The Knots That We Untie Together
sound installation
2024 Bremen, Germany.
To untie these metaphorical knots, I invited 5 women from Latin America to participate in Women’s Circles that took part in Circa106 – to establish a space of trust to talk about the emotions that belong to the migratory processes. By gathering in a group of only women who have lived similar experiences, it is possible to find and accept these emotions, which travel through different subjective experiences of the participants.To emigrate is to assume an uncertain identity forever. Even if you return one day to your country of origin, you will never feel part of it. That is why it is important to look at the past and recognize what was there -, to generate solidity to our roots. This can generate an internal conflict with who you are, especially when you change cultural territory and mentality; that is why your roots of origin have to be strong and stable to be able to open yourself to new paths and cultures.
I connected the stories of Latin American migrant women to the Khipu, in an attempt to give their migration new meaning through the khipu’s original and ancestral Andean wisdom. By accepting and integrating one’s indigenous roots as part of oneself, one may be able to reaffirm one’s identity amidst the struggles of migration. For the women I worked with, it is important to recognize their roots as something that was taken away, that the spanish colonization tried to eliminate. In the same way, they also lost an indigenous, feminine cosmovision of life that they once possessed. This is a loss that is especially affecting in the bodies of indigenous women.
**ABOUT KNOTS: knots began to poetically embody the obstacles we face when trying to express our feelings, symbolizing the way emotion can tighten in the throat or cloud the mind when we attempt to articulate what we feel, often held back by the urge to rationalize everything or when we don’t find the right space for doing it. What I wanted, then, was to begin untying those knots.
Even though emotions are something immaterial, they do carry a symbolic weight within us. I think that we carry them, and depending on our personal and cultural background, they will be faced. They are uncomfortable. They place us in a space of vulnerability that we often avoid because society associates them as something negative – a sign of weakness, mistrust, instability, childishness, even something too “feminine”.
This sound installation centers on a massive body of harbor rope arranged in the space. The rope starts on the floor with knots tied into it and then spirals in on itself, forming a pile. Headphones are placed around the spiral, suggesting the way a women’s circle works – a gathering in a circle as a space of trust, where women can express themselves, share, and support each other by navigating their feelings.
It aims to generate empathy and visibility to the processes, experiences, and emotional dimensions of migrants in foreign countries, emphasizing the displacement of emotions and meanings that are experienced in this process. Hence, the poetic approach to the knot is represented as tension or emotional repression encompassed throughout the physical body -, as something tense, that is knotted and needs to be released, untied, and spoken.
Pictures by Hsun-Hsiang Hsu (ig @piebeehsu)