~JILL
PELÁEZ
BAUMGAERTNER~
UPROOTED
The artists painting Cuba from memory
or from photographs, from family
stories
of the exodus, from dreams, know
their bloodlines are not clear.
The work
is mongrel, neither Cuban nor American.
They paint masks, figures floating,
palm
trees set on pedestals. They
sculpt women
locked in birth. What they
want is a particular
place. What they find is borrowed
space.
In hand-colored gelatin silver prints
or wood
with oil and gold leaf or oil on
linen or on
masonite or on carved locust bark,
they discover
new rooms, dream landscapes, regions
of origin
as small as phone-booths, as expansive
as cane
fields, rented, tenanted, temporary.
—Interprete mi silencio—,
one says.
They are like poets scratching out
their
metaphors sideways on pieces of
lined paper,
crossgrain, drafting possibilities,
unsettled, undecided.
These artists ask and never receive
replies,
remember without mementos, feel
without touching.
They have heard of the royal palm,
seventy feet tall
and seek its landscape. How
odd its trunk
is almost hollow, its roots mere
threads.
© by Jill Peláez Baumgaertner
