Watch the Open Studio here

 Here is a link to the Open Studio I presented in March 2022. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyZv7kaDDYU

Re-Membering

Re-Membering. Intaglio, Chine-Collé. 45cm x 45cm. 2022. 

Re-Membering is the twelfth and final print in my artist's book. I wanted to end my book on a somewhat hopeful note, with a view to a future that might be more just and equitable for everyone. The title Re-Membering carries multiple meanings: the importance to remember the past through subaltern voices and to bring people in from the margins, allowing them to again become members of society in their land. 

The figures in this print come together as a community. Settler women stand next to indigenous women; settler children stand next to indigenous children; a politician stands next to an indigenous man. I re-etched all the figures representing the settler society for this print, to scale them down to the same size as the figures representing indigenous people. With the change in scale, I wanted to portray the importance of an equal society, where people see each other as equals, where political decisions are community based and not top-down. I added a printing plate with settler children, since children shape the future; what we teach children in schools about history and how to interact with others who are different from us matters. 

One of the most interesting texts that I feel rounds off the book really beautifully is the text by former Anglican missionary Stephen Kidd. He came to Makthlawaya, the Anglican mission station Wilfrid Barbrooke Grubb founded, 95 years after Grubb. Kidd writes: “As my Christian faith withered away, I gradually developed a different perspective on Enxet culture and social life and my personal mission changed from one of transformation to a desire to share in the life of the Enxet. Rather than seeking to eradicate Enxet social practices I became increasingly committed to trying to understand – and experience – them.”

We often think of colonization as a process of history in the past, but the impacts of colonization continue to pervade everything in our lives today: social structures and systems, our perception of land and property, the content we are taught in schools, the way we think about, interact with, and treat others on whose land we now live, whose artefacts we store, who work for us, and whose experiences are not taught in schools. This artist book invites to question our biases, our perceptions, and our understanding of history, and challenges us to decolonize our thinking.

Disruptions

Disruptions. Intaglio, Chine-Collé. 45cm x 45cm. 2022. 

Disruptions is the eleventh print in my artist's book. In this print, a large group of indigenous figures is marching and blocking a road. The repeated layering of the figures darkens the tone and helps to give them a stronger presence. Now the positions are reversed from previous prints: the indigenous figures take centre stage and fill out a large portion of the image. The figures of politicians and settlers are pushed to the corner and forced to watch (and act!). The action of the road closure gives visibility to a community that was overlooked and marginalized time and time again. 

This print is a representation of frustration, strength, endurance, resilience and hope. In 2015, members of the Xákmok Kásek (Sanapaná and Enxet Sur) community blocked the main highway that runs through the Chaco to demand that their ancestral land be returned to them. For 30 years, they lived landless along the sides of the highway on a strip of public land. When I was a kid, we would pass the huts built from palm trunks and tents built from tarps on our way from my hometown to the city. I often wondered how people could survive in such extreme poverty, but at 130km/h drive-by speed, it was a rather fleeting image. The road closure forced drivers to stop. I understand there was a lot of anger and frustration on behalf of the drivers and interrupted transport traffic, but in comparison to the thirty year fight the Xákmok Kásek community has fought, sitting a few hours on a highway seems rather insignificant. 

In 2010, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that the land belonged to the Xákmok Kásek. However, the Paraguayan government didn't act on the ruling to return the lands; this inaction lead to the protests and road closures in 2015, ultimately resulting in the return of a portion of the ancestral lands. To me, this protest symbolizes a direction of thinking that interrupts colonial patterns, that different ways of thinking, acting, and being are indeed possible. 

I would like to point out, that there are differences between Enxet Sur and the Enlhet Norte. While not uncontroversial in its own right (as you can see in previous prints and texts in my book), the Enlhet Norte have somewhat more stability, in that the Mennonites have purchased (and own) some land on which they can live, with various opportunities to earn money through wage labour. To my understanding, the Enxet Sur are largely surrounded by ranches with little opportunity to work and until the victory of this one group limited or no access to land to live on. (Some land has been purchased by various missionary organizations, but it is not sufficient for subsistence). 

Loss

Loss. Intaglio, Chine-Collé. 45cm x 45cm. 2022. 

Loss is the tenth print in my artist's book. The losses indigenous people in the Chaco have experienced throughout the colonization process are unimaginable to me: a loss of land and territory, a loss of culture, a loss of a way of life, a loss of a sense of identity, a loss of autonomy, of freedom, a sense of power, a loss of an understanding of the world. This was a difficult piece to do: I am keenly aware that I'm attempting to express someone else's experience and the portrayal of a kind of victimhood can be problematic, but I believe that feeling empathy for others' losses is an important process towards understanding. To me, acknowledging the losses and wrongdoing is an essential step towards any kind of reconciliation and healing process. 

The grey dripping cloud, repeated from the first piece of Remembering (an obscuring and fading of memories), evokes this sense of loss and grief. The translucence of the groupings of figures suggests a non-solid, precarious presence and marginal existence, a fading past or a non-materializing future. The shadowy figures in the cloud allude to a parallel invisible society from the past. 

Ursula and Verena Regehr write about the role that missionaries and churches played in this monumental loss of culture: "Through evangelism, the missionaries taught new values and practices. They called the [indigenous people] 'heathen' and condemned their previous life as 'bad', 'false', 'vicious' and 'guilty'. With great verbal pressure (with the threat of social exclusion, illness, God's punishment, the final judgment, the end of the world, etc.), with violent actions (the destruction of ritual objects, the disturbance and prohibition of ceremonies and parties, songs and shamanic sessions) and with promises of a new life (of healing and recovery, of salvation from sins), with the construction of churches and settlements, they tried to persuade the [indigenous people] to renounce their worldview and ethics, as well as the practices and rituals associated with them. (Regehr, Ursula, Verena Regehr. Reconfiguraciones – Vida Chaqueña en Transición. Ed. Fernando Allen. Asunción: Fotosíntesis fotografía + editorial. (2018). 107). 

Exploitation

Exploitation. Intaglio, Chine-Collé. 45cm x 45cm. 2022. 

Exploitation is the ninth print in my artist's book. During my most recent trip to Paraguay (2018) I went to a public presentation in my home town about the 'Neighbourhood Assistance Program' (referring to financial aid given to indigenous communities by the Menno Colony). What stood out positively to me was an appeal by the speaker, that employers get to know and befriend their employees on a personal level, to show an honest interest in their family life and their well being. What also became evident during the presentation was, that indigenous people are never viewed as anything more than labourers. To think of the possibility that they achieve a higher education or to occupy political or administrative positions in mainstream society appears to be beyond the settler communities' imagination. 

The print depicts a large cattle herd pressing forward that dominates the image. Cattle ranching has taken over large parts of the Chaco and contributes to the displacement of indigenous communities. Also, indigenous labourers are frequently employed in the cattle ranching industry: they build the fences; they tend to the cattle; they work on maintaining the pastures by clearing bush and brush; they also predominantly work in the meat processing plants, and as far as I know most of this is done for minimum wage. While there are labour laws in place now, when the settlers first arrived, much of the work for the Mennonites was done in exchange for food or clothes. The settler community prides itself very much for their work ethic and all they have achieved in building a lucrative export industry of beef and dairy that has brought them much wealth and a high living standard. However, much of this success and wealth has been achieved through the exploitation of cheap indigenous labour throughout the past 95 years and a system of exploitation that is based on a deep seated sense of white supremacy.

Mission

Mission. Intaglio, Digital Print, Chine-Collé. 45cm x 45cm. 2022.

Mission is the eighth print in my artist's book. Much of the reading and the research I did revolved around missions and in particular the Anglican missionary Wilfrid Barbrooke Grubb, who was the main collector of the Enxet artefacts at the British Museum. Missionaries appear on the frontiers of colonization. The Paraguayan government welcomed the presence of Barbrooke Grubb and gave him the title of 'Pacificator of the Indians' in 1892. Missionaries were generally seen as these benign figures that would befriend and 'pacificate' indigenous communities, to introduce European thought, religion and way of life to prepare the way for future settlers and the 'development' of the land, or rather to prepare the way for the dispossession of indigenous people. In order to teach (change), educate (manipulate) and bring about this new way of life (assimilate), it was considered necessary to settle communities on mission stations and teach them how to become labourers and earn a wage, in opposition to the nomadic, autonomous, independent life indigenous people had known before. After the arrival of the Mennonites, they also established a strong missionary presence among the Northern Enlhet, which controls most of Enlhet life to this day. Through the text excerpts below I want to share a glimpse of the different perceptions of missionary work and the motivations behind it. 

The background of the print is a map of Makthlawaya (Walter Regehr, 1979), the Anglican mission station founded by Barbrooke Grubb. To the left is an outline of the mission buildings; to the right, on the other side of a road, are two neat rows of cottages for the indigenous inhabitants surrounded by farmland. Superimposed on the map is the grid again, to signify an imposition of order. I picked up on the rows of houses and printed several models of cottages in two rows in my print. The indigenous figures are confined within one small square. The preaching missionary is lecturing in the bottom left corner. I printed the figures of a politician and a settler behind the missionary on the backside of the paper, since he is backed by their interests. There is a physical space between the missionary and the group that alludes to the distance between the missionary and the people. Again, the scale of the figures is suggestive of the power dynamics between them. The church is printed in red. (If you haven't picked up on it before, in every print there is an element of the colonization process printed in red). 

The text excerpts below, and in particular Maangvayaam'ay's analysis, brings to the point quite clearly that the main purpose of the settlement projects was the accessibility of a labour force. Hannes Kalisch further explains that "[w]ith their acceptance of the attempts at proselytism, the Enlhet imagined themselves to be part of the same social fabric as the colonists, sharing a project of coexistence... By being 'Christian like the Mennonites,' they assumed that the latter became their 'friends,' their allies, their relatives even. But Maangvayaam'ay' is aware that such apparent inclusion was based on a lie: the colonists argued that, once settled, it wouldn't be necessary for the Enlhet to work for them. In reality, however, they were settled in order to provide the Mennonites with a workforce. Their taming, therefore, had clear benefits for the Mennonites: the Enlhet ceased to be feared and, above all, they became manageable and controllable. They could be included as functional to the immigrants' system – not as equals, but subordinated to the latter's economic aspirations ... Mangvayaam'ay's analysis is clear: the Mennonites' taming of the Enlhet was motivated by their fear of them, by the discomfort, the disgust that they felt in their presence and by their need for their labor. Their procedure consisted in missionary teaching, in the feigned inclusion of the Enlhet, in the latter's sedentarization and in the attempt to destroy their practice of sharing." Kalisch continues, that "[t]he fact that they [the Enlhet] accepted the aggressions of the missionary without resistance, that is without defending themselves or withdrawing from the mission, because they were now Christians, a tame people, indicates that they had accepted that life there had its own rules, that it was a life in a world belonging to others. Equally, the acceptance of the missionary as the authority who directs the conversion process and shows the path of life evinces subjection to the society that sent him. The mission thus embodies a space of defeat." (Kalisch, Hannes. “They only knew the Public Roads – Enlhet territoriality during the colonization of their lands.” Reimagening the Gran Chaco: Identities, Politics, and the Environment in South America. Eds. Silvia Hirsch, Paola Canova, and Mercedes Biocca. University of Florida Press, 2021, 108-110.)

Dispossession

Dispossession. Intaglio, Chine-Collé. 45cm x 45cm. 2022. 

Dispossession is the seventh print my artist's book. The imagery mimics the earlier print Neocolonial landscape. (That's the beauty of printmaking - the repetition and reproducibility of image elements to tie the images together). Not only has the landscape changed, but also the ownership. Ownership of land is a European capitalist concept, completely foreign to the indigenous people of the Chaco, who lived in a sharing economy. Again, the grid reflects the surveying, parcelling, and privatization of the land. The dripping vegetation evokes a sadness and a loss. The blank figures of indigenous people appear to have their presence erased in a way, but they also convey strength in their appearance and their stances. The leading female figure on the right, referencing a stronger female presence in the social structure of the community, overlapped with the bottle tree, almost disappears. Will her presence prevail or will she melt away, too? Dispossession does not only refer to being dispossessed of land, but also of culture. The forest, printed upside down in the upper left hand corner, represents an inversion of a natural order. 

I feel the text excerpts below speak for themselves about the process of dispossession. It is a complete failure against human rights that the Paraguayan government sold every acre of the Chaco to land speculators, to pay for the debt of war no less (the War of the Triple Alliance), without reserving any lands for the indigenous populations. Later, the Paraguayan government saw a "need to populate and occupy the Chaco, which prompted the search for foreign settlers to integrate this immense region not only into sovereignty but also into the national economy." [Vázques, Fabricio. Geografía humana del Chaco paraguayo – Transformaciones territoriales y desarrollo regional. Asunción: Ediciones ADEPO (2013). 37]. Time and time again, political decisions have rolled over the indigenous lands without taking the people living in it into consideration.  

I think the Mennonites absolve themselves from any guilt of dispossession by claiming that they purchased the land from others, i.e. the indigenous land was already sold. However, they were well aware that there were indigenous people living on the land before they purchased it, and the mere thought that they could buy the land with some food, clothing and sweets is utterly ridiculous (if it wasn't so serious). It is completely understandable that indigenous people would have considered those things as gifts from the visitors, and not a form of payment for land, which didn't even exist as a commodity in indigenous understanding. I don't think I heard the term 'dispossession' until I was an adult. In the public discourse, the settlement process was always described as a peaceful encounter. Hannes Kalisch writes, "The settlers' firm belief that their immigration was peaceful is understandable. They hardly felt the force of the collision of two worlds. After all, this violence was not directed against themselves, but consisted in the Enlhet being deprived of freedoms. Their own interests, on the other hand, prevailed." [Kalisch, Hannes & Ernesto Unruh. Wie Schön ist deine Stimme – Berichte der Enlhet in Paraguay zu ihrer Geschichte. Centro de Artes Visuales/Museo del Barro: 2014.] 

Encounters

Encounters. Intaglio, Chine-Collé. 45cmx45cm. 2022. 

Encounters is the sixth print in my artist's book. I really struggled with the image for this print and it only came together at the end of the project. I felt a discomfort trying to figure out how to portray encounters between the settler population and indigenous people, which paralyzed me for months every time I tried to tackle this piece. From the text excerpts I also get a sense of discomfort, where the indigenous narrator feels excluded, misunderstood and judged by the settlers, the settler voice expresses fear and trepidation towards the Other. I think to this day there is much discomfort and unease in encounters due to overt racism, unequal power dynamics, prejudice, and inequalities on every social and economic level. I observe a deep insecurity and a lack of self-confidence from many indigenous people in the presence of white people (after generations have been treated as inferior), and a deep-seated systemic racism and sense of superiority coming from the settler communities. This is coupled with a simmering fear of unrest ahead in the future, because I believe deep down the settlers are aware of the injustices they inflict, but somehow everyone appears trapped in their positions, their prejudices, their thinking, and the firm belief that they are fulfilling a God-given task to evangelize the indigenous people which justifies the settlers' presence and absolves them of any possible wrong-doing.

The print is divided in half by the repeated grid-pattern to evoke the separation between the settler and indigenous communities. The figures representing the settler men and women are large and strongly drawn and etched. The size and strength of the figures alludes to their position of power. They fill half the page and spread out freely within the space, while the more delicately etched indigenous figures are confined to a much smaller and clearly outlined square. The translucence of the grouping, of figures suggests a non-solid, precarious presence and marginal existence, a fading past or a non-materializing future. Herein lies an irony: the settlers fear the indigenous people, while they themselves are the ones taking over the other's land and a way of life. The missionary is the go-between figure. While most settlers don't interact much with indigenous people (at least not beyond an employer/employee relationship or on a personal level such as friendship), the missionary has direct contact to communities. However, he generally represents the interests of the settler community that backs him. The church and the huts represent the sedentarization process, another step in confining communities. 

Before I could make this print, I had to go back to the print studio to etch more plates. I realized that women play a central role in encounters as well, and up until this point all the figures I had used in my prints were male figures - figures in positions of power and the decision makers: the missionary/explorer, the farmer/employer, and the politician. Women encounter indigenous people on a daily basis as they stop by asking for work, food or water. Many women employ indigenous people as day labourers around the house and the yards for minimum wage (or less). 

From my own experience, I always felt a deep chasm between communities, a clear 'us' and 'them'. To this day there is an (Apartheid-like?) separation between white settlers and indigenous communities: we don't share schools, churches or hospitals; we live in separate towns and settlements or reserves. The gap between rich and poor is staggering. Indigenous people are generally labourers working for Mennonite  employers and have little or no political representation. Most decisions regarding life in the Chaco are made by the settler communities and any decisions regarding indigenous people are made in a top-down paternalistic way. I am ashamed to admit it, but growing up I never knew an indigenous person my age by name, because generally our paths never crossed. Well, that's not entirely true: I once played ball with Refina, the daughter of a farmhand at my aunt and uncle's farm, but I was admonished to keep my distance so I wouldn't get lice. Again, while we played together, there was not just the physical distance separating us, but also the prejudice of the Other and poverty that kept us apart. Fortunately, as an adult I had the opportunity to meet and work with a collective of indigenous artists in the Chaco (who are also part of this project from the British Museum), and for the first time I had the feeling I that we met on a level of friendship, respect for each other's work and interest in ideas. 

Fences

Fences. Intaglio, Chine-Collé. 45cm x 45cm. 2022.

Fences is the fifth print in my artist's book. Fences are a symbol of privatization of land, a point of pride for landowners and a necessity for cattle ranchers to keep their property safe and contained. Fences frequently appear in indigenous accounts as an obstacle that cuts off traditional pathways and hunting grounds, that limits movement and keeps their traditional lands inaccessible. I found one account by Enlhet elder Maangvayaam'ay' very poignant, in which he describes the following scene: "We lived on the other side of the fence, until we were approached by Haako'-Pya'yeem, a Mennonite from Nempeena-Amyep: 'Do you want to hear the word of God?' From then on we lived in Haako'-Pya'yeem's yard; no longer did we stay on the other side of the fence..." (More text below). In most indigenous accounts, the fences kept them out; here, they are invited in. Maangvayaam'ay and his people are invited to join the newcomers, but they are expected to change. Crossing the fence symbolizes a point of no return, of leaving the traditional way of life on the other side. I portray this scene as a kind of entrapment. Two fences cross the width of the image with figures standing in the space between. The forest, representing the traditional territory and way of life remain is now separated from the people. Another interesting aspect of Maangvayaam'ay's account is that he mentions the cattle roaming freely. Generally I think of the cattle as being fenced in and people moving freely, but here the roles are reversed and it is the indigenous people who are becoming fenced in and restricted in their movement. 

Roads

Roads. Intaglio, Digital Print, Ink Drawing, Chine-Collé. 45cm x 45cm, 2022.

Roads is the fourth print in my artist's book. One of the first steps in the colonization process of the Chaco after loosely mapping the region was the establishment of roads. The Anglican missionaries prided themselves for creating inroads and making the Chaco more accessible to European ranchers and settlers. Following these early roads and a short rail line built by timber and tanín extraction companies, the Mennonite settlers entered even further inland to settle on Enlhet territory.

As a background for this piece, I used a digitally printed rough map of the Chaco by Anglican missionary Wilfrid Barbrooke Grubb from 1910. I have highlighted his journeys in red ink. Also in red ink, I printed a road that diagonally crosses the entire Chaco. The trajectory of the road is loosely inspired by the modern day highway Ruta 9 which connects the central Chaco, and therefore the Mennonite colonies, with Paraguay's capital Asunción. The road goes through a planting of sweet potatoes, squash and beans, referencing the accompanying text (see below) of an Enlhet elder, Metyeeyam', detailing how Mennonite settlers built their village roads through their plantings.

The figures of indigenous people are pushed to the margin, becoming dispossessed and displaced. A small square of a satellite image of today's pastures and fields represents the expansion of agriculture opposite the more modest traditional indigenous plantings. It shows the impact of the scale of the change, where one is visible from space, while the other is integrated into the landscape; one requires the landscape to be cleared to create clean fields with neat, tidy rows of monocultures or grass, while the other is a sustainable polyculture adapted to the climate and the region that might look rather wild and unkempt to a European gaze.

The account by Metyeeyam' (see text page below) has hit me hard, since it shows a completely different reality to the narrative I grew up with. Time and time again we were told the indigenous people were so incredibly poor and starving when the Mennonites arrived. Yet Metyeeyam' clearly shares that they had seasonal gardens that provided food, which the Mennonite settlers destroyed. (The hunger came after the settlement). Based on the text excerpt by Mennonite missionary G.B. Giesbrecht, the Mennonites appear to have been well aware that their settlement destroyed the gardens, yet in the general settler myth, these facts are not talked about. The destruction of gardens by another farming community to me is an act of violence (among many others in the settlement process), which puts into question the entire precept of pacifism that Mennonites claim to represent. I struggle with this insight, since pacifism has always been a source of pride when it comes to my identity being linked to my Mennonite roots. 

Neocolonial Landscape

    Neocolonial Landscape. Intaglio, Digital Satellite Image, Chine-Collé. 45cm x 45cm, 2022. 

Neocolonial Landscape is the third print in my artist's book. As a progression from Terra Nullius, Neocolonial Landscape portrays the change in landscape after the settlement of the region. The accompanying text excerpts describe the shrinking territory of the Enlhet and the parcelling and ordering of the landscape through agriculture and ranching. For some, the Chaco was a place of potential for investment and development, for some it was a God-given challenge that needed sweat and effort to yield something fruitful, for others it was habitat and life. 

The small island of forest represents the land the Enlhet live on reflecting the text excerpt by Simeón Negro below. The forest in the background shining through the paper represents the large circle of land the Enlhet used to live in. The digitally printed satellite images of fields and the grid portray the prevalent change in the landscape around the Mennonite colonies. The grey drips evoke a sense of loss, of trickling away of the forest and a way of life. 

Terra Nullius

Terra Nullius. Intaglio, Digital Print, Chine-Collé. 45cm x 45cm, 2022. 

I grew up in a Mennonite settler community in the Menno Colony, Paraguay. My maternal great-grandparents migrated to the Paraguayan Chaco in 1927 from Manitoba, Canada. Growing up, the general Mennonite history narrative was always (and continues to be) something like this: "There was nothing here but wilderness. We arrived in a 'Green Hell.' The 'Indians' welcomed us and helped us with the farming. We made something of this land. God sent us here to evangelize the 'Indians'. They came to us because they were starving and we helped them. We coexist peacefully to this day." This history is taught in our schools and it is celebrated once a year at the anniversary of the founding of the colony. 

After moving to Canada, I audited a Canadian history class at the University of Manitoba out of interest in 2007 and our textbook presented three different points of view on history: the dominant and widely accepted Eurocentric history, and the history from the point of view of indigenous people and women. Of course the narratives of certain events looked quite different depending on the perspective of the narrator. This course was such an eye opener and I have sought out first person narratives by indigenous people in the Chaco and more objective writing about indigenous people since. Those narratives paint a very different picture of my history and it humbles me I didn't know more about it sooner. (It ought to be taught in schools!)

Terra Nullius is the second print in my artist's book. I came across the term Terra Nullius (nobody's land) a few years ago while doing some reading about colonization. A text by Roger Epp, professor of political science at the University of Alberta was a kind of lightbulb moment for me and has shaped much of my understanding of my history: "The settler mythology (and legal fiction), ... is more powerful and ideologically attractive than any corrections proposed by historians. For it has continued to offer something more profound: a 'sacrament of innocence,' a 'new world,' a fresh start, a clean slate, and a justification of hard work. The mythology is much the same in Canada, in South Africa, in Israel (and Paraguay) – wherever settler people say, 'There was nothing here when we came, and we made something of it.' Terra nullius. Empty land. Vacant, uncultivated, unproductive. Somehow lacking or incomplete.” [Roger Epp. “'There was no one here when we came,' Lecture One: What is the 'Settler Problem,'” The Conrad Grebel Review 30/2 (2012). 124]. I felt I finally understood something that I've been grappling with for most of my life, namely making sense of the (hi)story I was taught in school and observing a much more complicated reality.

     The digitally printed background of the print is an early sketch map by Anglican missionary Seymour Hawtrey from 1900, who literally put the Chaco region on the map. Maps are used for laying claim, for surveying the land, for parcelling, selling, privatizing land, for claiming ownership. The dense forest is both beautiful and a terrifying wilderness, depending on the view of the beholder, providing life-giving space to some and representing something that needs taming and ordering for the other. The concept of Terra Nullius does not acknowledge the existence of the people in the landscape that form an integral part of it. The arrival of the missionary explorers, backed and supported by politicians and ranchers or explorers (figures printed on the backside of the paper) pushes the wilderness back. 

I

Remembering

Remembering. Intaglio, Digital Print, Chine-Collé. 45cm x 45cm, 2022. 

With the first print, I wanted to acknowledge the starting point for this project, i.e. the Paraguay collection at the British Museum. Since I wasn't able to go to London and access the objects in storage myself due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the London team photographed and uploaded the images of all the artefacts. I noticed the system of boxes: physical storage boxes at 'The Orsman' stacked on shelves, digital folders labelled Box 1, Box 2, Box 24, etc, numbered, labelled, categorized, organized. A very neat and tidy system to organize and try to make sense of a collection, a series of artefacts outside of their natural environment. I felt a strange dissociation from the artefacts; they belonged to a different culture and time that I had little personal connection with, although I am familiar with the materials they are made from and their geographic origin. Nonetheless, I was very curious about their story and their current existence in storage. 

There is a kind of irony in the existence of the collection, in that the collector, Anglican missionary Wilfrid Barbrooke Grubb, tried to eradicate the Enxet indigenous culture and claims “[t]he people were disorganized and nomadic savages, possessing nothing that might be termed property,” yet he saw value in their artefacts, their clothing and their decorations at the very least as ethnographic objects of study worthy of preservation in a museum setting. At the same time he was eradicating the living culture of the Enxet, he was preserving parts of it by taking it away. What value do these artefacts have today, housed in storage, away from the descendents of the people who created and used them, away from the people who might still remember and know their meaning, their use, their importance?

For me, these artefacts are the starting point to question history: what does W.B. Grubb tell us about the objects and his time in Paraguay? What do indigenous voices have to say about their past and present? What do my own people, Mennonite settlers in the Chaco, tell about our arrival and settlement in the region? Whose experience, whose history is being told, preserved, taught and perpetuated? The text excerpts that accompany my prints give the reader access to different perspectives of the perception of events, thought processes, perceptions of people, and perceptions of self within colonial contexts and challenges preconceived western notions of history. The print plays with the idea of the boxes and the grid as a kind of imposition of order, of will, of religion, of a way of life, contrasted by the densely growing forest that gave everything to the Enxet: “We may have been poor, but that didn’t bother us because there weren’t any things. But we had the things from the bush.” The grey cloud and drips evoke a kind of loss, a loss of culture, and a fading of memories of the importance and the meaning of the artefacts with time.

Out of all the hundreds of artefacts in the collection, I was drawn to the incredibly long necklaces made of little discs cut from shells and pierced with hole to be threaded onto strings. I read that they were used as currency; the longer the necklace, the more worth it had. These necklaces were used as a kind of currency in trades and barters. I find the idea of creating your own currency based on skill, time, patience, need, and want, interesting. The second object I chose to print was a pipe head, because in a later text excerpt (in Loss) one of the Enlhet elders talks about how a Mennonite missionary threw their pipe in the fire to weaken the power and influence of the elders and shamans, and because for that very reason, the pipe represents a cultural power that was taken away.

Done printing!

Today, I printed the last plate on the last remaining print. I'm done printing! It feels like I've reached a milestone after working on this project for 14 months. Each of my prints has between 10-20 individual printing plates printed in layers. Admittedly, some of the plates were quite small, but it involved a lot of layering nonetheless. I am very happy how the prints turned out. I can't wait to get the custom museum cases I ordered that will hold the finished artist book. 

My final print!

I'm done printing! It feels strange to be done, but then again, there is still a lot more to be done. I still have to mount the prints, do some curating and signing of all prints. I still have to get a few more pages of the Spanish version to the text designers and get all the text pages printed digitally. I'm still waiting to receive the museum cases for the artist's books. 

Here is a close-up of my final print, Re-Membering. This piece is about a tentative look at the future and how colonial relationships might be reconsidered. In this piece I play with the scale of the figures; I re-etched all the settler figures in a smaller scale to match the size of the indigenous figures, to portray a shifting of positions and power relations. I also added the figures of women and children, since it will take the engagement of all to move forward. 

New Prints

I'm pretty much done printing my last two prints! I can't believe how long it took me to resolve these last two images, but I'm very happy how they turned out. Here is a proof of print eleven, (actually, print six in the series) that explores the dynamics of encounters between indigenous people and settlers. 

New etching plates for prints 11 & 12

I finally resolved the images for prints 11 & 12 (or to be precise, for prints 6 & 12). I didn't know for the longest time how to portray my ideas for these two prints visually. I had to go back to the print studio downtown to etch a few new plates and to re-etch some others since the aquatints were starting to wear down. I needed some plates with images of settler women and children, since they are an important part when it comes to encounters with indigenous people and also working on meaningful relationships for a shared future. I realized that in all my other prints the settler figures were represented solely by men. I finished etching all the plates I need and this week I can start printing again. I have worked on this project for over a year and it is hard to believe it is coming to a conclusion soon. (Below: Spite Bite. Ferric Chloride brushed onto copper). 

(Etched copper plates with figures. Aquatint and spit bite).

Drying and Stretching

 I fear this is a rather boring post, but it's part of the process. After I chine-collé the prints (see previous post), they need to dry and stretch. I tape each print onto a wooden board and let it dry for 48 hours. As the paper dries, it shrinks and stretches tight and flat. 

The Process of Chine-Collé

I have starting mounting the prints that I finished printing. I've spent the last few days measuring and tearing paper to size and preparing a damp pack. I've printed all my prints on a Japanese paper (Honen), which is a thin translucent paper and which allows me to arrange so many layers on the paper (in some cases on both sides). Now all the prints need to get mounted on a Western rag paper (Somerset) with an archival rice paste. The process is called Chine-Collé, (French for glueing Asian paper). Here is a video of the process, much sped up of course. In this video you see me place the dampened print on a blank copper plate as my print support. After blotting it, I brush the rice past evenly on the back. Now the paste has to dry with a blowdryer until it is just tacky and not wet. I take out a sheet of paper from the damp pack, which is just damp enough to reactivate the glue when I run paper and plate through the printing press. Voilá! While the printing process is always so messy and inky, this part of the process is hyper clean and precise. I love it all and this is one more step in the direction of finishing the prints. Now I have 30 more to go!

Print 10 finished

Just before the end of the year I finished printing print number 10, which in reality is print number 1 - the starting point for this project. It took me a long time to figure this print out, but I'm happy with the finished piece. I still need to take professional pictures of all the prints, but here is a quick snap shot of the finished print titled Remembering.  I still need to make prints 11 and 12. I've made progress in that I finally know what I want to make for those two prints. It'll still be a little while until they are finished, because I need to etch a few more plates to resolve them. 

Prints 8 & 9 are finished

Just before the holidays I finished printing the editions of prints 8 and 9, and I got a good test print of print number 10. This is a good place to take a break and take a few days off. I've come a long way since last December, when the ideas for this project were just starting to percolate. I never imagined then, that it would grow into such a big project that would take me longer than a year to complete. But, as we say in German, "Gut Ding braucht Weil" (good things take time). 

Text Pages

Earlier this week I got the English text pages digitally printed at Martha Street Studio. They turned out beautifully! A shout-out to the wonderful graphic designers Thomas Neutze and Gabriele Rudolph in Germany for the beautiful text design and for your patience to polish and shine all the small details until everything was just right. We opted to print the text excerpts in subtle colour. The excerpts of Indigenous voices are printed in greyish blue, resembling the blue figures in the prints. The excerpts of Mennonite voices are printed in terracotta red, the colour that represents colonial elements in the prints. The excerpts of the Anglican missionary voices are printed in dark grey, again, like the figures in the prints. I'm very happy with the choice to print the text in colour, as it provides a visual thread and orientation guide to the different voices. The font for the headings is Berlin and the text font is Utopia. Printed on German Etching paper. Paper size is 24"x24'. (Text Detail below. I can't for the life of me photograph a white sheet of paper properly). 

Printing Days II

For the past month I've been printing in the studio like a maniac every morning while my dear husband takes care of our little M. (M. turned two last week, so there was another milestone reached!) I am pleased to share that I have finished seven of the twelve prints (Yeay! More than half way done!) and three more will be done in the next week or two. (Gah! Two prints I still have to figure out what to do with...but I have a few ideas that I think might work). Some of my prints have between ten to twenty different plates printed on them, so it always takes a while to get them printed since I can only print one or two layers per day to prevent the ink from offsetting too much. 

Today I also ordered the custom made museum cases that will contain my artist book and I will head to Martha Street Studio in a bit to get the English text printed. I'm excited! It is so satisfying when a project nears its completion and things are coming together. 

Beautiful Details

I've been printing so much in the last few weeks and it gives me so much satisfaction to see the prints coming together. While the content of this body of work is rather heavy, it still gives me great pleasure and joy to look at the intricate little interactions between the different layers of ink on the paper every time I lift the paper. Here are some of my favourite moments from the past week in pictures. 

Printing Days

For the past few weeks I keep working away on the many many layers on each print. I've finished printing the first few prints, but there are many more to go. I'm printing an edition of three of each print. Aside from printing I've been working on the text back and forth with the graphic designers. I think we're almost there and I'll get a sample page printed soon. I'm also in the process of getting quotes for the portfolio cases for the final storage and display of the artist book. Things are coming together! For now, I keep printing, printing, printing.