Salt: Reconnecting and Disconnecting

Official Cornell University College of Architecture, Art and Planning Newsletter: https://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/exhibition/savannah-flores-reconnecting-and-disconnecting

Much of the artwork in this show dabbles with materiality, origin, place, and maternal lineage. I have a very complicated family history, with my maternal grandmother being Cherokee (but utterly unaware of its practices and culture for the sake of self-preservation) and my maternal grandfather being Asian-Hispanic (I just discovered he was a Bracero). I grew up in a female-led household, and my grandmother and mother spoke Mexican Spanish. I grew up with the customs of my grandfather's Mexican heritage, passed on through religion (Catholicism) and ritual to my mother. My childhood was filled with Hispanic influences, pop culture, and tradition, deeply tied to my show's color choices and materials. All the handmade paper has South American and Latin American plants. The natural dyes (the deep reds and pinks) throughout the show were derived from the cochineal bug originating in Oaxaca, Mexico. Cochineal symbolizes more than a color; it is a site of indigenous resistance. The practice of using cochineal has decreased, but its culture lives on through me. Cochineal originates in indigenous pre-colonial rituals and codexes, which is the pivotal reason it's used throughout my show (in the paper, fabric, and pieces). I attempt to connect myself to a site and a place I can resist or where I become the center of (Bell Hooks).

Then, the material only plays half a portion of the show, as the intaglio and fresco pieces depicted a tense relationship between mother, daughters, and grandmothers. The fabric knots and handmade paper symbolize connection but tension in maternal relationships. This give-and-take dynamic between mothers and daughters is constantly referred back to, as one cannot live without the other, and they share a special connection. Still, sometimes, it can suffocate and harm one without the other knowing. Thus, how colonial powers have ultimately impacted structures of control and indigenous thinking of the maternal and paternal are vastly different from the one I know today. This is a show filled with resilience, pain, suffering, emotional trauma, generational trauma, femineity, indignity, and resistance.