Tate

I have never been to an art museum dedicated solely to modern art. Truthfully, I have only been to a few art museums, all in the Tulsa area. The closest thing I have experienced to the Tate is the AHHA in Tulsa that displays local art in seasonal exhibits. Even then, it was nothing compared to this gallery and was certainly not on the same scale as the Tate Museum. Going in, I knew that I would be able to appreciate the art inside, but I was delighted to be moved by some of the pieces as well. 

The first piece that made my heart heavy was by Teresa Margolles, and it’s title was Flag 1. At first glance, it just seems like some ratted, old flag that has seen years and years of wear. However, the process of its decaying color and the motive behind it made me gasp out loud. The fabric contained blood, soil, and other substances from the sites of murders that have occured around the northern border of Mexico. These deaths were all the outcome of the brutal drug cartels that occupy smuggling routes into the United States. The part of the art description that truly made my heart sink was the very last sentence, “As the government failed to intervene in the drug wars, the blood-stained cloth was hung outside the Mexican pavillion as a memorial for the citizens that the nation ignored”. I couldn’t help but think about the current (and past)  climate of the United States in correlation with the devastating murders of so many citizens due to gun violence. I am fighting back tears now just writing this because they’re deaths that I don’t understand, much like the lives lost in Mexico because of the violence committed by the drug cartels. When I say I don’t understand, I don’t mean to say that some deaths due to violence make sense to me, I just mean that deaths of citizens ignored by those that are in place to protect them especially don’t make sense to me. What I found so raw about this flag was that the fabric itself was embedded with the actual blood, dirt, and dust of the places where these murders took place. There was something so haunting about that to me, because so often we place memorials that look clean and beautiful, when the event we are memorializing was everything but. It made me wonder, if we were to create pieces like this for every shooting in America, what would the response be? What if we took the clothes of every child/adult victim of the recent shooting in Texas, plus every mass shooting we’ve had in the recent years and sewed them together to create a blood-stained blanket to wrap around the Statue of Liberty, what would our government think then? There are so many thoughts that ran through my head while absorbing the information of this piece, but what stuck with me was the sadness and utter despair I felt afterwards. There are no words to describe the disappointment I feel for the lack of humanity shown towards the victims this flag represents, as well as the victims of murder within our own home. I will leave you with a quote that I found from Teresa Margolles’ website that I feel we should all sit with, “Looking at the dead you see society”. 

The second piece that I fell in love with was also related to death, this time in a way that gave me hope. It is by Juan Manuel Echavarria in collaboration with Fernando Grisalez. The piece includes a wall full of square images that change depending on what side of them you are standing on. Each square is a photograph of a gravesite occupied by an unidentified body, or part of one that was washed into the Magdelena river and rescued by the villagers of Puerto Berrio and then buried in their cemetery. The images are of the graves over time, so most of the photos are taken months or years apart showing the transformation of each grave and the care its been shown by this community. I found it so heartwarming that these people were claiming these dead bodies as their own, showing value to their lost souls, and even going so far as giving them names in order to demonstrate the care and meaning each lost life should have. It also spoke to the way grief changes over time, some of the images began bare, as if the death was too shocking to recognize. Then, over time, as we process, the grave was covered in flowers and given a name. Which to me represented that sometimes in order to fully appreciate and celebrate life, you must give yourself time to see and understand the death.