No Es Sencillo

OLINDA SILVANO AND CORDELIA SÁNCHEZ (SOI NOMA)
COMMISSIONED AND EDITED BY SARA GREAVU, ANDREA FRANCKE, AND GIULIANA VIDARTE
TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH BY MARÍA VIGNAU LORÍA

Sara Greavu: The gap or blindspot we wanted to speak to in this article is not unique to The Funambulist, but is a recurring issue that has come up again and again in discussions with my friend, Andrea Francke. Here, it stemmed from an incident when I shared an article from the magazine with her, which prompted another instalment in this ongoing conversation about the ways in which Latin American history, culture, and experience are flattened and generalized by texts produced in a Global North context. As always, I was grateful for and humbled by Andrea’s generous criticality in her response. When asked to suggest a “corrective” piece for this issue, I thought immediately of this conversation, and asked if she would be willing to elaborate on this point. Instead, she worked with curator Giuliana Vidarte and artists Olinda Silvano and Cordelia Sánchez of SOI NOMA to embody a different way of working.

Andrea Francke: Perhaps it is inevitable that institutions in the Global North, which hold unequal power in knowledge-making and distribution, repeat colonial structures, even when well-meaning. It’s hard to escape the conditions of where thinking happens. I’m also part of that system, so this critique also includes me. Years ago, in Peru, I was speaking with the daughter of an influential Peruvian intellectual about how he would discuss having made a choice. He could either produce knowledge that is legible and intended for a Global North audience, or he could work in Peru on projects that made sense and intervene in that context. He was aware that you can’t have it both ways, and that it is not only a social and political choice, but also a personal career choice. The refusal of Global North legibility is a choice.

Sara and I wanted to find a way to produce and circulate something that claimed a different type of space, that generated different relations of production. It was hard because the structure itself is not a good fit. I approached Giuliana Vidarte, who came up with the format and organized the conversation. Since the point is to map and situate the thinking, then in terms of authorship, Giuliana is more central than us. She raised the point that whenever Cordelia and Olinda, or anyone in the SOI NOMA collective, speak about their work, it is quickly limited to contextualizing and making it legible. It’s trapped in the eternal loop of producing legibility by appealing to specific codes that have been proved effective and seductive to an international art-world context. Giuliana suggested, what if we asked them completely different questions? What if we talked about their experiences travelling? What if instead of making themselves legible, they made the structures that host them and distribute their work visible? What if voices from the Global South were doing the analysis instead of producing testimony that is then analysed in the Global North?

OLINDA SILVANO: It is an honor for us to tell our story. Right? Because we go through things and sometimes, there are also stories behind that big mural.

CORDELIA SÁNCHEZ: Talking about stories or art is very profound and these are very beautiful topics, beautiful stories, but also sad stories. As Indigenous women, we have a different culture, different customs, and different languages, right? But we still understand each other.

OS: Some people are so interested, so interested, and they travel to meet us there, to be there with us. So it’s a wonderful journey. I was also a little sad while travelling. But the important thing is to represent your country or your people or your Nation. With your wonderful art that comes from the mind, that comes from memory, from being ourselves, from our feet to our heads. What our ancestors taught us, our grandmothers from thousands of years ago. To feel that our grandmothers are present with us. Each piece of art is unique, and each woman inspires with her own inspiration. Every woman has her own strokes. Every woman has her own stories. Every person. Sometimes we can’t express ourselves like that because we’re shy, but we can express ourselves through art, right? That we were submissive women before, and now we’re flying. Now we feel freedom, the freedom to fly like a hummingbird.