Hurricane Maria approaches a belly-button illuminating a mixed race woman's pregnant belly in this projection map of a NASA public domain photograph shot from space. Examining the conflicting man-made and climate-created catastrophes that impact procreative people, the Resident Alien series of Linea Negra photographs process the role structural violence plays in manufacturing stigmas with public domain photography. Expanding access to hi resolution images from space reveals the US government's resource ethics in contrast to the arresting portrayal of melanated people within and beyond the military's race or space wars. Maria Pandemia Mundial (Catherina de Liberty City) diptych offers a critical perspective and global gravity for the projected, internalized government image onto a pregnant mother whose covid mask covered face gazes impatiently back at the viewer from within a hurricane tarp shelter.The portrait of Catherina Ortiz from Liberty City was photographed during a Mama Spa Botanica workshop in the artist's studio at the height of the 2020 pandemic as she prepares for hurricane season on April 27, 2020 in Miami while Catherina was 8 months pregnant. Both artist and participant were front line families during the pandemic, navigating the heightened political, medical and climate risks for latine mixed race, mixed status families in a politically volatile state.Mama Spa Botanica workshop offers full spectrum cultural medicine to restore dignity and divinity to unvanquished fertile families. Participants build agency while documenting the conflicting climate and reproductive health crisis in America with vibrant carnival traditions, mummification rituals, matriarchal architecture retablos to celebrate solidarity traditions in botanicas or domestic interiors where it is safer for melanated people to create or procreate in America. Linea Negra photographs, Mother Mold monument fertility effigies, Flora Aura carnival crests, Double Consciousness Infinity Mirrors and immersive Foliage Obscura Retablo installations are made in collaboration with climate or reproductive health leaders and their LGBTQIA+BIPOC neighbors. Hosted by botanicas, doulas, griots, santeras, herbalists, historians, and matriarchs, the interdisciplinary workshop delivers critical resources and ancient indigenous rituals to transgress the texture and complexion of the American Castas system. Strengthening biological and biographical kinship by preserving Ancestral Intelligence, the project spans archival practices ranging from verbal, altar, retablo and tactile traditions to cultivate safe habitats for LGBTQIA+BIPOC fertile folks.The Linea Negra series photographs (2008-present) documents the inception of gender, power and race structures from slogans, slang, maxims and "old wives tales" to internalized, institutional violence. Beginning with the artist's infertility diagnosis in 2007, the works are conceived from the hemispheric melanin line appearing during gestation (most prominent in women of color) as a biological pieta. A Linea Negra is the first biographical mark on the procreative body and the first sign of our creative humanity.Resident Alien is the US government’s designation of immigrants who pass a "substantial presence" test on the path to citizenship. Complicating the government’s space race with inhumane immigration policies, the image distorts and reflects our nation’s treatment of “anchor babies” and their mixed status families with scintillating distraction. The abstract process the government engages to deflect attention from the black hole of human rights abuses by ICE, highlights its technological capacity for denial.
- Subject Matter: Pregnant Figure
- Created: April 27, 2020
- Collections: Linea Negra photographs