Artist Statement: This piece emerged over the course of several visits to an Amalia Mesa-Bains exhibit, as I interacted with my friends, parents, and children around the exhibit’s themes of culture, history, immigration, spirituality, violence, and much more. I was moved by the exhibit’s beauty and power, and I wondered what it meant to deeply engage with the artist’s work without needing to make it familiar or see myself reflected in it. And, too: how to relate to the histories of oppression portrayed in these works, without (on one hand) retreating to defensiveness or (on the other hand) seeking to detach myself from my own heritage in all its complexity. My gratitude to Ariana for introducing me to the exhibit.

“Circle of Ancestors,” 1995
amaliamesabains.com/exhibit/circle-of-ancestors
“Transparent Migrations,” 2001
amaliamesabains.com/exhibit/transparent-migrations
“Private Landscapes and Public Territories,” 1998-2011
amaliamesabains.com/exhibit/private-landscapes-and-public-territories

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Amalia Mesa-Bains, Archaeology of Memory, 
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2023

I. Circle of Ancestors, 1995

The chairs on the platform are painted golden, silver, copper. The seats are covered in wealth, a profusion of precious material: glass beads, gems, gilded fruits, skulls, corn, statues of a woman and a child. The inner side of each chairback holds an oval mirror etched with ancestor images in dark, delicate tracings.

I sit outside the circle out of respect. I crane my neck to see the little black seeds or stones anchoring the chair legs to the ground. I ask the docent what they are. She radios my question: “A guest wants to know…”

My mother finds the installations cluttered. “I know that’s a pejorative word,” she says, searching for a different one, her forehead furrowed.

The chairs don’t look cluttered to my eyes, but I do see the way the mirrors reflect each other and not me. How the ancestors being honored in this circle are not my European ancestors. How the candles, the gifts, the abundance, do not belong to me. Briefly, I understand the impulse to burst in, to insert myself, to take over.

I am a guest, but I was not invited.

II. Transparent Migrations, 2001

Tall glass leaves of spiny maguey rise up from the platform. The desert where borders are created and crossed. A wardrobe holding a glass globe model of Tenochtitlan, miniature glass ships with sails, and other small shapes shining in the shadows.

We are all looking at the shattered glass spread across the platform. The children want to know who broke it and how: Did they use tools? Did they wear safety goggles?

We all feel detached from the idea. We are not the kind of people who break glass on purpose. We see broken glass next to other cars in the parking lot – and occasionally our own – but we don’t identify with the act of breaking. Still, the glass remains broken, and someone did break it.

My mother and father point out the assumption that white people are responsible for all violence in California’s history. Didn’t the Spanish actually commit most of the violence against indigenous people? Should we consider the Spanish white? At what point were Californian Mexicans no longer Spanish? 

I can’t find the right words to make my point. I feel we’re not on the same side, or maybe in this moment I can’t remember what the sides are.

The money we paid to enter this exhibit has given us a safe distance from the broken glass. It doesn’t even look dangerous: soft sage color shimmering, sea-green and glittering.

In my arms, my jacket hangs heavy with my wallet, thick and secure, filled with green paper dollars and stiff plastic cards. I’m trying to recognize how we profit from violence.

III. Private Landscapes and Public Territories, 1998-2011

The garden spills out of a wardrobe: moss-green, fern-green, trailing fronds of ivy-green, garlands of cempasuchil, red-stringed bundles of sage, pomegranates, bottles of sand, family photos. Inside the half-open wardrobe, goddesses confer, heads bent toward each other under the wings of a colibri, nourishing and being nourished.

Words painted in gold on the wall:
“We understand space often in the geographical sense
as something that exists to be filled or to be used, 
but no space is empty. (H. Lefebvre)”

I become aware of the space inside myself. My wish to fill it with beauty, here. My wish to fill it with someone else’s beauty. 

I breathe into the space inside me, and I remember that it is not empty. I count what it contains: 

Heart, lungs, intestines, liver.

Scent of lavender, cascading Hildegard of Bingen chant melody, warm crust of bread. Alchemical elements transmuting into gold. 

Thousands of words I have swallowed and spit back out. Old World forests. My interpreter ancestor who spoke out. Green hills of live oak sloping down to the Bay. 

Sweet rivers and salt oceans, my arms cradling my children, my mother’s arms cradling me.

Across the room, the children have moved on: swinging their jackets, stepping too close to the “Please do not touch” printed on the floor, crouching down to peer at a glowing blue river, their eyes open wide.

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