Uprooted Dreams is a work of art designed in the form of workshop production; it brings people together from three distinct communities: Austin’s Latino immigrant community, the craft-making community from Arrazola, Oaxaca, Mexico, and Austin’s Art Community. Nineteen members of Austin’s immigrant community–guided by Master

Artesanos, Ranulfo Sergio Ibañes and Lucia Luria Sosa, experts in the traditional Mexican craft tradition of alebrije–created carved and painted wooden sculptures.

These pieces embodied artistic themes of uprootedness as they spoke to the transformation of people, land, and community. For the artist, artesanos, participants, and audience, the process and product of Uprooted Dreams provides an ongoing platform on which to build respect, equality, solidarity, and dignified ways of making art and creating community.

The sound performance deals with a layering of memories, as it is through memory that one addresses the loss or distortion of the disappearing cultural traditional crafts in Mexico; in Pulso y Martillo, this loss and distortion is specifically related to the copper production ritual in Santa Clara Del Cobre, Michoacan. Some layers of the performance also address archetypes within each audience member’s personal experience–here related to immigrants, student and art communities, musical ritual, the history of craft, the history of the labor, its struggles, and exploitation. Essential to the work are also the symbolic memories triggered by individual moments when performers create gestures that are understood through the visual or sonic aesthetics, and those pre-metaphorical experiences generated by the audience’s visual experience in order to create a narrative.
Delivered in group choreography and individual gestures, Pulso y Martillo’s variations include full strong circular hammer strokes, hammer sweeps, hammer rests, bounce strokes, hammer brushes, and quiet pulses.

Claiming territory through the discovery and production of sound and sensation, vital immigrant participation is central to the inherent meaning of Pulso y Martillo.

Events:
Pulso y Martillo, the Sweeney Art Gallery, February 5 – April 2:
Mexican craft made of copper from Santa Clara del Cobre

New Image Sculpture, McNay Art Museum, February 17:
Mexican Craft made from pine/sotol leaves by the Tarahumaras of Copper

Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, April 7th:
Mexican craft made from pine/sotol leaves by the Tarahumaras of Copper Cayon

Texas Biennial, April 16th-Austin and April 30th-Houston
Various Mexican craft made from chaquira, black clay, pine/sotol leaves and copper

Historically businesses have protected their interests by incorporating and pooling resources and gaining protection against financial and legal risks.
FLOREZCA uses a branded multinational business as a creative platform to address issues of globalization, and its affects on labor, rights, and international communities.

Conceptually, FLOREZCA challenges notions of “incorporation” even as it makes us of a traditional corporate structure: absorbing financial risk, distributing dividends, and allocating cultural, economic and legal resources to its members. Historically, corporations seek profit above all else; FLOREZCA is instead founded on humanitarian principles seeking primarily to empower its members through cultural and social inclusivity; our corporation offers fair wages, necessary legal protection, skills training, and creative production.

By producing art in community, FLOREZCA exemplifies a holistic unity in human interaction and experience, connecting bodies and places in artistic production while promoting respectful, equal, and dignified ways of making and being.

FLOREZCA progressively engages the dynamic global environment by protecting the real sources of our culture–people and their communities.

For more information on FLOREZCA please visit www.florezcacreativa.com

On view January 16- February 18, 2010 at Box 13 Artspace in Houston, Texas

Margarita Cabrera with Esmeralda Perez, Teresa Sanchez Garay, Doris Lindo, Nora Oviedo, Carlos Calles, Miguel DeLuna, Maria Lopez, Candelaria Cabrera y Delfina Medina.

SPACE IN BETWEEN is a collaborative project in the form of a sewing and embroidery workshop at Houston’s Box 13 Gallery.

The title is inspired by the term Nepantla, which in the Nahuatl Aztec Language references “the space in the middle” as it relates to marginalized cultures and their resistance strategies of survival. Gloria Anzaldua, scholar, activist, and author of Borderlands/La Frontera, views Nepantla as a reference to living in the borderlands or crossroads, and the process of creating alternative spaces in which to live, function, or create.

Cabrera’s work continues an ongoing exploration of the defining economic relationship between the United States and Mexico. She is interested in creating an aesthetic platform for political and social-cultural consciousness as a means of survival.

The project is structured in three parts:

First, given the history of the BOX13 space as a SINGER sewing machine showroom, sewing school and repair/factory, a community workshop will produce numerous sculptural replicas of desert plants that are indigenous to the Southwestern United States, the most frequently traveled route of immigration into the U.S. Sewn together out of border patrol uniforms, and planted in traditional Mexican terra cotta pots, these sculptural plants render the role of border patrol officers as the protagonists in the American landscape.

A second focus is the attempt to re-introduce and/or maintain an ethnic connection with vital cultural Mexican craft traditions. Members of migrating communities from Mexico living in the Houston Community will be invited to work with traditional sewing and embroidery techniques from Los Tenangos, Hidalgo, Mexico. Traditionally in mural form, the embroidery from Tenango de Doria Hidalgo, employs colorful narrative renditions reflecting popular culture, traditional rituals and myths of the Otomi indigenous communities. Sometimes appropriating and other times reclaiming these techniques, immigrant workers will use it to relay their own personal border crossing experience. This embroidered narrative element will be combined in creative ways with the desert plants.

Thirdly, the production areas are divided into four parts consisting of a cutting area, a sewing area, an embroidery area, and a construction area.

The work being produced and gradually displayed is primarily made from Border Patrol uniforms resulting in sculptures that represent desert plants that embody personal immigrant stories. The workers sharing in this labor and its rewards (Cabrera is sharing proceeds from sales with the craftsmen/women) are coming to this project from *The Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center.

All areas are open to interested volunteers (children welcome in the company of their parents) Mondays and Wednesdays from 10- 3 and Saturday 1-5.

Curated by Eleanor L Williams and coordinated by Elizabeth Murray.

*The Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center is a safe space for low-wage workers to gather and learn about their rights in the workplace, organize to improve conditions at work, network for various social services, file complaints with government agencies, meet with attorneys and connect with community allies. The Center also mobilizes the religious community on issues and campaigns to improve wages, benefits and working conditions for low-wage workers.

*****

ESPACIO ENTRE CULTURAS
Margarita Cabrera, Esmeralda Perez, Teresa Sanchez, Doris Lindo, Nora Oviedo, Carlos Calles, Miguel DeLuna, Maria Lopez, Candelaria Cabrera, y Delfina Medina.

Espacio entre culturas es un proyecto de colaboracion ,que toma la forma de un taller de Costura y Bordado en la Galeria Box 13 de Houston. El titulo esta inspirado por la palabra Nepantla que en el idioma Nahuatl de los Aztecas, quiere decir: “el espacio entre dos”, especialmente referido a -culturas marginadas y a su resistencia a las estrategias de sobrevivencia-’ Gloria Anzaldua, educadora, activista y autora de “La Frontera/Borderlands, ve, en la palabra Nepantla, una referencia a vivir en las fronteras o cruces de caminos; y al proceso de crear espacios alternos en los cuales se pueda vivir, funcionar y crear.

El trabajo de Margarita Cabrera expande la continua exploracion de como definir la relacion social y economica entre Estados Unidos y Mexico. Ella esta interesada en crear una plataforma aestetica para crear una conciencia -politica y socio-cultural -como un medio de fucion entre estas dos culturas.

El proyecto esta estructurado en 3 areas. La primera dada la historia de Box 13 como un espacio de exibicion para la maquina de Coser Singer, una Escuela de Costureras y un Taller de Reparacion, el proyecto “Espacio Entre Culturas” producira numerosas esculturas de plantas del desierto abundantes en el suroeste de los Estados Unidos, que es ademas la ruta mas frecuentemente utilizada por los imigrantes hacia Estados Unidos. Utilizando las telas procedentes de los uniformes de la Policia Fronteriza y presentadas en macetas de terracota original de Mexico, estas esculturas de plantas del desierto, representan la presencia de los oficiales de la patrulla fronteriza como protagonistas de este fenomeno de la realidad Americana.

La segunda se enfoca en el intento de re-introducir o mantener un contacto etnico con la tradicion de artesania que son vitales en la cultura Mexicana. Miembros de diferentes comunidades indigenas que hoy son parte de la comunidad de Houston, seran invitados a trabajar utilizando tecnicas de coser y bordar originales de Tenango, Hidalgo, Mexico. En forma de murales ,la tradicion de Tenango de Doria Hidalgo, emplea un estilo narrativo que utiliza cientos de colores, que reflejan la cultura popular, los rituales y los mitos de las comunidades Otomies de la region central de Mexico. Estos artesanos usaran estas tecnicas mezcladas con su estilo propio o bien utilizandola en forma pura, para describir sus eperiencias personales durante el proceso de emigraion. Este estilo de bordado narativo sera plasmado creativamente en el diseno de esas esculturas.

La tercera area es la produccion, que quedara dividida en cuatro areas. La pimera de corte, la segunda de coser, otra de bordar, y finalmente una de formacion.

Los artesanos que participan en este proyecto han sido referidos por el “Houston Interfaith Workers Justice Center”. Todas las areas de trabajo estan abiertas a voluntarios (hijos de participantes con sus padres son bienvenidos). Los horarios son de Lunes y Miercoles de 10am-3pm y Sabados de 1pm-5pm.

El Centro de Justicia al Trabajador es una organizacion que garantiza seguridad a todo tipo de trabajadores y donde se les enseña a entender los derechos y obligaciones en su trabajo. Se les ofrece asesoria y apollo legal para mejorar sus condiciones laborales, obtener servicios y presenta quejas.

The work is titled “Cultural Prosthetics.” Similar to medical prosthetics, which are artificial extensions that replace missing body parts typically lost by trauma, congenital parts or replacing defective body parts, “Cultural Prosthetics” metaphorically provide enhancement of motor control in the form of physical and emotional cultural equilibrium.

Art workers are real workers with real jobs who are part of this country’s real economy in the same way that these students and many immigrants participate. In addition to providing jobs, the workshops will also introduce a traditional cultural craft connecting immigrants and migrants to their native country through a cultural/ethnic art making experience.

With regard to the craft of basketry as a way to make the prosthetics, I will be working with the Tarahumara Indians of Copper Canyon, Mexico. They are a large indigenous group which navigates between their traditional Raramuri lifestyle and the other which integrates more with the Christian Mexican culture. Much like immigrants in this country, they live in a space in between cultures where they fight hard to be able to continue their traditional crafts, preserve their cultural roots and dignity as they work to provide for their families.

Shedding light on the impact of emigration and tourism on craft making traditions in Mexico, a life-size replica of a tractor [and farming tools] in clay, instead of a tree, embodies the Olmec theme that explains the origins of life, representing a means of survival for immigrant agricultural workers in the US.