LLANO EN LLAMAS es una serie de obras textiles que marcan el proceso psicologico que acontece tras un abuso sexual, usando como vehiculo y metafora los textos clásicos del maestro Juan Rulfo en su cuentario El Llano en Llamas.
En México, el 41% de mujeres y disidencias mayores a los 15 años, han sufrido al menos un caso de violencia sexual (ENDIREH). En muchos casos el acoso sucede en casa, o con alguien cercano a la vida cotidiana y familiar. Para Salazar, el abuso sexual y repetido de su infancia sucedio siempre en Guadalajara, de donde se identifican sus raices chilangas, y donde paso muchos veranos e inviernos jugando en el polvo y la tierra.
El vínculo con Rulfo surge por emergencia: El Llano como metáfora del cuerpo en llamas. Ese llano: el lugar originario de mi ser y de mi pérdida.
Nace como un grito de desesperación, de rabia. Un luto por el cuerpo mismo: por la autonomía, y por la patria.
Las obras de Llano en Llamas nos presentan relieves y texturas desérticas: yermas y áridas. Donde la esperanza es poca, y el camino es largo. “Aquí todo va de mal en peor.”
Los textos de Rulfo, re-apropiados para este contexto, nacen nuevos: y cantan nuevos cantos que, igual a los que recordamos, nos confrontan con un personaje que es víctima de su propia forma de vivir el sufrimiento y su inhabilidad para soltar el rencor. Mientras navega un trayecto infinito de dolor y desesperación, lucha para conservar la esperanza:
“Uno ha creído a veces, en medio de este camino sin orillas, que nada habría después; que no se podría encontrar nada al otro lado, al final de esta llanura rajada de grietas y de arroyos secos. Pero si, hay algo.”
Llano en Llamas
Plain in Flames
Materials: Screen printed canvas, artist body, ink
Size: 6’x6’, 6’x 5.5’
Year: 2019
Azulejos
Tiles
Screen printed tiles, artist body, ink, stretcher bars.
45’’x70’’
2019
En Llamas
In Flames
Hand dyed wool double cloth woven on a 14 harness floor loom, artist body, ink.
35” x 66”
2019
Desde chiquitas ya eran rezongonas.
They talked back from the time they were little.
Screen printed canvas, artist body, ink, Page 26 of Juan Rulfo’s short story “It's because we’re so poor” from his collection “El Llano en Llamas” or “The Plain in Flames”
Size: 40’’x70’’
Year: 2019
“Nadie te hará daño nunca, hijo. Estoy aquí para protegerte.
Por eso nací antes que tú y mis huesos se endurecieron antes que los tuyos.”
Oía su voz, su propia voz, saliendo despacio de su boca.
La sentía sonar como una cosa falsa y sin sentido.
“No one will ever hurt you, son. I’m here to protect you. That’s why I was born before you and my bones hardened before yours did.”
He heard his voice, his own voice, slowly emerging from his mouth. He felt it sounding like something false, without meaning.
Hand dyed wool cloth woven on an 8 harness floor loom, artist body, body of the artist’s mother, ink, wood hanging.
7.6’ x 8’
2019
Uno ha creído a veces, en medio de este camino sin orillas, que nada habría después; que no se podría encontrar nada al otro lado, al final de esta llanura rajada de grietas y de arroyos secos. Pero si, hay algo.
One may think sometimes a midst this boundless road, that nothing would come after; nothing on the other side; at the end of this plain full of cracks and dried up streams. But yes, there is something.
Hand woven textile on a Jacquard Tc2 Loom
2019
Este blanco terregal endurecido, donde nada se mueve y por donde uno camina como reculando.
This white hardened soil, where nothing moves and where you walk as if you are losing ground.
Cotton brocade cloth woven on an 8 shaft floor loom, artist body, ink, text taken from Juan Rulfo’s short story “They Have Given Us The Land” from his collection “El Llano en Llamas” or “The Plain in Flames”
30’’x 60’’
2019
Este blanco terregal endurecido (2)
This white hardened soil (2)
Sewing thread cloth woven on an 8 shaft floor loom, artist body, ink
30’’x 60’’
2019
Quíza entonces se volvió malo, o quíza ya era de nacimiento.
Maybe he turned bad then, or maybe he was that way from birth.
Materials: Black cotton and wool cloth woven on a 10 harness floor loom, artist body, ink, sand, text taken from Juan Rulfo’s short story “Remember” from his collection “El Llano en Llamas” or “The Plain in Flames”
Size: 50’’ x 50’’
Year: 2020
No tenía ganas de nada, solo de vivir.
He didn’t feel like doing anything. Just to live.
Cotton and Hand dyed wool, brocade cloth woven on an 8 harness floor loom, artist body, ink, sand, text taken from Juan Rulfo’s short story “Tell them not to kill me!” from his collection “El Llano en Llamas” or “The Plain in Flames”
40’’x70’’
2019
Aquí todo va de mal en peor.
Here everything goes from bad to worse
Materials: Hand dyed wool double cloth woven on a 14 harness floor loom, artist body, ink. Text taken from Juan Rulfo’s short story “It is Because We are So Poor” from his collection “El Llano en Llamas” or “The Plain in Flames”
Size: 35” x 30”
Year: 2019
Desde chiquitas ya eran rezongonas 2
They talked back from the time they were little.
Screen printed linen, artist body, ink, Page 26 of Juan Rulfo’s short story “It's because we’re so poor” from his collection “El Llano en Llamas” or “The Plain in Flames”
Size: 6’x7.5’
Year: 2019
El Llano en Llamas (2)
Plain in Flames (2)
Materials: Screen printed canvas, artist body, ink
Size: 6’x7.5’
Year: 2019
Mi mamá no sabe por qué Dios la ha castigado tanto al darle unas hijas de ese modo, cuando en su familia, desde su abuela para acá, nunca ha habido gente mala.
My mother doesn’t know why God has punished her by giving her such daughters, since in her family, from my grandmother on, there have never been bad people.
Screen printed canvas, artist body, ink, text taken from Juan Rulfo’s short story “It's because we’re so poor” from his collection “El Llano en Llamas” or “The Plain in Flames”
30”x30”
The work in Llano en Llamas revolves around Juan Rulfo’s EL llano en llamas in relation to my experience as a woman of color, and as a survivor of child sexual abuse. I utilize text from different short stories in the book, and appropriate it into my own fibers practice as a way to insert myself and my experience into its history and culture.
Juan Rulfo is one of the most important Mexican writers of the 20th century. He is from the state of Jalisco and lived most of his adult life in its capital, Guadalajara, which is where my father's family is from. He wrote about the conditions of post-revolutionary Mexico and the culture of secluded areas in Jalisco, many of which were left in poverty after the war. The reality he described in his writing shaped my father's upbringing. I was raised in a biracial middle class family in Mexico City, which could not be further away from what Rulfo describes. But his stories encapsulate the culture of my father and his family, and the particular brand of Machismo that is prevalent in that part of the country, and which has permeated my life, despite my physical distance from the region.
Rulfo’s work gets re-shaped and reinterpreted to be the story of my physicality and of my experience. Using the text itself, and distorted prints made with my own body, the work becomes a series of vignettes that depict the process of grieving one's own body and innocence. Taking something as masculine and iconic as Rulfo’s text and weaving it into cloth is a gesture of queering and re-claiming the text, along with its great significance to that part of the country, and therefore, my own family heritage. From the title of the book, El llano en Llamas (The Plain in Flames), which serves as a metaphor for my own body; to the areas of text I have chosen to place in this new context, and marinate in new meanings, the cloth that emerges is an amalgam of all of my Experience as a woman, as a survivor, and as a person of mixed race.