Recently I found a goose feather and as I walked, with the feather in my hand, I noticed how the feather responded to the wind. I felt how a bird feels as it flies.
At the Cooper Hewitt in New York City, there is an exhibit titled “Rebeca Mendez Selects” which highlights the fate of the Aztec ruler’s, Moctezuma II’s, private aviary at the hands of the Spanish conquerors. The Spanish set fire to his aviary and killed all the birds, which had come from all over the Americas. That this act demonstrates the destructive powers inherent in colonialism; it also illustrates the tensions arising from our conflicting impulses towards nature. This exhibit shows birds as sources of art, design and science and also discusses the effects of climate change and human avarice.
Feathers float above a woman’s tattooed thigh.
Tattooed New-York
In the spring of 2017, my work was part of the exhibition “Tattooed New-York” at The New-York Historical Society. This exhibition traced the history of tattooing in New York starting with the native peoples to our times. It was curated by Cristian Petru Panaite.
My piece, “Hands Fly”, was exhibited with work that expands tattooing from the personal into art.
Tattooing was and is a part of human cultures globally.
Spiders Then and Now
My work is often inspired by the close relationship between tattoos and the honoring of plants and animals by other cultures, both past and present.
At the Brooklyn Museum is a small exhibition of jewelry, pottery, hunting tools and other objects of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in the Pre-Columbian time. One of the objects is a gold Chiriqui pendant of a spider whose legs end in human hands. This pendant served as an active extension of its owner, like tattoos, and a communicator of awe for a creature of nature.
An artist whose work includes spiders is Louise Bourgeois who saw spiders as elegant, fearsome and protective.
Gold pendant at The Brooklyn Museum from Costa Rica
