Integral Education: The CIIS Blog

En Foco/In Focus: Samantha Box

By COLLEEN McGRUDER

En Foco/In Focus, opened Jan. 22, 2013, at CIIS, with 56 images by 48 artists, selected from the permanent collection of En Foco, a New York-based non-profit dedicated to cultural diversity in photography. The below interview most recent in a series conducted by CIIS students and emerging photographers, Jessica Juliao and Colleen McGruder.

Colleen had a chance to speak with artist Samantha Box about her work with homeless LGBTQ youth of color in New York City.

“You know, if I ever taught a photo class,” says photographer Samantha Box as we begin to wrap up our interview, “I would say go photograph the things you are absolutely obsessed with and the minute taking pictures of it becomes chore you should stop.”

Boxʼs statement lingers in the air before we both laugh in agreement.

Samantha Box found her photographic voice in 2005 when she began documenting the lives of LGBTQ homeless youth in New York City. Her documentary series, recently re-titled "The Invisible Project," intimately chronicles the lives of LGBTQ homeless youth, mostly of color.

Colleen McGruder: How did you get involved with En Foco?

Samantha Box: I took my first photography class 14 years ago at City College in New York, during a leave of absence from my biology studies at Cornell. I met and became friends with Marisol Diaz, who upon graduating went to work for En Foco. So thatʼs originally how I became aware of them. In 2009 I applied for a work fellowship at En Foco and was accepted. En Foco was the first organization to recognize The Invisible Project. This was especially significant for me because many of the photographers I really admired were involved in the organization; since first becoming aware of it, I’d thought, “Maybe one day I can become an En Foco photographer.”

CM: So how did your project become known as The Invisible Project?

SB: At the time I submitted the work to En Foco, it was called Nobody to Anybody. This referenced a quote by Mother Teresa about being seen: “One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.” To me this idea pinpoints the feeling of the young people I shoot. I switched it later to The Invisible Project because it works on a couple different levels. To most people moving along the street these kids do not look homeless. They look just like regular young people going about their lives. In this way they are invisible; a part of their lives is kept in the shadows. They exist in this intersection of race, class and gender, invisible to the media and to social policy makers. The Invisible Project speaks to their marginalization.

CM: A significant portion of The Invisible Project is done with LGBTQ youth in a homeless shelter in New York. How did this come about?

SB: A good chunk of my early work (on this project) was from a shelter on the West Side but since the director left three years ago, I am broadening the scope of the project. In some ways I now de-emphasize the shelter to focus more on the outside experience, especially on those youth living on the streets. But it’s still true that I meet most of the young people at the shelter; they come in with their friends and the shelter is kind of a hub.

CM: Whether inside or outside the shelter, often times you are photographing people whose lives are very different from your own. How do you make this entry?

SB: In documentary photography there are things that are problematic. There are certain visual stereotypes that are perpetuated. There is a certain type of portrayal of people of color...and there are really irritating stereotypes of the LGBTQ community, specifically of trans women.

CM: Yes I see this often. Photographers sometimes take an anthropological approach to entering others’ lives, making images that mostly reflect their own expectations.

SB: One of the reasons people photograph in a stereotypical way is because it is easy. So you go to another country, or spend time in a community outside your own and see the people involved as the other because you have not taken the time to look at the fact that we are all people. If someone came into my house to photograph me I would want to be represented with honesty but also with respect.

If you are photographing someone like Donald Trump there is a way to photograph him that can actually show you who Donald Trump is, beyond the scandalous public life. It’s important be able to look at the photos you make of him and think, okay, I get it. I understand who this nuanced person is.

My subjects’ lives arenʼt scandalous but to some people what’s happening may be shocking. They may not understand it. But again, if someone was photographing my life I would not want to be reduced to that shock; I would want them to tell who I am in a way that is respectful and yet honest.

In the beginning I really tried to make pictures that drove home the issues for viewers. Then I realized, life is the in-between moments, when you are just sitting, contemplating things, just existing. So when I am photographing these young people I look for the moments when they are just being themselves, just living. After two years of working on this project I started to feel like I finally had the tools to talk about what I saw happening with queer young people.

CM: That is what I think is so great about your work. Your subjects’ lives may be different from that of the viewer but your photographs feel like an invitation to share a moment with them that speaks to a larger human experience.

SB: This is the thing, when you photograph in stereotypes you do not get to find out what is really going on in someoneʼs head. You have to watch them long enough, get to know a person long enough to see who they really are.

CM: Can you tell us the story behind the photograph in the En Foco collection?

SB: That photograph was taken in the first couple of months of the project. I was taking classes at ICP (International Center for Photography) during the day and I would go to the shelter in the evenings. Misty was one of the people I met. We warmed up to each other very quickly while everyone else was just getting used to me being there. And I was asking myself, “Okay, so how do I do this?” Missy had set up her bed for the night, a little pallet—a nest really—and she wanted me to photograph it. She had these two stuffed animals just set against her pillows, and to me, this was so interesting. The young people all had these talismans to create the idea of home; hers were these two animals. So I began taking a photograph of the stuffed animals, then the pillows, then her bag of clothes. When she saw me doing this she asked me to take a picture of her and she arranged herself in that way. I only took like three pictures so I really lucked out.

CM: In what ways has this project enhanced your life?

SB: It has impacted my life in ways that I find hard to explain. Mainly it has allowed me to clarify who I am, how I exist in the world, how other people like me exist in the world and how I talk about those things. Iʼve been out for a while, but through this project I have access to a community of queer people of color. Finding like-minded people was a wonderful reward for doing this project.

CM: What are the misconceptions?

SB: Many believe that homeless LGBTQ youth are being kicked out of their communities and that is why they are homeless. Really it is more about communities of color being so unstable that a child can get arrested, a child gets put in foster care, mothers abandon their children for new relationships. . .There are just so many reasons why these kids are on the streets; it’s much more complicated that the idea that communities of color are kicking out their young people. This project gave me the confidence to finally talk about these intersections and the intersections in my own life.

When people take photos for the sake of taking them, I think, “Maybe you shouldnʼt...maybe you should photograph only the things you really want to photograph. Maybe you should try becoming obsessed with it.”

—Samantha Box

Wisdom 2.0: Purpose and Presence in the Digital Age

By SOREN GORDHAMER, founder and host of Wisdom 2.0. Soren works with individuals and groups on living with greater mindfulness and purpose in our technology-rich age. He is the author of "Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Secrets for the Creative and Constantly Connected."

Learn more about his lecture on Feb. 13th, Wisdom 2.0: Purpose and Presence in the Digital Age with Soren Gordhamer, hosted by CIIS Public Programs & Performances.

Our lives have changed significantly in recent years. Today, there is not only a massive amount of content to consume at all hours, but it comes at an increasing speed. In fact, if there is one thing that has most changed in our culture in recent years, it is likely this: never before has our attention been pulled in so many different directions. There is little question that the external technologies will advance and grow; the real question is whether the internal technologies, such as wisdom and compassion, will grow along with them?

The question for most of us is not, "should or should we not use modern technologies?" The real conversation is more about partnership. It is about how to connect to one another through technology -- and in person -- purposefully, in ways that are beneficial to our own well-being, effective for our work, and useful to the world. It is one that engages the best external qualities of our age, including social media, along with the best of our internal qualities to move toward a more open and transparent world.

There is no way to go back ... yet there is also no way to unconsciously move forward. In fact, the great wisdom teachers and technology leaders often share a similar focus in the power of attention and mindfulness. This the invitation of our time: to live more deeply connected to ourselves while harnessing the amazing tools and technologies of our time. 

What Is Art?

By SAMANTHA BLANCHARD

This post was written as an assignment for Professor Cindy Shearer’s CIA 7091, Interdisciplinary Arts Workshop. As part of a community of artists working across art perspectives, students in this course get the chance to present their work and teach each other about their art form(s), practice, lineage and influences, and are challenged to inquire into the interdisciplinary arts as well as forms new to them.

I am an Artist because I create. I believe everyone has a creative source that fuels them, but they don't necessarily call it art... although it is art. Creation = Art. How can it not be? When we write, paint, photograph, film, sing, dance or speak about trees and flowers, are we saying that our product is art but nature's product is not? Art is in the breath of a newborn, the pan of a chef, the scissors of a hair stylist, the stillness of death. Life = Art and Art is life. As a neo-feminist pagan witch I try to see beauty in everyday things.  I love to view the choreography of birds and people crossing the street. I could make a dance theater piece about many aspects of everyday life; however I choose to make art about women's issues. I feel if I made art about everything I see I would be overwhelmed with possibilities. I need to be somewhat in control of what I choose to frame in my world as an Artist!   

"Eclipse Dance Theater 1995 - 2000" on Facebook >>

I am informed by my belief that everyone can dance, sing, act, draw, paint, but they choose not to because they are drawn to another medium; a medium that we "Artists" probably would not consider a medium. Do we think we are special? Gifted? Yes I do. As an Artist, I have an overactive ego and I need to believe I can do a singular thing, like colliding dance and theater, better than anyone else. I guess it’s my fatalistic perspective that this rises from; I believe that we are all here to do one thing, and that one thing will change the world; a kind of divination if you will. 

Creation for me happens to be in the collision of things.  I like to collide mediums and personalities and facilitate the collaboration of resolution/revolution into a performance piece.  I also like to violently edit to strip the material down to its essence.  So if I seem abrupt, I am embodying the truth of my experience.

An interview with the artistic director of Eclipse Dance Theater, Samantha Blanchard, about the making of her first one woman show, Renee >>

My art form is Dance-Theater and that began in 1995 with the collision of sound and movement, but has progressed or processed through dance and theater/text, free writing to collaboration for conflict resolution, to consciously pushing boundaries to extend or expand the artist's reach. Right now I am interested in working with rock and roll musicians, actors, all genres of dancers, and singers.

"Eclipse Dance Theater 2004 - 2009" on Facebook >>

What's brewing in my pot next is a piece on suicide inspired by the recent romantic meme of Mozart writing himself to death. On more investigation there are theories that he was a hypochondriac and took an overdose of antimony trying to rid himself of an imaginary illness. However, his wife held that he was riddled with guilt over his father's death and that is what ultimately killed him.  So that pushes me to ask the question "what would make you kill yourself?"  

This brings me full circle back to I am an Artist because I create. Is it also art to destroy? To destroy, of all things, yourself? I am struggling with the duality of things and starting to wonder if we truly mimic nature and if art is life then art must also be death. I am interested in the fact that when we create no one asks why. Why was that baby born? Why did I make such a beautiful painting? Why are the mountains so beautiful? But when we destroy, or die there are many questions. Why now? Why me? Why him and not me? And this is where we forget to see art as death. We want to cut death out of the cycle of life and hopefully that will make us happy. 

My journey for the next year and a half at CIIS is to continue to embrace the shadow and give it a voice so that we cannot consciously continue to deny the inevitable and in this way bring some integration and healing to the community.

I'm An Artist

By ELLIOT WEISS

This post was written as an assignment for Professor Cindy Shearer’s CIA 7091, Interdisciplinary Arts Workshop. As part of a community of artists working across art perspectives, students in this course get the chance to present their work and teach each other about their art form(s), practice, lineage and influences, and are challenged to inquire into the interdisciplinary arts as well as forms new to them.

It has taken me 57 years to understand and envision calling myself an artist. The word artist has always had particular definition in my mind. In my mind an artist is someone that draws or paints. I inherited this definition from the culture, values, and morals of the neighborhood where I was raised. A very good example of the mindset of my neighborhood is represented in a movie written by a performance artist and actor, Chazz Palmenteri (A Bronx Tale). The neighborhood that I was raised in was located in the Northeast section of the Bronx, New York, 15 minutes away from Yankee Stadium.

 

It was working class, controlled by organized crime. Italian, Irish, and Jewish people all mixed together, however, living apart. Fighting between the Jews (which I am) and Irish occurred more than altercations with Italians. The mindset and values of my household and the community wouldn’t allow for the possibility of promoting a person with artistic capabilities. Most people with artistic capabilities were viewed by the community as strange or weird. However, an artist that had a talent for sports was exalted.

Why didn’t I gravitate towards my artistry? Well, I had a hard time gravitating towards anything because I was obese, heading quickly to morbid obesity. The main stimulus in my mind was not art, it was food; at a young age I was addicted to sugar and junk food. Also, in my family one was either college material or worker material. I was not considered college material by my parents and was urged to find employment that coincided with the worker mentality. Postal worker, sanitation, truck driver and other employment in the “blue collar” fields were the possibilities assigned by my parents.  To consider the arts as a career, well a famous saying goes, “fugghedaboutit."

Thinking back I was always who I’m becoming now; however, no one knew it…including me to a great extent.

The possibility of promoting the talents within me wasn’t a thought at all. At a young age (8 years old) I displayed a penchant for acting/performing. I remember fondly acting in plays in school and summer camps. Being obese, I was very depressed and these experiences provided me moments of happiness. I felt “normal” on stage, the only place I’ve ever felt normal to this day. I didn’t realize as a child that this artistry was a part of me, a part as big and valid as the part of someone that wants to become a lawyer or doctor.

But what I’ve learned from so many years of performing is the word artist and what it means to me is basic and simple. By calling myself an artist I am thinking with a healthy mindset. It’s a healthy mindset because I’m already an artist. I just needed to realize that and work with my talents. Pursuing my talents that I’ve been blessed/born with: that is really the real me. I remember being asked in an acting workshop, “Why do you act?” My response was: because I need to. Thinking back, the artistry in me is the major reason for my restorative health project. My health was wrecked due to morbid obesity. What kept me alive when at age 14 I was teetering on the edge of killing myself was a thought: if I kill myself (with food) I’ll never be able to act/perform or listen to music again. This was a light in a very dark existence; I’m alive because of this thought. Being an artist has an inside-out effect. I know that to be the artist I want to be necessitates my focus and dedication to be in the best mental, physical, and spiritual health that I can be. Artistry and being an artist is therapeutic on the inside and a lot of fun on the outside. I’m an artist and this is what it means to me.

What Are You Trying to Say?

By CREATRIX TIARA

This post was written as an assignment for Professor Cindy Shearer’s CIA 7091, Interdisciplinary Arts Workshop. As part of a community of artists working across art perspectives, students in this course get the chance to present their work and teach each other about their art form(s), practice, lineage and influences, and are challenged to inquire into the interdisciplinary arts as well as forms new to them.

When I tell people about being an artist, or that I am working on an MFA, the first question I receive is, "What sort of art do you do?" Usually this means, "What is your medium?" and often their elaboration reveals their limited ideas about what art entails: "Painting? Drawing? Watercolors or acrylics?" Even other artists and art-savvy people focus on the medium as though that is the only way I am meant to identify: "I am a performance artist" or "I am a writer."

To me, that feels like the wrong question to ask. Stating the media I use does not convey much about my artistic practice. It's just as vague as asking me which languages I speak, and assuming that says anything about what I say with that language, as though I only communicate with that one language.

Then again, much as people don't tend to expect my use of multiple artforms, they don't often expect me to be multilingual either.

From a very young age I have been fluent in more than one language, and am also very proficient in various regional creoles, such as Singlish (Singaporean English) and Manglish (Malaysian English). Growing up in multicultural societies where English is not the primary language, though its importance as an international business language was emphasized, meant most of us often code-switched while communicating. In the same conversation, often the same sentence, I would braid in English, Malay, Bengali, sometimes a smattering of words from various Chinese or Indian languages, and often Singlish or Manglish slang words - and be perfectly understood. The mix of languages became a larger super-language for me, one that I felt best communicating in.

So it was quite a surprise for me when I played back videos from Indian TV shows, where the hosts often code-switched between Hindi, English, and other regional dialects, and many of my friends (often native Western-speakers) reacted with bafflement and confusion over the host’s patter. Even those who knew more than one language did not mix them up regularly while communicating: they picked the most useful language in that situation and stuck to it.

I understood then why people tended to be more curious about form than content: because the idea of switching between mediums, languages, tools in the same piece or space was unusual and unheard of.

Like languages, there are a couple of art forms I am more fluent in, forms I tend to gravitate to instinctively and hence have more experience with. I have been a life-long writer and recently embraced my love of the stage through performance art. And, like languages, there are a few forms I do not know much about, some I am rather self-conscious about and not confident in. I feel much the same way about Bengali (my family's mother tongue) as I do about painting or drawing. People expect me to know more than I actually do and often comment on my lack of skill to the point of making me reluctant to make use of those languages and forms.

However, to restrict me to just one form is like forcing me to choose only one language forever. Some prompts require this, and usually the prompt also tells me the requested content, creating useful artistic boundaries, e.g. submissions for themed poetry readings or acts for a burlesque cabaret. The main purpose of my artistic practice, though, is to express myself the best way I know how, which almost always involve more than one form, code-switching like I do with language. I've performed my poetry submission in costume and character; I've incorporated spoken word into my burlesque acts.

And sometimes, when the idea or emotion demands it, I delve into languages and forms I know little about - because they were the best ways to communicate. I have used painting and music to deal with body-related emotions. I have created short films to visually accompany written work. I have sung the words of others because they tap into what I want to say better than I sometimes can articulate.

I understand the importance of building fluency, whether in language or artform. It's why people take classes, read books, listen to audio instructionals. Yet one of the best ways to really learn a language is by immersion. Similarly, a lot of my artistic education has come about through immersion and experimentation.

The pertinent question for me is not, "What art forms do you work with?" It's, "What are you trying to say, and what's the best way to say it?” And sometimes the best word for what I want to say is in a language unusual to me.

Walking in Circles

By MAIA SCOTT

This post was written as an assignment for Professor Cindy Shearer’s CIA 7091, Interdisciplinary Arts Workshop. As part of a community of artists working across art perspectives, students in this course get the chance to present their work and teach each other about their art form(s), practice, lineage and influences, and are challenged to inquire into the interdisciplinary arts as well as forms new to them.

Some ten years ago, I accidentally discovered the joy of walking around in circles during a theater workshop.  Don’t worry.  Lots of people do it.  In the early nineties, walking labyrinths started to become a popular addendum to spiritual, communal, and holistic practices all over the United States and beyond.  Initially walked during private training retreats with the likes of Jeanne Houston, the labyrinth touched public fancy when San Francisco’s own Dr. Rev. Lauren Artress set one up at Grace Cathedral and started training facilitators.  Like a happy case of freckles, labyrinths continue to dot the continent with greater regularity, sweeping across the nation. (Visit the World Wide Labyrinth Locator to learn about labyrinths near you.)

Popular modern labyrinth design and lore weaves back through history from around 2000 BC.  As I stepped barefoot onto a painted canvas labyrinth during that first walk, I realized I was accepting a timeless gift.  Really, how often do people receive permission to touch a work of art, let alone walk all over one?  It takes a lot of love and patience to create today’s behemoth canvas masterworks.  The Freemasons of yesteryear chiseled labyrinths ripe with numerological mysticism into medieval sanctuary floors for pilgrims with a serious case of wanderlust.  Warp back another couple thousand years and trade goods on the isle of Knossos for coins featuring a labyrinth design.  Like good tea and yogic practices, walking the labyrinth is one of those old habits made new again.  Sometimes it’s a good thing when history repeats itself.

As an art maker, spirit seeker and forward thinker, the labyrinth is a valuable tool for my varied creative practices.  To start, I am set up for success as I traverse this path with no dead ends, spiraling to the center and back.  Like a vigorous bout of spring cleaning, I appreciate the invitation to empty mind-space of clutter making way for shiny new thoughts.  As a facilitator holding space for other walkers, I love the gentle choreography generated by the design on the floor leading people to move through space differently than may be usual.

I feel joyfully mischievous when I draw a big labyrinth on the beach and run away with a friend to witness from nearby as people discover it.  Whether the design is five inches or fifty feet in diameter, the process of creating a labyrinth can be a poignant experience in its own “rite”.  Drawing a Classical style labyrinth is deceptively easy to do.  If you’ve ever played “Connect the Dots” as a child, you can figure it out.  Any sort of tool will do for creating them.  Try digging a heel into the sand at the beach, chalking one in a parking lot, forming a pattern on a table out of toothpicks or pennies… and, yeah, pens and paper work nicely, too.  For example I designed and created the labyrinths pictured with this post.

The labyrinth remains my primary muse as I journey through my studies at CIIS.  I am fascinated by the opportunity to create art that, like the labyrinth, comes to life and becomes a multi-media experience affected by the people interacting with it.  I want to create works that inspire peace, pondering, play or whatever viewers need to experience at the moment.

This four-thousand year old swirly thing has taught me a lot over the years, quietly doling out wisdom as I become ready to learn.  The path looks like it will deposit me at the center right off.  Yet, I have to wander all the way out to the edge again to eventually reach the center.  How like life that is.  That doesn’t have to be a bad thing…During that first walk over ten years ago I learned to embrace the process of reaching my goals.  “The journey is the reward.”  Indeed it is.

Autumn Sun

By DANIELLE REYNOLDS

This post was written as an assignment for Professor Cindy Shearer’s CIA 7091, Interdisciplinary Arts Workshop. As part of a community of artists working across art perspectives, students in this course get the chance to present their work and teach each other about their art form(s), practice, lineage and influences, and are challenged to inquire into the interdisciplinary arts as well as forms new to them.

The autumn sun everywhere is unique to me. The air is comfortable with a touch of chill. When the fall rays hit my skin, I feel cleansed. It feels so warm, so nurturing and gentle. I never want to leave it. I never want to go in the shadow. I want to stay in its glow.

The fall sun is powerful and transformative. I get lost in the light. Autumn in itself has always seemed to me a season of surrender. The leaves gracefully fall down for a soft landing. The rains come down with a pitter-patter, washing the land. Animals gather and store up food for a long winter. Humans put on extra layers and spend more time indoors.

Personally, fall has often been an invitation for an inner surrender, too. And that's what I'm feeling—Letting go of the familiar and comfortable for a chance to be led through winter, with the hope that on the other side is a seedling, bursting forth from the fertile spring ground.

As I delve more into the Creative Inquiry program, I’m trying to remember that it does take a while for a seed to germinate, sprout, and become a mature plant.

While I struggle with what it means for me to be an artist—from understanding my aesthetic, experimenting with other mediums, and defining my values—my intention is to be the observer in this growing process, to be patient, and delight in the unfolding.

So, as I bask in the warm sun I remember that change is coming everywhere. But for that change there must be a stillness, an honest inquiry, and a will to grow from this surrender.

Because to grow, you just have to allow yourself to be rooted in your environment and to stay in the light.

Source Snapshot

By NINA RAMOS

This post was written as an assignment for Professor Cindy Shearer’s CIA 7091, Interdisciplinary Arts Workshop. As part of a community of artists working across art perspectives, students in this course get the chance to present their work and teach each other about their art form(s), practice, lineage and influences, and are challenged to inquire into the interdisciplinary arts as well as forms new to them.

I was recently asked to cull a list of sources that have served me as inspiration or enhanced my investigations as an image maker and filmmaker. It was a great opportunity to construct a genealogy that traces my journey as an artist. Below is a sampling of ones I most often look to.

 

Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema, 1896 to the Present - Ally Acker

Comprehensive guide of the women who pioneered the art and craft of filmmaking. The revised edition (published in 2001) extends where it left off showing that women are very much a part of today’s Hollywood. It’s also an essential read for anyone looking to enhance their knowledge of the key players who introduced motion pictures as language.

 

Blank City documentary

First-time filmmaker Celine Danhier has helped create a really fantastic record of the No Wave Cinema. Balanced by archival footage and well conducted and curated interviews, the film involves the audience in this moment in time with more intimate accounts of this time and place, and some stories you might not have heard before. Thanks to Netflix streaming, I can revisit it often and seem to note something new each time. 

Shooting to Kill - Christine Vachon and David Edelstein

Birds-eye view to the production pipeline for an independent film. Part journal, part production booklet, its first person account of the behind the scenes goings on for Velvet Goldmine manages to entertain while showcasing the creative and business concerns of making a film. Reading through this felt as if I was actively going along each step of the process. Nearly ten years later Vachon followed with a more personal account of her career in A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond.

Brain Pickings website

Meticulously curated by Maria Popova, the site serves as a cornucopia of creative resources. Inspiring and informative, the myriad of books, profiles, sites, concepts cover a seemingly impossible gamut. I often reference BP when looking to expand my knowledge of graphic and motion design (both examples and origins). Or spend a fun afternoon getting lost in a curiosity-feeding labyrinth. Quoting Maria herself, “Brain Pickings is a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers.”

Myths for the Cosmos

By MONICA MODY, author of "Travel & Risk" and two other chapbooks. Her first book, "Kala Pani," is forthcoming from 1913 Press. She is currently a PhD.candidate in East-West Psychology at CIIS

Here at the East-West Psychology program we are trying to find new ways to reconnect or bring into conversation dualities such as the self and the world, body and earth, psyche and spirit, art and scholarship, being and activism. We are interested in how myth and symbol and dreams work, and in their relationship to the healing of the planet, of the self.

The myths that live in our unconscious contain us and contain our world. This is why a project to re-enchant the self and the world requires re-enchanted myths: alive, vital, continually opening, in relationship.

As a poet, my task is to add to the repertoire of myths that can participate in this re-enchanting, healing, re-awakening. Through the last year, I wrote a sequence of myths attempting to do that. One of them is below. You can read some other myths from the sequence at Lantern Review and Pyrta.

"Don't be satisfied with the stories that come before you; unfold your own myth."

—Rumi

This poem first appeared on The The Poetry Journal as the poem of the week in November 2012.

 

Myth of Cosmos

It stands outside of myself, something round, flecked with spit, like a moon«
growing out of my nails, moon« of phenomenal lactescence.

 

I push my head into the roundess & a cloud« is my face
& I see particles of mist« floating away.

 

There’s nothing I can do or limb or crook of elbow, inutile
& something is growing under my tongue, a word, a love«

 

A deer falls from my eyes, rolls down my cheek, & I name
the cloud« with the overgrown tongue

 

& a brush of flowers falls on my face
to toe I’m blessed, blessing

 

painted on my nails my palms I d«ance, palm flashing thigh buckling
silvered belly stars.

En Foco/In Focus: Rania Matar

By JESSICA JULIAO

En Foco/In Focus, which opens Jan. 22, 2013, at CIIS, includes 56 images by 48 artists, selected from the permanent collection of En Foco, a New York-based non-profit dedicated to cultural diversity in photography. The below interview is third in a series conducted by CIIS students and emerging photographers, Jessica Juliao and Colleen McGruder.

Jessica recently spoke with artist Rania Matar about her series, The Veil, documenting the lives of Muslim women and girls in Lebanon.

It was the intense stare of the deceased mother pictured in the photograph hanging on the wall, carefully framed by her two young daughters having a moment to themselves, that drew me in. There seem to be a few things happening here in Rania Matar’s Dead Mother: perhaps a mother’s love watching over her children; the severe expression of the older woman framed by the youthful grace of her daughters; and the cultural connection that is felt through the veil donned by all three. This image is only one of a series that invites us into the lives of Lebanese women, Muslim and Christian, and disrupts the Western stereotypes that exist around the hijab. 

Jessica Juliao: Your images speak to the coexistence of the Muslim and Christian communities living in Lebanon. How difficult was it to capture these casual and at times very intimate moments? Did you have a preexisting relationship with most of the women in your photos or did you approach complete strangers?

Rania Matar: These images were not choreographed at all; it was really simply me capturing beautiful daily moments. When I started photographing in the refugee camps I originally felt like an outsider, almost like I should not have been there. Eventually I started meeting NGO (non-governmental organizations) staff and having them introduce me to women and their families. Once I came with somebody who people trusted I had a foot in the door. So access was very important, and once in, it was up to me to justify people’s trust in me. I used very little equipment, trying to make it the least invasive as possible.

In the beginning I was tentative; I wanted to be accepted so I can tell the best and most truthful story possible.  I do speak the language; I was born in Lebanon and am part Palestinian, so that also helped in being trusted. In all the work in the Middle East, mainly in the refugee camps, I was inspired by my early work photographing my children.  I remembered how intimate these pictures [of my children] felt, and this is what I wanted from the Forgotten People and Veil series, to achieve that same level [of intimacy] with people I did not know. I felt that I owed them that.

JJ: In your project statement you talk about the social pressures among Muslim women in Lebanon to wear the hijab. Some women wear it for religious reasons, others for self-expression, others as political statement. How do you see this pressure taking different forms among different age groups/generations?

RM:  I would not say it is really social pressure as much as it is an implied pressure amongst some younger women. Women do not have to wear the hijab in Lebanon, but I found after September 11th there was an implied pressure, especially for younger girls, in the sense that it became the thing to do and girls wanted to be like their friends. A Western parallel might be my daughter wanting to wear Uggs because all of her friends have them.  At the time it also became a symbol of identity, a statement, a symbol of belonging to the larger Muslim community, but also in some cases a fashion accessory. In the past couple of years, I found that it was not as present among younger girls and I was surprised to find out that some girls who wore the headscarf after September 11th ended up not wearing it anymore. There are so many layers and so much symbolism to the hijab and why women decide to wear it. I think I just scraped the surface with my work. 

JJ: In one image you show a Muslim woman wearing a hijab tattooing the eyebrow of another woman who is not wearing the veil. Is the woman being tattooed also Muslim? I associate tattooing with Western cultural practices, and would love to learn more about whether—and how much—accepted practices differ between the Muslim and Christian populations. And to what degree do the communities respect what differences there are?

RM: I don’t like when people ask if the woman is Muslim or not. I think it simplifies the issue. People of different religions mix together beautifully in Lebanon and those are two women interacting. It doesn’t matter if they are Muslim or not. The story behind that image is that I just happened to be walking by and saw the women wearing the hijab sitting outside of the beauty parlor. She actually owns that parlor. After I took the photos she asked me who did my eyebrows and eventually I ended up on the table getting my own eyebrows done. She then asked if I was interested in Botox! It was wonderful—a very hysterical scene.  The thing is, women who are wearing the hijab, the veil, also get their nails, their hair and their faces done.  They care about their appearance and their beauty and to assume that because they wear the hijab they are any less “feminine” is a huge misconception. It’s just that only close relatives and friends can see what is underneath. A woman who wears the veil just won’t be photographed without it, and I have to respect that.