Gariela Muñoz
"Earth Tattoo #1- Dalila"
2021
C-print
Courtesy the artist.

Muñoz’s mother sits alone in a desert, rooting herself to place. On her back are the intertwined portraits of herself and her granddaughter, Uma. This portrait represents three generations unbroken by circumstance, rooted in each other, claiming space in the contested borderlands landscape.

To make what Muñoz refers to as Earth Tattoo portraits, she combines earth from the Chihuahuan desert with her own breast milk, using printmaking techniques to print directly onto the skin of the women she photographs, alluding to the deep bonds between mother and child, body and land.

The use of breast milk was sparked by the artist’s own personal journey breastfeeding her daughter, a process that was contradictorily beautiful and physically painful, similar to the ways in which women nurture communities and environments, giving of themselves until it hurts. In the work is an intimate examination of the parallel existence between the two forms of nurturing, both relegated to being an invisible and solitary effort, since societal taboos dictate a woman may be able to breastfeed her child but should do so out of sight, and therefore out of mind.