Kaleidoscopic No. 8: Raisa Galofre Cortés
Thinking, feeling, sensing through pluralities..
I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue – my woman‘s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence“
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera. The New Mestiza, p. 81.
Leonardo Bravo
Today I’m interviewing Raisa Galofre Cortés for Kaleidoscopic Projects. It's great to talk to you as I've been following SAVVY Contemporary here in Berlin and through that your own research based curatorial practice, and your artistic work which embeds a sense of social engagement and thinking/feeling through diasporic world making. It's really wonderful for me to be able to check in with you, especially as I’m now starting to connect more with the arts and culture community in Berlin.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Thank you so much, Leonardo, for inviting me and for having me here. For opening up the space to share my practice and also to exchange some ideas and experiences. Very happy about this.
Leonardo Bravo
One of the things I'm always super interested in is in people's personal journey and how that is reflected in their work. It'd be great to share about your own journey from Colombia to Berlin and how that helped shape your own curatorial values, your artistic values, and how these things come together now.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Yes, of course. Well, to start I didn't go to art school. In Barranquilla (Colombia) I studied – what we can translate in English – Communication Sciences and Journalism. This is a combination of communication theories and practice. In terms of text and media production, the emphasis was mostly journalistic. At that time I thought I would pursue a career in documentary film and photography. When I actually finished my studies, I began to feel this incredible need and impulse to try something else beyond the journalistic approach and the language of facts.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
It was more like an instinct. A feeling that I needed to express myself in another way, in a way that wasn’t necessarily “one to one to reality”... if one can say that. But it was only after I had the means to buy my first photographic camera, when I started to produce my first images. I began working with my own body and staging self-portraits in my family home. I believe this came out of a need to explore certain questions, certain reflections, that were going on, moving around and always present in me, but that didn't find a channel to be expressed and to be visible until then.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Through these self-portraits, I began to, as Gloria Anzaldúa would say in El camino de la Mestiza / The Mestiza way in her book Borderlands / La Frontera, “(...) take inventory. Despojando, desgranando, quitando paja…” of all the stories and things we have been told of what we are, what we are able to do… you know, all these ideas of identity and subjectivity socialized and internalized through generations. In my case, as a female identified person, it was about how to reveal, deconstruct and confront the concepts and ideas that shaped my personal herstory in a society like the Colombian-Caribbean and the intuition that others might also see themselves in this process and these images.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
As life would happen, I was presented with an opportunity to study abroad, in Germany. But first I had to make and save some money for that. For nearly a year I worked as a waitress for different restaurants and events in New York. When I got to Germany, I had very little time to learn German at University level and get admitted to a masters program. This was a crazy marathon! After several attempts, it worked out and I could finally start a masters in photography. I have to say, this wasn’t an “easy” study time. Dealing with sexism and racism in a city like Halle (Saale) and its institutions made me hesitate to continue several times. What helped along the way was to focus on my goals and take the experience of living in a very different culture and territory from which I come from as material for my artistic work and practice.
Leonardo Bravo
Absolutely. In a different world altogether.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Yes, a different way of being, of understanding the world. This contrast made me think and reflect with a certain distance about how I perceive, make sense of and how I can express what I perceive and read in the world. I then found myself “coming back to the roots” and going deeper on the many ways in which I could use visual language for expression. This topic of language or languages is very important in my practice. My first experiences with self-portraits made me reflect on and realize that I'd been struggling with, what Anzaldúa describes, the tradition of silence that has been very much part of the colonial legacy passed onto generations and generations in families and women in Colombia and in the Caribbean region.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
In addition to that, the machismo culture which we know is very much shaping societies in these regions. So there was – actually, there is – this need to break with that tradition and – following Anzaldúas' thinking – to reflect on what is coming from there, on how do we build something new? So, in my practice, it's the breaking off from those traditions and then trying to create or craft new languages – not only visual but also sonic – to express, to address, to name….
Leonardo Bravo
I've taught at UCLA for the last couple of years and some of the theoretical foundations that I introduce to my students is the work of Gloria Anzaldúa and Audre Lorde. And, it's so beautiful what you're saying about this naming, this sense of reshaping context and identity, because that's what their writing is really all about, this sense of shedding the layers of a colonial kind of oppression to find new ways, to find new worlds, to find new names, and also embrace that in-between space, to be in that hybrid space of the pluralities of existence.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Yes, definitely. The pluralities and also the contradictions
It's a constant negotiation. It also implies recognizing the tools that we have, using them to shape something that might be new. But not necessarily has to be new, it's just something that grows from that individual or collective search. So this constant search for languages is part of my own practice. For example, one of the tools that I’ve found in my journey is the magic-realistic storytelling. I’m inspired by its hybrid and creole character and of course the Caribbean thinking/feeling/sensing. Magic Realism, for us in Abya Yala (Latin America) and the Caribbean, besides being a literature genre, it is a way of being, a way of dealing with reality, of finding oneself in reality. It is also a language that stands precisely against the tyranny of rationality.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Magical Realism acknowledges the violence of the clash of all these subjectivities and worlds – the Indigenous, the African and the European – that first collided by colonization. Departing from there, it says, let's see what possibilities we have from that clash and encounter, what can grow from there and from a place of coexistence. That’s one of the topics I visually engage with in my works. And that's one of the tools I’ve found along my way.
Leonardo Bravo
So let's talk about the Daughters of the Muntu series, because I found the imagery so related to exactly what you're speaking to. It'd be great to get your description, your reason for the series.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Yes, Daughters of the Muntu is a body of work that I'm slowly putting together and crafting. The chapter you probably saw is Daughters of the Muntu, A Pluriverse. There is a second chapter I'm working on, which is on Cantaoras, the ancestral singers of Bullerengue in the Colombian Caribbean region and from which there is already a sound piece I did called “We Travel in Circles / Viajamos en Rondas”. Daughters of the Muntu is inspired by the novel by Afro-Colombian Caribbean writer Manuel Zapata Olivella, Changó, El Gran Putas / Changó, The Biggest Badass. This novel is a retelling of the African experience and diaspora from the enslavement to the arrival in the Caribbean and the Americas. With this novel he proposes a new literary realism: a mythical review of history with the African (Sub-Saharan) philosophy and worldview at the base. Nevertheless, because of the Spanish Castillean language, the narration is mostly in the masculine gender.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
So I wanted to flip it from the gendered view and say… What about if we talk about the daughters of the Muntu, not to highlight the binary male/female but to just open up reflections on this. What if we look at this as a way of reflecting on the commonalities and interrelations of the big Muntu family in the contemporary Colombian-Caribbean. In contrast to the classic history- storytelling we find non-human actively participating in the narration, we find that the landscape is also a character, for example... of course the Orishas, and ancestors play a big part in this sense. The beings, either non-human or human are presented as a big family that are interconnected and are supporting each other to go on with life, to survive, to thrive, to live. For the series I looked at the contemporary daughters of the Muntu in the Colombian-Caribbean through portraits which resemble landscapes and landscapes that I presented as if they were a texture of a skin in order to visually construct this interdependency.
Leonardo Bravo
I found that really compelling and that's what drew me to the series. There's something so evocative about the faces to begin with, but then this combination against the landscape and nature. Also being from Latin America myself having that awareness and that sense of animism, that sense that the landscape and nature embody a sense of being alive, um, powerfully alive. So I found that really striking.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Thank you. You know, I also think of Daughters of the Muntu body of work as the opportunity to closely look at the African influence and the African way of thinking, of being, that is very much present in the Colombian Caribbean region or better say, in Colombia in general. In Colombia we tend to connect our African ancestry mostly to music and dance. This is of course very important and is also a big topic I work on. But there are also other expressions and manifestations of this ancestry that are very much present in our daily life. Literature, for example. So that was one of the reasons I started working on this series.
Leonardo Bravo
Have you exhibited the series or are you thinking of publishing it as a book?
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Well, actually a selection of photographs will be exhibited in the beginning of December in the Rencontres de Bamako, the African Photography Biennale in Bamako, Mali.
Leonardo Bravo
Wow. Congratulations.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Thank you. Some of the photographs I took in 2015 when I was in Barranquilla for the carnivals. These photos were basically sleeping in my archives, and then in 2019 or 2020 I started looking at them again and saw them with new eyes.
Leonardo Bravo
I would love to discuss more of your work and especially the Modern Coloniality series which is a little bit different and has some sculptural or object-like elements to it.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Yes. It's funny because in my work, sometimes I find it difficult to describe, or to define myself in terms of the formal aspects and aesthetics used. They may look very different, even though they are all inspired by the same current of reflections and ideas.
Leonardo Bravo
And I would tell you that I can see that in the formal qualities of your work, but there's also a sensibility that I think comes through in the works that for me is tying it together.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Well, great… I was even thinking, okay, if I want to “define” myself, I would say my work is like a carnival parade, you know? unfolding streams, currents here and there and all of these streams have in common mestiza and creole World-making, world-sensing, world-telling of stories and each work is a different wagon or comparsa.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
So this series that focuses on the concepts of modernity/coloniality is coming from the same roots of thinking, in the sense that, what drives me is the urge to question, deconstruct, unveil what’s behind the narratives that we have been told.
From decolonial thinking we know that western modernity is not an ontological moment in history… It is rhetoric. It's a story. It's a narrative. It's something that is constructed. My concern is then who tells the story. Why, when, for whom and for what reasons? On the other hand, coloniality, which is a concept from Latin American scholars and thinkers, especially Aníbal Quijano, is the other side of this story. Modernity is telling us the story of progress and of development, but the real question is how is this progress and how is this development achieved?
Leonardo Bravo
Yes, it's based on extraction, and it's based on erasure, and displacement.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Exactly. So in an attempt to unveil what’s behind these narratives in a photo series, I developed “Supporting Surfaces” and “Concrete Discontinuities” while I was in Bangalore, India, during an artist's residency with the Goethe Institute Bangalore and the Indian Institute for Human Settlements.
Leonardo Bravo
Raisa, you are well traveled!
Raisa Galofre Cortés
I've had great opportunities and am very thankful for that!
This was in 2019. Bangalore is known as the so-called Silicon Valley of India. There's a lot of IT companies and parks. In the city you see these huge industrial parks and buildings, tech hubs and everything… crazy. But I was interested in the questions about labor: Under which conditions is this “development” put into motion? What is the other side of this story? To open up these reflections I decided to visually work them through sculptural compositions I did with man/woman-made and natural materials. I alternate them with stagings and documentary photographs.
The series Concrete Discontinuities: Narratives of dwelling and becoming in the Urban is built as a visual dialogue with my partner Marvin Systermans, who is also an artist and photographer. In this series we explore the spaces between the so-called traditional and modern, and the state of continuous becoming in Bangalore and these dichotomies so evident there.
Leonardo Bravo
Looking at these two together, it's really interesting because then you see the topographies at play, the social and cultural topographies you're speaking about and how they reinforce each other. Your images are so inviting, they are aesthetically seductive, which I feel is a special trick when you're doing work that has critical discourse built into it, but also to have something that is inviting to the viewer rather than just like, okay, here's the issue and just deal with it.
Leonardo Bravo
So, all this amazing personal work but you are also very active as a curator and very involved with SAVVY Contemporary which is one of the leading spaces here in Berlin. I wanted to find out how you find that sense of communal and collective transformation in your own work, but also in the sense of being involved in these artistic or cultural communities here.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Yes, even though I started my artistic journey as something very personal, very individual, more and more I've had this feeling or necessity to work collectively. I recognize that I am not the kind of artist who can just work in my studio. I love to do that, but at a certain point it feels like being in your own bubble. I also have this need to connect with people and to feel that somehow we are together working for something, having a vision, sharing and supporting each other. I think being part of SAVVY is one of the reasons why I’ve had this feeling of being at home in Germany – besides personal reasons and my partner of course – but even so, every now and then he asks me, why don't we go to Barranquilla instead for a few years?
Leonardo Bravo
And get a little more sun!
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Yes! SAVVY has definitely played an important role. When I first went there, my experience was to be in a place where you can just be and breathe and feel connected on so many levels. After a few years, one experiences that this connection is woven from cooking, dancing together to realizing massive projects out of the madness and love we feel for the visions and the callings that we share. It’s also been an intense and fruitful learning and growing process in which I’ve had the opportunity to work in areas I didn’t have experience before, like the curatorial. For example as curatorial assistant in the project Whose Land Have I lit on now? and recently as curator and researcher in one of this year’s projects, Magical Hackerism or The Elasticity of Resilience.
Leonardo Bravo
I saw it. I went to see that exhibition.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Amazing! Yes, as a personal note, that project connected conceptually with my own artistic work, as it took magic realism as a starting point. So it was very exciting to participate in the project’s collective unfolding with its focus on the tropical region.
Leonardo Bravo
We’ve talked a little bit about this, but to expand on how your experiences as someone of a Colombian Caribbean identity inform how you see the world, especially in the context of being here in Europe and Berlin and how you maintain that sense of identity.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Yes. Yes. I, I try with this gray sky…(laughs)
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Well, one of the things for example, is that in every project I'm involved in, I always include works and performances, invite authors, artists that propose bodily and sonic thinking and embodiment
Raisa Galofre Cortés
It's always present and it's not something that I consciously plan, it's just something that naturally flows in me… to think through the dance, through the music, through the sound, through the body. ¡Hacer una rumba, Hacer una fiesta!
Leonardo Bravo
That's so nice what you're talking about and your work and your involvement in SAVVY. I think there's so many cultural institutions that want to create a sense of belonging and sometimes it comes down to some of the most basic and human experiences like eating together, and music together, and dancing. These are like essential human actions that connect us beyond our differences. You know, we're all different, but then there's some pretty powerful things that bring us together.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Yes, definitely. And that is something that we just naturally practice at SAVVY: cooking together, eating together, and dancing. And yes, it's those non-institutional ways of making community that mean so much.
Leonardo Bravo
This has been such an uplifting conversation and I always like to end with what's bringing you joy or what's bringing you inspiration right now, especially all the upheavals of the last couple of years.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Oh!
Well the pandemic has been hard in many ways. One of the learnings is that, I think it made us collectively recognize that things can get very complicated very fast. So let's not waste time.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Let's try to do, and to engage, and to be together, and to create. I'm sometimes this kind of perfectionist waiting for things to be “super ready” to bring them out and on the other hand someone who every now and then deals with self-doubt and insecurity as well… but lately I'm like once I feel things are ready, I'm putting them out. Nowadays I'm trying to just do.. and have the trust that what I do will become this thing that will grow and it will enrich itself through feedback. I’ve experienced that what is important is to be in conversation, to be part of the conversation. I've also discovered for myself other mediums like sound that I'm working with lately, that has also opened up another huge universe -- a Pluriverse!
Leonardo Bravo
Oh, beautiful.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Yes. And yes, thinking about what’s bringing me joy and inspiration, I’ll add to that, that I am pregnant.
Leonardo Bravo
Wow!
Raisa Galofre Cortés
And I have to say, besides the normal tiredness I've felt such an energy and a fire! I don't know, like I feel really hopeful… more hopeful of doing things and accomplishing things. It's really kind of like an acceleration full of inspiration and strength
Leonardo Bravo
Well that’s beautiful. That's really, really beautiful to hear. Congratulations to you and your partner. This has been such a treat and it's so wonderful just to like get this little slice of time with you. I would love to follow up with a little cafecito at some point, or a studio visit if time allows here in Berlin.
Raisa Galofre Cortés
Yeah definitely. I would love to continue the chat!