Women in Latin America

me veo y no me siento, 1998
Raquel Paiewonsky

Today I visited the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) online and viewed the exhibition HERland: Women Artists in the MOLAA Collection. The work of art that caught my attention was Raquel Paiewonsky's me veo y no me siento, produced in 1998 using mixed media on canvas. The artwork is pictured here on the left. At first glance, it's quite off-putting. The image is what appears to be some kind of alien or unnatural being with a giant square-like head, eleven eyes, a rectangular torso without arms, and thin legs that are spread apart and end with gnarly-looking feet. It's not an image that will usually make people say, "wow that's beautiful." It is definitely not an image that gives its audience a feeling of quiet, calm, or serenity. In fact, it does quite the opposite, it gives the audience a feeling of repulsion and, at the same time, oddly enough, a strange fascination, and that's what the artist strives to effect. According to MOLAA, "Raquel Paiewonsky is interested in the body as a platform through which to explore the socio-political impact of issues related to race, ethnicity, and gender from a uniquely Dominican perspective. Highlighting, isolating, or repeating certain physical attributes, Paiewonsky distorts the figure as an expression of the struggle to build an identity in environments shaped by cultural stereotypes and colonial histories. The highly textured and often disjointed works are simultaneously fascinating and repelling, pushing us to confront our own ideas about women in contemporary society."

The Mirabal Sisters from left,
Minerva, Maria Teresa and Patria

I went on JSTOR and looked for an article that relates to the artwork. The article that I found was "Women's Political Participation in the Dominican Republic: The Case of the Mirabal Sisters" by Nancy Robinson from Caribbean Quarterly. The main idea of the article is to highlight women's active role in politics in Latin American countries despite the common and traditional misconception of women's passive role in Latin cultures and societies. The article is about the Mirabal sisters who resisted and opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic (1930-1961). The sisters were ultimately assassinated by Trujillo's men. United Nations officialized the day in 1999 as "International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women" to commemorate women's rights to a life free of violence. The text states, "the enduring significance of the Mirabal sisters in the Dominican Republic is that they have legitimized women's political participation not as 'mothers of the disappeared' or widows, but as political activists in their own right" (Robinson 180). 

"Badass Women in History: The Mirabal Sisters 'The Butterflies'"

Youtube

Paiewonsky's work is captivating in its own strange way. The image of the distorted women is the artist's way of expressing women's hardships in finding their own identities, especially in misogynistic environments teeming with stereotypes and discrimination towards women. In the JSTOR article, three sisters from the Dominican Republic defied the societal norms and fought for their people's freedom from a tyrant, and unfortunately, they fought until they couldn't anymore. The JSTOR article relates to my theme for my Latin American Humanities class, which is the relationship between people and authority. In the case of the Mirabal sisters, they rebelled against authority in hopes to topple Trujillo's authoritarian regime.

Works Cited

"Badass Women in History: The Mirabal Sisters 'The Butterflies.'" Youtube, uploaded by Lajuar Creatura, 6 Nov 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhdxHnau2FA.

ROBINSON, NANCY. “Women’s Political Participation in the Dominican Republic: The Case of the Mirabal Sisters.” Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 2/3, University of the West Indies, 2006, pp. 172–83, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40654568.