|
|
|
ARTIST STATEMENT
I want to acknowledge that we are gathering on the traditional territory of many nations
including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee,
and the Wendat peoples which is also the home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis
peoples. As a settler, I am very privileged to live and work on this land, which has become a
second home and place of refuge for myself and my family.
I am a Salvadoran-Canadian Visual Artist currently residing in Oakville, Ontario. As a refugee,
my journey to Canada in the summer of 1985 was not planned under peaceful circumstances. I
grew up in a tight-knit community in the interior valley of El Salvador on the outskirts of the
Cerro Cacahuatique — a lush canopy of hills and mountains — in a city called Ciudad Barrios.
My childhood memories are filled with the euphoria of play and precious time with my dad
where he tended to our coffee farm. The last volcano here was 10,000 years ago, predating the
Olmecs and the Indigenous peoples who lived before them. The fertility of the soil was no doubt
imbued with thousands of years of volcanic ash mixed in the earth, which in turn fed the plant
life and vegetation that sustained us. I could never know it at that time, but this innate
understanding of my connection to the earth and the natural world that nourished us — and what
it meant to be torn from it — would later feed my artistic practice in the same way the soil fed
my father’s crops.
Euphoria and play would make way for fear and violence in an ensuing civil war (1980 - 1992)
between leftist guerrillas and the right-wing paramilitary government which, with military
training and billions of dollars in financial backing from the U.S. (under the Reagan
administration), would lead to the deaths of over 75,000 civilians. This history informs my art
practice which investigates a personal and collective memory of violence, oppression, death,
migration, immigration, and displacement. My drawings, paintings, photography and
three-dimensional works transform the human body, landscape, and familiar objects, into
ambiguous, unsettling evidence of loss, pain, violence, and displacement.
Greenbelt - National Capital Commission
I find inspiration and joy in the beauty and magnificence presented by Canadian and Central
American landscapes, and my interaction with the Niagara Escarpments, the iconic Bruce Trail,
and other forests, is sensory in nature. In the case of COFFEE & PINE, I center sight and smell
to connect us all to its wonders.
I acknowledge the wonderful work of Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) the founder of the Green
Belt Movement and the Wangari Maathai Institute which helps inform my work.
Ontario's Greenbelt is the largest peri-urban protected area in the world, comprising 20,000
hectares of green space including farms, forests and wetlands. Created in the 1950s to protect the
rural land bordering the Capital from urban sprawl, it has since become the largest publicly
owned greenbelt in the world.
In my artwork, I aim to initiate discussions on the connections between politics, economics, and
climate change to human mobility and its environmental effects. I wish to motivate others to
establish deeper connections with nature, scientifically proven to enhance well-being, by
emphasizing the significance of conserving and safeguarding natural ecosystems. The video
vignettes, photographic images, and installations included in my COFFEE & PINE project reveal
my passion for communicating the beauty found in nature. Being outdoors momentarily
unburdens me from life’s challenges. When contemplating the landscapes, skies, and bodies of
water, I am immersed in sound and silence, a myriad of scents, and the tactility of flora and fauna
sustained by the soil underfoot. It all brings me back to my childhood and allows me to focus on
spirit, body and mind — the self.
COFFEE & PINE examines how cultural identity can shape our perception and portrayal of
nature and how this can also affect our lives. The installation includes an open suitcase filled
with pinecones, black-and-white photos, and coffee beans. A monitor behind it streams video of
the case bobbing in frigid waters, the visual of the subject tossed against rocks representing the
perilous journey that I and other families experienced as displaced migrant refugees — a story of
resilience across oceans and borders. These migrations, forced or otherwise, are undertaken by
refugees and new immigrants despite the plentiful barriers — language, cultural difference, class
— to easily settling into this new land. As such, the suitcase also represents emotional healing.
Open and exposed to the world around it for everyone to see, full of pinecones and memories
that tell my story, with a hidden space that one can choose to expose or not.
My pine plank piece embodies a small representation of forest, adorned by moss and dried plant
life from the woods. At the top centre of the pine plank, there is a pocket-sized black-and-white
photo of my younger sibling — Rene Antonio — standing at the old coffee farm in El Salvador.
Although our refugee status was granted on the basis of what the Canadian government
acknowledged was a very real threat of persecution experienced by random victims of war, they
saw fit to deny my brother access to the safety of its borders because he was born with Down
syndrome. This second persecution of my family was discriminatory in nature, driven by a 1980s
policy of barring entry to anyone whose health issues could be deemed burdensome to the state.
This plank piece is a shrine to his memory and commemorates the devastating impact of forced
separation and relocation from land and family. Although years of advocacy and changing
attitudes removed specific barriers to people with disabilities, ableist policies still exist and
create further discrimination towards families with loved ones with disabilities, expanding the
fractures in already broken families.
My unique perspective as an artist is deeply rooted in my lived experience, where the scent of
pine trees and coffee triggers a nostalgic journey back to the old coffee farm. My research into
ways to create multisensory and interactive environments were influenced by the work of Caro
Verbeek, an art historian specializing in smell-synaesthesia. I was compelled to share this
immersive sensory experience with viewers of this exhibit as soon as they entered the gallery. To
do so, I employed pine oil blends applied over the moss/pine slabs and pinecones, as well as a
mocha-latte fragrance oil over the coffee beans and black & white photographs. In this way, the
viewer becomes a participant in the exhibition, much in the same way humans become part of
the natural world simply by respectfully engaging with it.
However, humanity has chosen disrespect for nature for far too long. As a result, global climate
change is now triggering more internal and international migration and displacement. While
climate change may not yet be the main reason people move, it is increasingly becoming part of
the story. For instance, more than 1 million Somalis were displaced by drought in 2022,
primarily within Somalia. Other times, impacts are more indirect, as it can be hard to trace how
rising global temperatures threaten jobs and livelihoods that compel migration.
My ancestral home in El Salvador is surrounded by water-rich countries, and yet it faces the
worst polluted water supplies in Latin America. In the past 50 years, all but around five percent
of the land has suffered from deforestation. The apathy of the Salvadoran people has allowed for
purposeful government and corporate corruption to negatively affect their environment and
well-being. The human populations of Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica
are concentrated within the ecoregion — Tropical and Sub-Tropical Central American dry forests
important to the biome — and expanding human influence, including extensive logging for
agricultural purposes such as cattle ranching or firewood, have strong negative impacts on the
area. In rural Honduras and Guatemala, these impacts have prompted people to move to urban
areas, the United States, or other places around the globe. I am interested in sharing lessons
learned from projects in Colombia. They are leading the path to sustainability, environmental
justice, and energy transition in Latin America by taking significant steps to protect cultural
biodiversity and adapt to climate change as discussed in the work of the artist Carolina Caycedo.
Many/most could benefit from this knowledge.
COFFEE & PINE is an immersive multimedia installation that I hope will resonate with people
who experience it in communities across Ontario, in the same way experiencing the province’s
Greenbelt resonates with me. As an eco-feminist and artist engaged with climate justice and
preservation, I also wish to create space for women in Canada and Central America to have more
say in how to protect the environment, through leadership roles that protect and preserve both the
environment and gender equality. Earth is our mother. Who better to lead us back to respect for
her than women?
I want to acknowledge that we are gathering on the traditional territory of many nations
including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee,
and the Wendat peoples which is also the home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis
peoples. As a settler, I am very privileged to live and work on this land, which has become a
second home and place of refuge for myself and my family.
I am a Salvadoran-Canadian Visual Artist currently residing in Oakville, Ontario. As a refugee,
my journey to Canada in the summer of 1985 was not planned under peaceful circumstances. I
grew up in a tight-knit community in the interior valley of El Salvador on the outskirts of the
Cerro Cacahuatique — a lush canopy of hills and mountains — in a city called Ciudad Barrios.
My childhood memories are filled with the euphoria of play and precious time with my dad
where he tended to our coffee farm. The last volcano here was 10,000 years ago, predating the
Olmecs and the Indigenous peoples who lived before them. The fertility of the soil was no doubt
imbued with thousands of years of volcanic ash mixed in the earth, which in turn fed the plant
life and vegetation that sustained us. I could never know it at that time, but this innate
understanding of my connection to the earth and the natural world that nourished us — and what
it meant to be torn from it — would later feed my artistic practice in the same way the soil fed
my father’s crops.
Euphoria and play would make way for fear and violence in an ensuing civil war (1980 - 1992)
between leftist guerrillas and the right-wing paramilitary government which, with military
training and billions of dollars in financial backing from the U.S. (under the Reagan
administration), would lead to the deaths of over 75,000 civilians. This history informs my art
practice which investigates a personal and collective memory of violence, oppression, death,
migration, immigration, and displacement. My drawings, paintings, photography and
three-dimensional works transform the human body, landscape, and familiar objects, into
ambiguous, unsettling evidence of loss, pain, violence, and displacement.
Greenbelt - National Capital Commission
I find inspiration and joy in the beauty and magnificence presented by Canadian and Central
American landscapes, and my interaction with the Niagara Escarpments, the iconic Bruce Trail,
and other forests, is sensory in nature. In the case of COFFEE & PINE, I center sight and smell
to connect us all to its wonders.
I acknowledge the wonderful work of Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) the founder of the Green
Belt Movement and the Wangari Maathai Institute which helps inform my work.
Ontario's Greenbelt is the largest peri-urban protected area in the world, comprising 20,000
hectares of green space including farms, forests and wetlands. Created in the 1950s to protect the
rural land bordering the Capital from urban sprawl, it has since become the largest publicly
owned greenbelt in the world.
In my artwork, I aim to initiate discussions on the connections between politics, economics, and
climate change to human mobility and its environmental effects. I wish to motivate others to
establish deeper connections with nature, scientifically proven to enhance well-being, by
emphasizing the significance of conserving and safeguarding natural ecosystems. The video
vignettes, photographic images, and installations included in my COFFEE & PINE project reveal
my passion for communicating the beauty found in nature. Being outdoors momentarily
unburdens me from life’s challenges. When contemplating the landscapes, skies, and bodies of
water, I am immersed in sound and silence, a myriad of scents, and the tactility of flora and fauna
sustained by the soil underfoot. It all brings me back to my childhood and allows me to focus on
spirit, body and mind — the self.
COFFEE & PINE examines how cultural identity can shape our perception and portrayal of
nature and how this can also affect our lives. The installation includes an open suitcase filled
with pinecones, black-and-white photos, and coffee beans. A monitor behind it streams video of
the case bobbing in frigid waters, the visual of the subject tossed against rocks representing the
perilous journey that I and other families experienced as displaced migrant refugees — a story of
resilience across oceans and borders. These migrations, forced or otherwise, are undertaken by
refugees and new immigrants despite the plentiful barriers — language, cultural difference, class
— to easily settling into this new land. As such, the suitcase also represents emotional healing.
Open and exposed to the world around it for everyone to see, full of pinecones and memories
that tell my story, with a hidden space that one can choose to expose or not.
My pine plank piece embodies a small representation of forest, adorned by moss and dried plant
life from the woods. At the top centre of the pine plank, there is a pocket-sized black-and-white
photo of my younger sibling — Rene Antonio — standing at the old coffee farm in El Salvador.
Although our refugee status was granted on the basis of what the Canadian government
acknowledged was a very real threat of persecution experienced by random victims of war, they
saw fit to deny my brother access to the safety of its borders because he was born with Down
syndrome. This second persecution of my family was discriminatory in nature, driven by a 1980s
policy of barring entry to anyone whose health issues could be deemed burdensome to the state.
This plank piece is a shrine to his memory and commemorates the devastating impact of forced
separation and relocation from land and family. Although years of advocacy and changing
attitudes removed specific barriers to people with disabilities, ableist policies still exist and
create further discrimination towards families with loved ones with disabilities, expanding the
fractures in already broken families.
My unique perspective as an artist is deeply rooted in my lived experience, where the scent of
pine trees and coffee triggers a nostalgic journey back to the old coffee farm. My research into
ways to create multisensory and interactive environments were influenced by the work of Caro
Verbeek, an art historian specializing in smell-synaesthesia. I was compelled to share this
immersive sensory experience with viewers of this exhibit as soon as they entered the gallery. To
do so, I employed pine oil blends applied over the moss/pine slabs and pinecones, as well as a
mocha-latte fragrance oil over the coffee beans and black & white photographs. In this way, the
viewer becomes a participant in the exhibition, much in the same way humans become part of
the natural world simply by respectfully engaging with it.
However, humanity has chosen disrespect for nature for far too long. As a result, global climate
change is now triggering more internal and international migration and displacement. While
climate change may not yet be the main reason people move, it is increasingly becoming part of
the story. For instance, more than 1 million Somalis were displaced by drought in 2022,
primarily within Somalia. Other times, impacts are more indirect, as it can be hard to trace how
rising global temperatures threaten jobs and livelihoods that compel migration.
My ancestral home in El Salvador is surrounded by water-rich countries, and yet it faces the
worst polluted water supplies in Latin America. In the past 50 years, all but around five percent
of the land has suffered from deforestation. The apathy of the Salvadoran people has allowed for
purposeful government and corporate corruption to negatively affect their environment and
well-being. The human populations of Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica
are concentrated within the ecoregion — Tropical and Sub-Tropical Central American dry forests
important to the biome — and expanding human influence, including extensive logging for
agricultural purposes such as cattle ranching or firewood, have strong negative impacts on the
area. In rural Honduras and Guatemala, these impacts have prompted people to move to urban
areas, the United States, or other places around the globe. I am interested in sharing lessons
learned from projects in Colombia. They are leading the path to sustainability, environmental
justice, and energy transition in Latin America by taking significant steps to protect cultural
biodiversity and adapt to climate change as discussed in the work of the artist Carolina Caycedo.
Many/most could benefit from this knowledge.
COFFEE & PINE is an immersive multimedia installation that I hope will resonate with people
who experience it in communities across Ontario, in the same way experiencing the province’s
Greenbelt resonates with me. As an eco-feminist and artist engaged with climate justice and
preservation, I also wish to create space for women in Canada and Central America to have more
say in how to protect the environment, through leadership roles that protect and preserve both the
environment and gender equality. Earth is our mother. Who better to lead us back to respect for
her than women?