffee sacks with the Oliver brand in them that I recently discovered. These were sewn on the first floor of the house of my grandfather, Pedro Marzán.
Translated by Florence Quilichini
October 12, 2006