MEDIUM: Digital Illustration/Instagram Post
DESCRIPTION:
The media project uses decolonial feminism frameworks to present on reclaiming one’s body through the ancestral deity from El Salvador called the Sigüanaba. Bodies tell stories, which is why the project unpacks the deity as a study of how generational waves of women decode the enchantment of viewing bodies as shameful. Sigüanaba is interpreted differently by three women from three generations and distinct transnational contexts, but each story intersects in their journey of body reclamation. This is achieved by intersecting mixed media art and research to share the stories on an Instagram account, @muxerhermosa_muxerhorrible. The social media platform allows for the bridging of diverse struggles, triumphs, and experiences to provide solutions on how to build, maintain, and advocate for a healthy relationship with one’s body.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
The submission is a combination of a research paper and creative project, produced in a Senior Capstone course during the spring of 2019 for the Department of Humanities & Communication (HCOM) at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB). My undergraduate career became the place to explore discourses in relation to critical decolonial feminism studies. The senior capstone course provided the opportunity to begin forming my identity as an artist-scholar. The formation of this identity has led to a continuation of producing coherent media projects while pursuing graduate school in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. As a graduate student, I am currently passionate about preserving the history of female deities in the American continent by using comics and fictional oral history. Working with interdisciplinary methods thereby places my work in a constant state of evolution. First, it aimed to be daring, edgy, and loquacious, but now it stems from a consciousness of self-representation, pain, and passion. However, my style is consecutive because it uses bold and vibrant colors to portray personal depictions of women’s experience and form. Through my artwork and scholarship, I hope to interconnect women’s rights and issues.
