Author(s): Veronica Diaz
Published: 2015
Type: M.E.S. Papers/Theses
FOREWORD
The decolonization path of transformation started with self-knowledge and self-recovery as an auto-ethnographic journey through my art practice. This was a personal and collective transformation through my art practice. My focus was on healing ancestral and migration traumas, bringing my indigenous legacy into my artistic and scholarly endeavor. Through my MES, I had the opportunity to have a dialogue between my identities and my being, and it manifested as two projects, the methodological process as Cocoons and the workshop application series as Fluye.
The methodological project, Cocoons, encompasses an auto-ethnographic exploration through multiple art disciplines such as poetry, performance, photography and painting that emerged as my Tlacuila Nepantlera art practice. The goal of my practice is to experiment, decolonize, and liberate, and has three main transformational phases (cocoons): 1) radical love, 2) red path, and 3) divine feminine. Integrated into the practice and phases are the power of the erotic, indigenous Nahua and Cora philosophy, and my own mestiza history. Part of Cocoons involved personal transformations in various capacities at: artist residencies with Watah Theatre Trans-diciplinary Artist Program (TAP) in Toronto and in the Centre for Art and Good Living in Longo Mai, Costa Rica; participation in Pocha Nostra's Rebel Acts and Aluna Theatre; internships in ExpresARTE and Jumblies Theatre; and working with the artists in Perez Zeledon, Costa Rica on the Fluye project.
The Fluye project consists of a workshop series in eight communities in Costa Rica. Its purpose was for participants to explore themselves using transdisciplinary practices, enhance the use of intuition in the creative process, explore connections to rivers, and to build a network of artists and artisans in an effort to create a community vision of the Biological Corridor's fine arts and crafts. The workshops also delved into the collaborative Tlacuila Nepantlera art practice and in collective transformations.
Through these two projects Cocoons and Fluye I was able to fulfill what I had aimed to study. It was an honour to have the opportunity to dwell in introspection and commit to this ancestral journey.