solo presentation by artist Coralina Rodriguez Meyer
Santuarios Gestion Desmadres I Motherless Sanctuaries for Governing Riots Linea Negra photographs & Mother Mold monuments from the Mama Spa Botanica
Curated by Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Katherine Adams, and Anna Mikaela Ekstrand
Presented on the occasion of and in partnership with The Immigrant Artist Biennial
September 22 through November 18, 2023
Opening Reception Friday, September 22 from 6-8p
Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space (Artists Alliance Inc.)
Inside Essex Market, 88 Essex St #21, New York, NY 10002
Viewable 24/7 in Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space storefront Santuarios Gestion Desmadres— offers a streetside sanctuary of a Foliage Obscura retablo of works from artist Coralina Rodriguez Meyer’s Mama Spa Botanica project. Mother Mold monument pregnant body casts and “Double Consciousness Infinity Mirror (Doula Nicky Dawkins)”; a Linea Negra photograph within a domestic environment is framed by tropical foliage mirroring the viewer’s reflection infinitely within and beyond streetlamp surveillance. Nesting viewers and voyeurs within a verdant Foliage Obscura retablo reflecting the neon rituals, fertile flora, vulnerable fauna and endangered activists vibrating in Latinx and Caribbean diaspora immigrant communities, the urban scale installation documents griot/ doula Nicky Dawkins work on the front lines of the democratic fertility and climate crisis in the American tropics with its conflicting mother nature and man made causes. Through Coralina Rodriguez Meyer’s ongoing multimedia movement in documentary sculpture, photography, and community organizing Q+BIPOC ancestral life cycle traditions and doulas deliver lifesaving reproductive healthcare and matriarchal interdependence celebrations.
In 2007 Rodriguez Meyer received an infertility diagnosis. Forced to reconcile her late indigenous mother’s birth to her in a car in the Florida Everglades swamp, and her experiences with public health system failures to women of color- Meyer hosted her first Mama Spa Botanica workshop to build agency and self care as an extension of community care with her first Linea Negra photo shoot with 2 pregnant diasporic women. Since then the artist has held dozens of workshops in collaboration with neighbors, reproductive justice leaders and environmental advocates such as griot/doula Nicky Dawkins (Period Market foundation). Ranging from members of medical, academic, activism, herbalism, curandero farming, community health, and environmental justice fields as participants, the workshops offer dignity training and cultural medicine sanctuaries to her low income, immigrant, LGBTQIA+ BIPOC diaspora. she explains, and also birthed a daughter. Celebrating matriarchal sovereignty within the vibrant domestic interiors where it is safer for black and indigenous mixed race people to give birth in America than in hospitals, the artist harnesses “ethnic ethics” resources as a collaborative, critical tool for resisting assimilation and embracing self preservation. Offering full spectrum aesthetic care from Indigenous American practices of mummification from the Andes to Creole fertility rituals of the Caribbean- the Linea Negra photographs, Mother Mold monuments and Foliage Obscura retablos aims to increase visibility of structural violence in reproductive and environmental health by translating effigy statues into equity statutes.
Ecchoing surveillance aesthetics heightened during the pandemic , a photograph of Meyer’s long-term collaborator Griot/ Doula Nicky Dawkins is infinitely reflected eight months pregnant, continuing her advocacy work and delivering babies while the Corona virus pandemic was crowning in Miami in 2021. Double Consciousness Infinity Mirror (Doula Nicky Dawkins) highlights the pressure on immigrant communities to assimilate within American Caste system hierarchies of race, class, status and gender. A devastating effect of colorism, their wellness centered hometown Miami has the highest infant and maternal mortality rates amongst developed cities. “The series examines the inception of stigmas, and where the American Castas system is conceived. Illuminating the texture and complexion of our ranking system, the documentary sculpture and photography process embodied in cultural microclimates- exposes hierarchies beginning with skin color, appearing in the “Linea Negra,” (as the series is called). A medical term for a darkened hemispheric line appearing during gestation on pregnant belly skin with higher melanin content- the series title “refers to the aesthetic tradition of the pieta… the first mark of our humanity on the body, made in collaboration with Mother and fetus” says the artist. In Meyers’s work the linea nigra melanin line, is a representation of where “structural violence in American mythology is conceived” beyond skin color, nurtured through culture, biological or biographical family construction to determine class passing. Depicting matriarchal resistance and a sanctuary from assimilation in the photograph, Jamaican Griot & Doula Nicky Dawkins provides lifesaving urgent care, patient political and hospital advocacy for pregnant and home delivering women of color. Despite being surveilled as a threat by most hospital administrators and state legislators, Doula Nicky’s model citizen work amidst a reproductive health crisis, are an apparition within the hallowed, holographic layers of photographic depth to celebrate resistance in the face of cultural or environmental erasure.
2000 years before the carbon date of Egyptian mummies, Andean Chinchorros culture embalmed the remains of desiccated Huacas mummies to cohabitate with birthing, living and afterlife traditions. Celebrating belly cast vernacular sculpture forms popular in American reproductive pop culture, the works cultivate a kinship between current self-care rituals, (moisturizing, rubbing, preserving, embalming and tinctures) and ancient mummification. Preceding Death Masks during the French Revolution, Mother Molds and Mummification is resurfacing today as belly casting: a documentary sculpture of the pregnant body whose popularity and accessibility repairs bonds between birthing people and their kin. Coralina’s two Mother Mold monumental sculptures bring pregnant female bodies as effigy figures to the fore, recalling fertility figures, mummies (the oldest art form) and its contemporary spin-off. To create the Mother Mold monuments, the artist casts intimate waste, environmental ephemera with a slurry of domestic construction materials into a silicone and plaster Mother Mold of her Mama Spa Botanica participants. A compound of refuse materials such as discarded medical latex gloves, birth control pill & abortion pill packaging, human hair, finger nail clippings, nail salon glitter, children’s clothing as textile backing, palm fronds, funerary flowers, coral collected after tropical storms and other utilitarian objects- both warn and adorn their user. Like the death masks made by French Revolutionaries—head casts of guillotined aristocrats—paraded around the streets to prove the possibility of democracy, Coralina’s Mother Molds serve as political retablos to preserve and reconstruct matriarchal interdependence structures.
Concurrently with Rodriguez Meyer’s TIAB solo presentation, her work with African fertility effigies in the Jackson Collection archives are presented in conjunction with her contemporary American indigenous heirlooms on view at University of Maryland Art Gallery September 13 – December 1 2023.
Santuarios Gestion Desmadres is part of The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023: Contact Zone held across venues in New York and New Jersey from September 2023 to January 2024. Find the full program here.
ARTIST BIO
Born in a car in an Everglades swamp, and raised Tinkuy (queer) between a rural US Southern immigrant neighborhood and the Caribbean, Coralina Rodriguez Meyer is a mixed-race indigenous Andinx (Colombian Muisca/Peruvian Inca), Brooklyn and Miami-based Quipucamayoc artist, architect, activist. Spanning 20 years and 30 countries, Coralina has collaborated with reproductive justice and climate leaders working across disciplines including architecture, activism, archives, education, documentary sculpture and moving images. She studied painting at MICA and anthropology at Hopkins and holds a BFA in Architecture from Parsons and MFA in Combined Media from Hunter College. Rodriguez Meyer received awards from National Latino Arts & Culture, Oolite Arts, VSArts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NYFA, South Arts, Miami Dade, and Young Arts. They have been a resident of Mildred’s Lane and the Bronx Museum AIM program. She was a research fellow at Museo Machu Picchu Peru, Syracuse University Florence, Artist’s Institute NYC and Universitat Der Kunst Berlin studying Nazi Utopian urban design with Hito Steyerl. Coralina taught architecture and urban design at Florida International University prior to completing a recent artist & scholar in residence program at Miami Dade College where her work in the University of Miami Kislak Americas collection culminated in her 2023 Voladores solo show at MDC Koubek Memorial Center. Rodriguez Meyer has exhibited at Queens Museum, Bronx Museum, Perez Art Museum Miami, Smithsonian Museum, Kunsthaus Brethanien Berlin, Colonial Florida Cultural Heritage Museum, CAC New Orleans, and Bronx River Art Center among others. Coralina’s current Lenguas Espinas solo show at University of Maryland (Sept 13- Dec 1 2023) combines 2 decades of her Mother Mold monuments, Linea Negra photographs & Foliage Obscura paintings from the Mama Spa Botanica with 2 centuries of African Effigy Figures from the Jackson collection archives.
HOST PARTNER
Artists Alliance Inc. is dedicated to launching, strengthening, and advancing the vision of emerging and underrepresented artists and curators through fully-funded residencies, paid exhibition opportunities, and commissioned projects. Through three initiatives—Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, LES Studio Program, Public Works—AAI aims to widen the audience for contemporary art and encourage public dialogue using art as a catalyst.
ORGANIZER
The Immigrant Artist Biennial presents immigrant artists through various formats, facilitating a platform of support for projects by often overlooked and silenced voices. Founded in 2019 by its artistic director Ukrainian-born, NYC-based artist Katya Grokhovsky TIAB is fiscally sponsored by New York Foundation for the Arts and funded through its host partners, grants, sponsorships, donations, and its Patron Circle.
For press inquiries please contact annamikaela.ekstrand@gmail.com or +1 720 254 2997.
Download Press Release here
Exhibition Images here
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