We invite the writer Jumko Ogata to reflect on the first individual exhibition of the Haitian artist Tessa Mars on our continent. Curated by Eva Posas at Casa del Lago (MX), "Nan Dòmi/The Songs We Sing" invites us to re-inhabit dreams and reconfigure memory as a political tool.
This is my dream. I sing for my brother-self
A song for an island on fire
A song for tending to the seeds of hope.
/
Este es mi sueño. Yo canto para mi hermano-yo misma
Una canción para una isla en llamas
Una canción para cuidar las semillas de la esperanza.
—Tessa Mars, 2024
The dream world is a space in which our deepest desires are expressed. In it, the past and future are intertwined with each other, reminding us that time is nothing more than an illusion. For Tessa Mars (Port-au-Prince, 1985), this space allows us to recognize longing, the desire to return and take root again in homes that were believed to be lost. Her exhibition, “Nan Dòmi/The Songs We Sing”, recreates the liminal space of dreams to reflect on the diaspora, the connection with the ancestral home and the loss that migration entails. Inaugurated on April 27, 2024 and available until September 22 of the same year at the Casa del Lago UNAM, Mars' work invites viewers to immerse themselves in the worlds that their dreams traverse. The exhibition is located in the Resquicios room of the Casa del Lago, which is in itself an innovative space. In the lower part of Casa del Lago, a warehouse section was adapted to serve as a place of experimentation whose objective is to make visible the work of young Latin American artists who are not contained within the hegemony. The room was founded in 2022, and proposes highlighting artists whose work shows the syncretism of the ancestral and the contemporary.
The lullabies that comforted us are often gory tales that warn us about the dangers of everyday life.
Nan Dòmi is made up of floating sculptures and paintings that, together, contribute to the feeling of multidimensionality that the artist proposes. The images portray a variety of black people, sometimes just their faces, inhabiting this spiritual space and absorbed by it. The expressions on their faces convey nostalgia. We witness parts of the body that are enveloped and practically consumed by roots that sprout from various parts, as well as the suffering that this asphyxia causes. In other cases, people struggle to extract themselves from the soil; their roots waving in the open air and seeming determined in their goal. In contrast with painting, sculptures make us feel like part of the dream world we see before us; colored ropes tied to branches hanging at different angles. Like tangled seaweed and branches from the sea or the roots of a tree, sculptures invite us to consider our own history of uprooting and “transplantation.” In this sense, the publication that complements the exhibition offers the keys to link together the symbols that Tessa Mars uses. The artist proposes four axes to approach the work: the dream, the song, the journey and the root. Like the wind rose, these themes guide us in space and build a narrative with deep origins in Afro-Caribbean history. Tessa Mars was born in Haiti and migrated to Puerto Rico. Like many of her countrymen, the artist was forced to leave her country in search of better opportunities. In this sense, the origin of Nan Dòmi was a dream that the author had, in which she saw a tree similar to the one she recreates through her work. Furthermore, the phrase that gives the exhibition its title is from Haitian Creole and refers to that spiritual space, “neither here nor there,” in which one is neither completely asleep nor completely awake. It is precisely in this space that possibilities for learning and connection with ancestors are created, as it is not determined by the person's permanence in any territory in conscious life. That is to say that, even if the person leaves the territory in which they were born, they will always have access to this place and the information it transmits.
The subjects portrayed embody this dynamism: they all appear to be in motion; no one remains static in this world of dreams. There are those who struggle to dig themselves out, others who caress their own faces that barely stick out of the soil, while others let themselves go, sailing with their roots exposed. These images take us back to the painful process of migration: being in constant movement, with roots on our backs, looking for a place to transplant them to. Haiti is a country that, despite being the spearhead of anti-colonial struggles since the end of the 18th century, has also been the target of multiple foreign interventions that have resulted in dictatorships and immense political instability. Therefore, a good part of the population has been forced to migrate and seek better opportunities in other countries. On the other hand, during the Duvalier dictatorship, the term Dechoukaj became popular, which in Haitian Creole means “to root out,” thought of as the necessary technique to expel the tyrant from power.
Mars offers us different songs to face reality. Dreams allow us to account for the loss and pain we suffer when we are awake, but also for what drives us to seek another world.
Today more than ever, in Mexican history, Nan Dòmi is particularly relevant. On the one hand, the Haitian diaspora in the country has grown steadily for some years and the process that the artist describes is occurring in this territory. Tessa Mars reflects the feeling of loss that a move of this nature implies, but she also reminds us of the strength of roots. Far from being disjointed from the territory where we were born, they represent the home that we carry on our backs, and are ready to be planted in our place of arrival. Spirituality plays an important role in this context: even when we are far from our community, we are guided and cared for by the spirits; we are never truly alone. Another way in which we connect with the origin are lullabies—melodies that take us to the world of dreams, which is precisely the space that will provide us with tools to deal with the conscious world, but also the one that draws a map for us to return when we need it. When we are awake, lullabies bring us back to childhood, to the certainty of knowing we are cared for by someone else. These songs are transmitted from generation to generation; they are part of traditional knowledge that adapts and survives despite forced displacements, in this case, of the African diaspora. The exhibition did not have the recording of the lullaby that is mentioned in the complementary publication; but it would undoubtedly have been a valuable addition to the sensory experience.
Tessa Mars reflects the feeling of loss that a move of this nature implies, but she also reminds us of the strength of roots. Far from being disjointed from the territory where we were born, they represent the home that we carry on our backs, and are ready to be planted in our place of arrival.
The complementary publication of the exhibition was created as a fanzine, a newspaper-sized folio that not only describes the thematic axes behind the pieces, but also weaves dialogues with other Caribbean voices and builds a regional sensitivity crossed by migration, loss and the inherent violence of colonization. It includes, for example, some fragments of the poetry of Dionne Brand, a writer born in Trinidad and Tobago. Mars dialogues with Brand's work, through a question-answer in which it is evident that the sorrows that tormented the poet persist in black artists of subsequent generations:
"Why don't I remember my life in detail?
Because I was always going somewhere else,
And what I was experiencing was not important at the moment."
“This is the story of the body:
Water, maybe darkness, maybe stars
Bone, then scales, then wings, then legs, then arms…”
While for Tessa Mars the intangibility of the dream world is the most solid thing in the process of displacement, Dionne Brand recognizes the disorientation that this movement generates. The body is disintegrating, memories are reduced to sensory and ephemeral aspects. Moments are the only thing that remains on the path and, despite the nostalgia, it is clear that it is impossible to bond eternally to a territory due to the risk it poses for survival. The body itself becomes a nation traversed by borders; the idea of one's own country is discarded because it is history repeated over and over again. The idea of the “American dream” is never mentioned; however, this notion lurks behind the disenchanted words of both artists. What is sleep for those who are trapped by insomnia? The lullabies that comforted us are often gory tales that warn us about the dangers of everyday life. Mars offers us different songs to face reality. Dreams allow us to account for the loss and pain we suffer when we are awake, but also for what drives us to seek another world. There are songs for sowing and songs that make it burn, both are present in the same space; it is up to the dreamer to find the path, wake up and follow the steps outlined in the plane of ancestral wisdom.
This is my dream. I sing for my brother-self
A song for an island on fire
A song for tending to the seeds of hope.
/
Este es mi sueño. Yo canto para mi hermano-yo misma
Una canción para una isla en llamas
Una canción para cuidar las semillas de la esperanza.
—Tessa Mars, 2024
The dream world is a space in which our deepest desires are expressed. In it, the past and future are intertwined with each other, reminding us that time is nothing more than an illusion. For Tessa Mars (Port-au-Prince, 1985), this space allows us to recognize longing, the desire to return and take root again in homes that were believed to be lost. Her exhibition, “Nan Dòmi/The Songs We Sing”, recreates the liminal space of dreams to reflect on the diaspora, the connection with the ancestral home and the loss that migration entails. Inaugurated on April 27, 2024 and available until September 22 of the same year at the Casa del Lago UNAM, Mars' work invites viewers to immerse themselves in the worlds that their dreams traverse. The exhibition is located in the Resquicios room of the Casa del Lago, which is in itself an innovative space. In the lower part of Casa del Lago, a warehouse section was adapted to serve as a place of experimentation whose objective is to make visible the work of young Latin American artists who are not contained within the hegemony. The room was founded in 2022, and proposes highlighting artists whose work shows the syncretism of the ancestral and the contemporary.
The lullabies that comforted us are often gory tales that warn us about the dangers of everyday life.
Nan Dòmi is made up of floating sculptures and paintings that, together, contribute to the feeling of multidimensionality that the artist proposes. The images portray a variety of black people, sometimes just their faces, inhabiting this spiritual space and absorbed by it. The expressions on their faces convey nostalgia. We witness parts of the body that are enveloped and practically consumed by roots that sprout from various parts, as well as the suffering that this asphyxia causes. In other cases, people struggle to extract themselves from the soil; their roots waving in the open air and seeming determined in their goal. In contrast with painting, sculptures make us feel like part of the dream world we see before us; colored ropes tied to branches hanging at different angles. Like tangled seaweed and branches from the sea or the roots of a tree, sculptures invite us to consider our own history of uprooting and “transplantation.” In this sense, the publication that complements the exhibition offers the keys to link together the symbols that Tessa Mars uses. The artist proposes four axes to approach the work: the dream, the song, the journey and the root. Like the wind rose, these themes guide us in space and build a narrative with deep origins in Afro-Caribbean history. Tessa Mars was born in Haiti and migrated to Puerto Rico. Like many of her countrymen, the artist was forced to leave her country in search of better opportunities. In this sense, the origin of Nan Dòmi was a dream that the author had, in which she saw a tree similar to the one she recreates through her work. Furthermore, the phrase that gives the exhibition its title is from Haitian Creole and refers to that spiritual space, “neither here nor there,” in which one is neither completely asleep nor completely awake. It is precisely in this space that possibilities for learning and connection with ancestors are created, as it is not determined by the person's permanence in any territory in conscious life. That is to say that, even if the person leaves the territory in which they were born, they will always have access to this place and the information it transmits.
The subjects portrayed embody this dynamism: they all appear to be in motion; no one remains static in this world of dreams. There are those who struggle to dig themselves out, others who caress their own faces that barely stick out of the soil, while others let themselves go, sailing with their roots exposed. These images take us back to the painful process of migration: being in constant movement, with roots on our backs, looking for a place to transplant them to. Haiti is a country that, despite being the spearhead of anti-colonial struggles since the end of the 18th century, has also been the target of multiple foreign interventions that have resulted in dictatorships and immense political instability. Therefore, a good part of the population has been forced to migrate and seek better opportunities in other countries. On the other hand, during the Duvalier dictatorship, the term Dechoukaj became popular, which in Haitian Creole means “to root out,” thought of as the necessary technique to expel the tyrant from power.
Mars offers us different songs to face reality. Dreams allow us to account for the loss and pain we suffer when we are awake, but also for what drives us to seek another world.
Today more than ever, in Mexican history, Nan Dòmi is particularly relevant. On the one hand, the Haitian diaspora in the country has grown steadily for some years and the process that the artist describes is occurring in this territory. Tessa Mars reflects the feeling of loss that a move of this nature implies, but she also reminds us of the strength of roots. Far from being disjointed from the territory where we were born, they represent the home that we carry on our backs, and are ready to be planted in our place of arrival. Spirituality plays an important role in this context: even when we are far from our community, we are guided and cared for by the spirits; we are never truly alone. Another way in which we connect with the origin are lullabies—melodies that take us to the world of dreams, which is precisely the space that will provide us with tools to deal with the conscious world, but also the one that draws a map for us to return when we need it. When we are awake, lullabies bring us back to childhood, to the certainty of knowing we are cared for by someone else. These songs are transmitted from generation to generation; they are part of traditional knowledge that adapts and survives despite forced displacements, in this case, of the African diaspora. The exhibition did not have the recording of the lullaby that is mentioned in the complementary publication; but it would undoubtedly have been a valuable addition to the sensory experience.
Tessa Mars reflects the feeling of loss that a move of this nature implies, but she also reminds us of the strength of roots. Far from being disjointed from the territory where we were born, they represent the home that we carry on our backs, and are ready to be planted in our place of arrival.
The complementary publication of the exhibition was created as a fanzine, a newspaper-sized folio that not only describes the thematic axes behind the pieces, but also weaves dialogues with other Caribbean voices and builds a regional sensitivity crossed by migration, loss and the inherent violence of colonization. It includes, for example, some fragments of the poetry of Dionne Brand, a writer born in Trinidad and Tobago. Mars dialogues with Brand's work, through a question-answer in which it is evident that the sorrows that tormented the poet persist in black artists of subsequent generations:
"Why don't I remember my life in detail?
Because I was always going somewhere else,
And what I was experiencing was not important at the moment."
“This is the story of the body:
Water, maybe darkness, maybe stars
Bone, then scales, then wings, then legs, then arms…”
While for Tessa Mars the intangibility of the dream world is the most solid thing in the process of displacement, Dionne Brand recognizes the disorientation that this movement generates. The body is disintegrating, memories are reduced to sensory and ephemeral aspects. Moments are the only thing that remains on the path and, despite the nostalgia, it is clear that it is impossible to bond eternally to a territory due to the risk it poses for survival. The body itself becomes a nation traversed by borders; the idea of one's own country is discarded because it is history repeated over and over again. The idea of the “American dream” is never mentioned; however, this notion lurks behind the disenchanted words of both artists. What is sleep for those who are trapped by insomnia? The lullabies that comforted us are often gory tales that warn us about the dangers of everyday life. Mars offers us different songs to face reality. Dreams allow us to account for the loss and pain we suffer when we are awake, but also for what drives us to seek another world. There are songs for sowing and songs that make it burn, both are present in the same space; it is up to the dreamer to find the path, wake up and follow the steps outlined in the plane of ancestral wisdom.
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CALLE ARTÍCULO 123 #6, INT100, COLONIA CENTRO, DELEGACIÓN CUAUHTÉMOC, CDMX 06048, MÉXICO 2024 // TERREMOTO