THE OBJECTIVE He talks to the artist Ayana V. Jackson, the curator Marisol Rodríguez and Yaison F. García, director of the space Afro Cultural Center, On the sample. The exhibition, entitled Know yourself: a member of the fantasy (Know yourself: ghost member), is organized in collaboration with Photospaña and is the main project of the XXVIII edition of the festival, dedicated to claiming the role of photography as a tool of dissent, resistance and change agent.
QUESTION.- The project takes the name of the Latin registration that presides over the historic building of the National Museum of Anthropology, Know yourself (Know yourself), recorded on the porch by which Alfonso XII accessed the museum in its inauguration, a century and a half ago …
Answer. Marisol Rodríguez– Yes, it is the Latin registration that welcomes the museum, as a temple of the enlightened anthropocentrism. The artist internalizes the maxim and proposes a replica in the present time. Its proposal, the result of the section of presences Afro and Afromestizas in the state anthropological and ethnographic collections, includes several unpublished works created in order to establish a dialogue, horizontal and direct with an institution in the decolonial process.
P.- on series Archival Impulse (Archival impulse) presented in 2016, the attention of the international artistic community caught. His title came from the critical theories of Hal Foster, which appeal to the need to confront the file to create new knowledge systems …
R.- Ayana V. Jackson- during the last 15 years I have been working from files, I reconstextualize to tell new stories. If I did not, we would never see images of black and mestizo women raised in arms, or in a battleFor example. The series You Forgot to See me Comingalso presents slightly ironic images, it is a way of digging in the past and saying: if you had not reduced me to this phenotype, to this skin color, you would have been able to see the dynamic aspects of who I am, or you could see the power that is contained in our blood and in our experiences …
“I work with the notion of the ghost member, with the feeling of those who have been amputated and still feel pain in what is no longer”
Q. It is a descendant of the well -known abolitionist William Still, his work is also promoted by a multigenerational concern, towards the experiences of African communities in the Americas …
R.- A.V.J.- I work with the notion of the ghost member, with the feeling of those who have been amputated and still feel pain in what is no longer. That is what it means to be disconnected from history itself as an African descendant. when I go to the Costa Chica de Oaxaca, Oa Ghana, I am looking for my ghost member and when I immerse myself in this type of historical collections as well. This exploration also reviews the role of photography in the perpetuation of hierarchies, strata and social imbalances.
Q.- What female referents do we see present in the sample?
R. Marisol Rodríguez- In the series developed during its residence in the Alturas Foundation In 2023, he explores, for example, the role of mestizo and Afro -descendant figures such as Mary Fields and Selika Lazevski. Both from disparate geographies and social media, managed to distinguish and impose themselves despite racial prejudices. Another of its referents was Carmen Robles, an Afro -restizer crowns that I fight in the Zapatista army during the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Through his equestrian portrait, Jackson faces the predominant racial and sexist representations in Mexican history to subvert them.
Q.- Syncretism is a key topic throughout Jackson’s work …
R. Yaison F. García- From the dynamism of several of its series, it connects us with the syncretism between African spiritualities and native peoples. This approach also invites you to interrogate other syncretisms, such as in Spain, with artistic manifestations such as Fandango and Flamenco. In recent years, investigations that indicate the African roots of both traditions have emerged. Spain is no exception in this issue. Historical figures such as Juan de Apouble They are invisible members of a society that is still perceived as racially homogeneous and that renounce their black -African roots.
Q.- The nonverbal transmission of messages or visual codes in Afro-descendant traditions, also shows them from textiles, masks, music or dance …
R.- A. V. J- Because historically they have always been resistance tools. I have worked with fabrics from Western Africa and Mexican rebozos, which were embroidered with a merger of symbols Mixtecs and African iconographies, including reasons adinkra, idxque and Angolan. Another wardrobe presents what I call a path of tears of the black semins. While historically the original “path of tears” makes specific reference to the forced displacement of North American indigenous populations, I directed attention to a less known parallel history, related to The black seminolas. Many enslaved black people who escaped found refuge in seminolas communities, giving rise to mestizo descendants who fought with the indigenous people. When they were necessarily transferred to the reserves, many of them were again enslaved, which led them to flee south, to Mexico, where slavery had already been abolished. His descendants, known as the “pets”, finally established themselves at birth in Coahuila, Mexico.
“In dialogue with each New African and African presence, the artist reconstructs a fragmented body”
Q.- What proposes the work that speaks of the “mirror therapy”?
R.- The video was made in collaboration with the Afro -Ricostarricense videographer Richard Rose. Jackson embodies an anonymous woman who seeks a sense of unattainable belonging. In dialogue with each African and African presence, the artist reconstructs a fragmented body in an attempt to heal her ghost member, exploring in turn, the gap between identity and perception. The objective of the artist, is not the representative representation or identity search, but to affirm that there are ghost members scattered throughout the world, amputated presences of a main body that remains in Africaand that some of the displaced people seek tireless to rebuild that body and restore the ties that history tried to break.
Q.- In the exhibition the photograph coexists with the work of Vicente Albán, which are part of the collections of the Museum of America, or with paintings of the National Museum of Anthropology, belonging to the only series of castes made in the Viceroyalty of Peru, attributed to the workshop of Cristobal Lozano. When is the interest in the painting of caste?
R.- Yaison F. García- The painting of caste is a genre that arises in the Viceroyalty of New Spain in the 18th century, whose purpose was to represent the miscegenation that arose from the union of the Spaniards, the original peoples and the aforementioned African people. Jackson’s interest in this pictorial genre emerged during his first visits to Mexico, knowing his functionality linked to the classification and stratification of identity. From this contact, it takes different elements provided and introduces them in their photographs, such as mirrors, which evidences the tension between self -image and the gaze imposed by society. His powerful portraits, released from statism and stereotypes of the historical referent, They open a space to rethink photography and turn it into a critical resistance instrument against the constructions of race, gender and class that still have us.
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