Statement: Rossana Mercado-Rojas

Statement – Hysteriska Historiska

Rossana Mercado-Rojas

Hysteriska Historiska is a project that started approximately one year ago after the invitation from Gallery Majkens. This exhibition was my second solo show in a gallery space after many years. The past eight years I have been working mainly in public spaces with my collective Hysterix (consisting of women artists), as well as my involvement in other activities with cultural state institutions as a curator, and producer.

The pieces in this exhibition reflect different states in which institutional violence aims to erase us women from writing- or taking part of history.

Linking the term “Hysteria” (Hyster = Uterus/ ungovernable emotional excess) with History (the study of the past as it is described in written documents) I aimed to contradict different states and layers in which the “ungovernable” was systematically oppressed, silenced and erased by patriarchal colonizing systems of control.

The projects hold three main installations resembling a beginning, middle and present.

The process of making these pieces demanded going through my personal- and family history. I researched personal documents and explored alternative materials, such as materials derived from the human body, or actual everyday clothing from deceased family members. The process was harsh, painful and long. Yet, the outcome aimed to be festive with the struggle perceived as strength gained.

The first installation “Pater Familias” gathers photocopies of documents issued along eight years of process in Peru for getting sole custody of my child, up until today with the ongoing migration process of bringing my son to Sweden. The words “father”, “god” and “husband” are repeated in a lot of the documents, even when the father is completely absent in these processes. The piece reflects the violence in which institutions force women to go through long evaluations that demand money, time, and emotional waste in order to reinforce the “pater familias-figure”, where a family is incomplete without a father, without a husband.

I covered these documents with tracing paper, on which I drew portraits of my son using cooking oil. Portraits of how I remember him when these events occurred. They were based on the absence and remembrance of how I think and feel about my child on top of the documents that foster his absence.

-Holy father, father of god.

The second installation “Penurias, pick a dick” depicts a shadow painted with organic tint and blood. This is based on my silhouette projected onto the fabric – a process that symbolizes how the female body is viewed and interpreted by others. Our bodies coded as fragile or inviting to violence and sexual abuse – starting at a young age. Our bodies in the view of strangers, of family, and of people you need to put your trust in. They remain without faces, in anger and in fear. The unclear state of the silhouette poses questions such as: how do we “portray” ourselves when walking on a dark street in order to stay safe and not to provoke? How can we “draw” ourselves when going to the police, in order to be taken seriously in front of authorities? How does our body language make us look like we are asking for it when we “project” ourselves onto institutions of safety and protection?

Attached to the fabric with the silhouette is a group of knitted colorful penises. They are placed on the floor, looking fragile and soft. Demanding penises that want to be respected, feared, touched, taken care of, seen, sucked, and loved. Penises the audience on the opening night was invited to step on.

The third installation “Vida Bohemia – Rossanaconda” is a homage to my great-grandmothers. In my family´s history they are mentioned and remembered as the impoverished and uneducated past. The past we should be ashamed of in order to fully adapt and be accepted into “wealthier” environments.

I perceive my great-grandmothers to be the turning point for my own family´s history and also in a collective context dealing with the situation of indigenous communities in my country. Which also reflects the general history of how whole cultures were planned to be erased using different argumentation in each case.

The idea of racial and cultural hierarchies stems from the power of colonial storytelling –portraying the indigenous population as dirty, obscene and uncivilized savages. Stereotypes of ‘uncivilized’ people were at times further framed within an evangelical context, allowing European military forces to present their conquest of ‘savages’ as divinely ordained: a colonial military doctrine. During 1969, the agrarian reform was implemented in Peru to take the Haciendas from the patrons (Spaniards or Criollos) to give them to the working-force: the indigenous-farmer communities. By doing so, the silenced objectified working-force regained a voice, at least on paper.

During the Fujimori government (1990-2000) around 294 000 women were sterilized in Peru. Most of them were Andean women on the grounds that they were the uneducated poor that would only breed more poor to the population. This was Fujimori´s strategy to manifest a progressing country on the path to success.

For “Vida Bohemia – Rossanaconda” I built a sculpture of my great-grandmother with a metal skeleton as a base, positioned as if it was dancing the Huayno (a folkloric traditional Andean type of music), then I built the organs with materials such as soft fabric, yarn, paper, and plastic. I made the skin with transparent delicate fabric tinted with wax, hair and blood – blood of my blood. The sculpture wears a pink skirt that was given to me as a gift from my grandmother and I have brought this skirt to different celebrations around the world. There are four old monitors surrounding the sculpture showing images of women, colleagues, and friends from Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Sweden celebrating in different cities such as Lima, Visviri and Stockholm. The audio of this installation alters from songs by the Andean folk diva Flor Pucarina to distortion- and techno queer noise. Framing the piece is hand-written text covering the walls on which I have cited a poem that starts with: “I’m the savage, the otherness / I´m the savage, embodied complexity / I’m the savage you discover in her own lands / I’m the savage you raped and kept as a slave”.

Hysteriska Historiska aimed to touch upon urgent issues and at the same time project an over all festive tone. The vernissage was colourful and inviting. During the opening ceremony we had live painting where a lot of young girls participated. Just before that, Natalie Högström and I read the text “Poner el cuerpo: Om performance” which is about the embodiment of women´s political resistance and how we approach that through performance as an art form.

This project gathered not only my personal work but also the effort of different women involved in different aspects of the whole exhibition and its processes.

We showed video works by Paola Torres Nunez del Prado, Angélica Chávez and Ami Kohara. Their works touched upon the topics described above from different angles, such as the submission demanded of the colonized population until current times and the body of women as a work-force, neglected and objectified.

Other women were also present in my own installations. In Vida Bohemia: Angélica Chávez, Cecilia Rejtman (from Hysterix), Sara Sanjinez (Bolivia), Margarita Kalfio (Mapuche activist), Josefina Jimenez (Peru) and other sisters brought great joy and strength to the work.

For the piece “Penurias, pick a dick” Lotta Hedin and La Wara collaborated with the knitting process and were set on participating in the “knitting-confessions-workshop” that was meant to happen during the exhibition period.

Last but not least, the entire exhibition design with scenography, press and curatorial texts were made by Marie-Therese Luger and Magdalena Blom from Galleri Majkens. Together we created the festive-looking aesthetics: combining selected materials of shades of pink and purple assembled on site in the ABF-house gallery.

After just one day, the exhibition was abruptly cancelled over a phone call made to Magdalena Blom (founder of Galleri Majkens) by representatives from the ABF-house. Due to their unwillingness to meet with us we were not given a possibility to discuss their decision before closing it down and covering specific parts of the title´s design (a vulva and a uterus) with immediate effect.

I am a member of two women artist collectives: Hysterix in Peru and Galleri Majkens in Sweden. I feel baffled by the fact that with Hysterix, we are used to being shut down by different types of authorities in the middle of a process of creating street art in the public realm of Lima. Not only while painting and performing, we are usually confronted about the discourse and content of our work. However, this time around, I felt safe to exhibit at ABF: Sweden´s Workers Educational Association´s open gallery space –indoors yet public. My solo show was also the first project Galleri Majkens took on as a collective board. So it really came as a shock to me that a renowned nationwide organization could behave so aggressively towards us.

While in Peru, as in many “third world” countries we fight against physical and critical violence towards women (with a high rate of femicides), could it be that in countries like Sweden women struggle with the every-day, passive-aggressive violence in the shape of diplomacy and bureaucratic silence by laws and legislation? Is this all in the same thread? Is this all about a patriarchal system doing what it does simply because it can, and nobody wants to address these matters?

The fact that ABF denied us a proper dialogue before executing this abrupt decision reinforces the urgency of having platforms focused on women and intersectional feminism. Spaces where we can openly talk and make work about issues relevant to us, such as the society´s over all control of our body and behavior, and how it affects us in different areas and stages of our life, without fearing to be censured or erased from the public sphere.

I can’t help but wonder if this situation could have turned out differently if we were a group of men? What if we weren´t calling ourselves a Feminist gallery? What if we were less loud? Or, what if I was a Swedish artist, would this have been handled so fast and without any hesitation?

Rossana Mercado-Rojas,

Stockholm, December 2018

Corrections:

M. Blom

Rossana Mercado-Rojas,

Stockholm, December 2018

(En Español, abajo)

Open letter denouncing censorship of the Hysteriska / Historika exhibition (Nov. 29 – Dec. 13) by Rossana Mercado Rojas on November 30.

This letter serves to denounce the censorship of the Hysteriska / Historika exhibition by the Peruvian artist Rossana Mercado at the ABF-Stockholm, in the Swedish capital. We want to express our solidarity with her and the curators of Galleri Majkens. On November 30, the artist and curators were forced to dismantle the exhibition that included installations, video, textiles, and paintings from the premises of the ABF.

In an exchange with the artist and curators, the administrators of ABF Stockholm denied that their decision to take down the exhibition was related to its contents, arguing instead that the reason was that the assembly guidelines were not followed by the curators, as there were many nails damaging the walls of the gallery. However, the actions taken upon the images of the exhibition tells a different story. Both the artist and curators have noticed that drawings of vulvas and ovaries included in the exhibition were censored by the administrators of the premises, who crudely covered them with paper. This was not the first time that Galleri Majkens -whose members include artists aligned politically with feminism- organized an exhibition with ABF. For that reason, ABF is accustomed to hosting projects of this kind. As usual, the Galleri Majkens curators were committed to the total restoration of the space, so AFB’s reaction is unjustifiable.

In addition to being verbally aggressive during the conversation with the curators, and because of the hurried nature in which the exhibition was taken down, this censorship is surprising given that ABF is an Educational Association of Workers whose work focuses on adult workers, many of whom are immigrants in Stockholm. How then does a progressive cooperative of this type censure a Peruvian immigrant artist whose work demonstrates the violence of a sexist system? Why was the punishment so exemplary if the venue in collaboration with Galleri Majkens had already served as a space for other feminist exhibitions that had also used women’s bodies as vehicles for criticizing patriarchy?

From her activist and political feminism, starting from her Lima-based collective Hysterix, Rossana Mercado’s work has made visible the historical and systematic violence against women through the medical concept of hysteria and its proliferation in Latin American, Peruvian and global popular discourses. The work that Rossana brought together in the above-mentioned exhibition included an artistic / conceptual fragment made out of her legal experience in obtaining full custody of her son in Lima, and in continuing the process to bring him to Sweden. In her piece entitled “Pater familias,” the artist presented an intervention with different types of documentation that involved legal representatives, and Peruvian and Swedish authorities, and that linked to the case of the parental authority of her son and his immigration status. The visual power of this archival work and the systemic violence it represents, as well as other pieces in the exhibition, are much more compelling than the censored materials.

It must be said that, as critics of Rossana’s work, we believe that it was these and other factors that motivated the censorship of the exhibition. Although ABF insists on affirming its commitment to the educational interests of working adults and immigrants, we believe that this discourse reveals its limits with ABF’s censorship of the work of a woman and artist, mother and immigrant, deeply critical of the values of the pater familias. For ABF, the exhibition called into question the very ideal of the ‘good’ immigrant worker that is behind the ostensibly progressive discourse of ABF, and we believe that was ultimately the reason they decided to dismantle it.

Claudia Arteaga Olórtegui / Scripps College

Olga Rodríguez-Ulloa / Lafayette College

___

Carta abierta de rechazo a la censura de la exposición Hysteriska/Historika (29 Nov. – 13 Dic.) de Rossana Mercado Rojas ocurrida el 30 de noviembre

Esta carta expresa nuestro rechazo a la censura a la muestra Hysteriska/Historika de la artista peruana Rossana Mercado y nuestra solidaridad para con ella y las curadoras de Galleri Majkens. El día 30 de noviembre artista y curadoras fueron forzadas a desmontar la exhibición que incluía instalaciones, video, textiles y pintura del local ABF-Stockholm, en la capital sueca.

Al inicio del intercambio los administradores de ABF Stockholm, negaron que su demanda estuviera en relación con el contenido de la muestra argumentando que las condiciones del montaje, muchos clavos, arguyeron, no habían sido las acordadas. Sin embargo, esta excusa quedó descartada cuando tanto artista como curadoras pudieron notificar que la exhibición de algunas imágenes había sido censurada por los administradores del local, quienes burdamente cubrieron dibujos una vulva y ovarios hechos por la artista en las paredes. Aunque esta no era la primera vez que Galleri Majkens cuyo grueso de artistas y colaboradoras se alinean políticamente con el feminismo trabajaba con este local, el que por demás acostumbrado a puestas de este tipo sabía que las curadoras se comprometían al restaurado total del espacio.

Además de profundamente violenta por los términos de la discusión y la celeridad con la que se exigió sacar los contenidos de la muestra, esta censura resulta sorprendente en tanto ABF es una Asociación Educacional de Trabajadores cuya labor se centra en la popularización de adultos trabajadores muchos de ellos inmigrantes en Estocolmo. ¿Cómo entonces una cooperativa progresista de este tipo censura a una artista peruana cuyo trabajo evidencia justamente las violencias del sistema machista? ¿por qué fue tan ejemplar el castigo si el local en colaboración con Galleri Majkens había ya servido de espacio para otras muestras feministas que también habían usado el cuerpo de las mujeres como vehículo de crítica al patriarcado?

Desde su feminismo activista y político el trabajo de Rossana Mercado ha visibilizado las violencias históricas y sistemáticas en contra de las mujeres a través del concepto médico de la histeria y su proliferación en el discurso popular peruano, latinoamericano, global, a partir de su colectivo con base en Lima Hysterix. El trabajo que Rossana reunió en esta exhibición incluía una elaboración artítica/conceptual hecha a partir de su experiencia legal por obtener la custodia completa de su hijo en Lima y actualmente el proceso para llevarlo con ella a Suecia. En esta pieza titulada “Pater familias” la artista presentó una intervención de diferentes tipos de documentación con representantes legales y autoridades peruanas y suecas vinculadas con la patria potestad de su hijo y su situación migratoria. El poder visual de esta obra archivo y la violencia que representa, así como de otras piezas de la muestra resulta mucho más contundente que el material censurado.

Cabe decir que, como críticas de la obra de Rossana, creemos que fueron estos y otros factores los que motivaron que se exigiera el retiro de su trabajo. Si bien ABF dice alinearse con los intereses educativos de adultos trabajadores e inmigrantes, creemos que dicho discurso encontró un límite insalvable cuando tuvo que lidiar con el trabajo de una mujer y artista, madre e inmigrante profundamente crítica de los valores de los pater familias y, cuestionadora también, desde su performance pública del ideal de buena inmigrante trabajadora.

Es importante mencionar que la muestra se concibió como una producción colectiva que no solo incluía a otras artistas como Paola Torres Núñez del Prado, Angélica Chávez Cáceres y Ami Kohara, sino que contó con la participación de la comunidad el día de la inauguración. Dicha exhibición además marcaba un inicio importante para las curadoras feministas de Galleri Majkens en su nueva formación, quienes continúan trabajando por valores igualitarios en el mundo del arte.

Claudia Arteaga Olórtegui / Scripps College

Olga Rodríguez-Ulloa / Lafayette College

“Hysteriska Historiska” – a feminist art show by Peruvian artist Rossana Mercado-Rojas has been abruptly cancelled by the show´s host ABF Stockholm. The exhibition visualized the consequences of institutional violence against women.

The following text shows that – whether ABF Stockholm was aware of what they were doing or not – there is no excuse for shutting down an art show only one day after the official opening.

Institutional violence is a phenomenon. A phenomenon that consists of a series of specific, yet almost randomly assorted activities, choices and decisions executed by individuals within the framework of an institution. This complex pathology is the reason for a very common misunderstanding of what a feminist agenda is about: Even though the isolated violent acts of an individual (or a group of individuals) are acts of misogyny, of racism and of oppression, it is the  thereby formed power-structure – created through and perpetuated by them – that entails most danger. The feminist agenda is not to be “against men”. The feminist agenda is to be against the patriarchy. And patriarchy is a structure. An institution.

Feminism works towards a change of the hegemonic order of society. In the words of Guy Debord, this can be achieved through „appropriate actions“.

The word “appropriate”, especially when put next to the word “actions” allegorically exemplify another quite common misunderstanding of what a feminist agenda and feminist practices are about: While inappropriate does not subsequently mean „radical“, appropriate does not mean „submissive or according to the hegemonic order. It also does not mean polite. Add another layer: to appropriate. Means: to take. If we disregard rules and regulations of grammar at this point – which queer practices might be more than happy to grant us – appropriate actions can be interpreted as actions that take a specific place and a specific framework. One might even go as far as to say, actions that take on a specific place and a specific framework – thus revealing a methodology regularly used by critical studies: subversion, mimicry, infiltration. In order to appropriate, the so-called „inappropriate“ can become a tool, often a visual one. This is a procedure that feminism intrinsically shares with the arts – as well as conscious methodology of what artistic and visual representations of feminist practices look like. This encompasses a third common misunderstanding of what a feminist agenda is about: The claim that it has no artistic quality because it chooses to represent the suppressed parts of society by the use of aesthetics that don’t correlate with the hegemonic aesthetic practices in use.

But in any case, it is the specific freedom as well as the responsibility of Art to formulate and give shape to societal issues that need to be addressed. This is why art is always an appropriate action and the censorship of art cannot be tolerated under any circumstances – neither in a controlled gallery space nor in an urban, public environment.

Peruvian artist and curator Rossana Mercado-Rojas explores the possibilities of a feminist agenda to be present in the public sphere through her visual artistic practice, using a language that hovers between the so called in-appropriate and the appropriative. Her work explores tracing the power structures and their violent participation in women’s life through the example of her own body and her own identity. Together with Galleri Majkens Mercado-Rojas has conceptualized the show „Hysteriska Historiska“ which was supposed to be hosted by ABF Stockholm – an institution for the education of workers, established 1916. An institution that – according to their website – creates „faith in the future, emancipation, and solidarity“. Solidarity itself is one of the most important aspects of a feminist agenda – and the failure to anticipate this is a symptom of the fourth most common misunderstanding of what a feminist agenda is about: Even though feminism is striving for a change in society by the means of appropriate actions, feminism is not interested in violence, destruction or vandalization. The appropriation of a space by feminism has nothing to do with overtaking it by force or mistreating it. Even if the visual language of feminist practices can look threatening, daunting, even what we would describe as disgusting (or what we rather should describe as abject) the feminist agenda is not a violent one.

Hysteriska Historiska is an exhibition showcasing Mercado-Rojas work but also a holistic view on appropriate actions: With the visual language of a colorful celebration rather than a sterile gallery space the works visualize patriarchal power structures that have an impact on the artists own life, work and practice. It is undeniable that the majority of the work is inspired by historical and contemporary pains and struggles of female figures – Mercado-Rojas own struggle of gaining custody for her child or the struggle of women who have become objects of physical violence. By negating to answer these oppressions with the same violence, through transformation into an artistic intervention, Rossana Mercado-Rojas presents an optimistic outlook – grounded in the very same solidarity ABF Stockholm is presenting on their website.

It is equally disturbing as it is hysterically funny that this very show was canceled on Friday 30th of November by ABF Stockholm with immediate effect – only one day after the official opening of the exhibition. The disturbing aspects of this decision are not the small details and miscommunications that occurred through the process of canceling the exhibition up to the actual dismantling of the show by Galleri Majkens and the artist: The disturbing aspect lies within the complete refusal of negotiation. The cancellation was motivated by ABFs claims of both the artist and the gallery having disobeyed their rules and regulations – which led to the immediate cancellation without further notice, clear explanation or communication. The erasure of this show is the erasure of a positive outlook into the future, of emancipation and most of all: of solidarity.

As conceptually explained above, both Gallery Majkens as a feminist gallery as well as Rossana Mercado-Rojas as a visual artist with a feminist practice is working with a methodology: Activating space with specific aesthetics in order to work towards a change of society with the use of appropriate actions. These actions are as described above: non-violent, artistic and executed on the base of solidarity and communication.

There is no determinable way of classifying ABFs behavior in this case as…appropriate – in every meaning of the word – since it is a violent expropriation of space. In this case, a space that was knowingly given to a feminist artist in order to produce an art show with feminist aesthetics.

The hysterically ironic aspect of this behavior must be described pre-shadowed by an anecdote: When members of Galleri Majkens arrived at ABF s gallery space on Sunday, December 2nd to begin the deinstallation of the show it was discovered that an unknown individual had covered and thus censured both an abstract vulva and a uterus Rossana Mercado-Rojas had painted in the staircase as part of the exhibition-design. This occurrence was excused by ABF as „separate decision of an employee“  and in no way the decision of ABF. It is ironic that Rossana Mercado-Rojas show about the many ways of institutional violence affecting women is met by an unmasked blow of institutional violence.

ABF Stockholm has through phone calls and emails tried to excuse their behavior with different claims and excuses – all of which can be dismantled by being motivated by the four common misunderstandings of a feminist agenda mentioned above. And this is not acceptable. It is institutional violence and institutional violence is a phenomenon. A phenomenon that consists of a series of specific, yet almost randomly assorted activities, choices and decisions executed by individuals within the framework of an institution. This complex pathology is the reason for a very common misunderstanding of what a feminist agenda is about: Even though the isolated violent acts of an individual (or a group of individuals) are acts of misogyny, of racism and of oppression, it is the thereby formed power-structure – created through and perpetuated by them – that entails most danger. The feminist agenda is not to be “against men”. The feminist agenda is to be against the patriarchy. And patriarchy is a structure. An institution.

Marie-Therese Luger

(Galleri Majkens)