“How can you decolonize the archives?” Can you even decolonize the archives, which is the very implement of organization and classification of resources and knowledge production done in the name of cartographic violence? Is decolonization a means of dewesternization? So, you just take out the west? That we immediately seek refuge, albeit a nostalgic one, of the pre-colonial and indigenous past? That seems to be myopic and easily erases a part of history that is crucial to the formation of hybrid bodies such as who I am. I am mestizo. I am of overlapping borders. I am of many tides and many shifting shores. I am archipelagic that does not need the continent. I am the urban and I am the jungle. I am what was controlled and what can be unleashed.
Perhaps, decolonization is using the weapons against continued oppression and subjection? Perhaps decolonization happens with agentic self-assemblages particularly to point out the tremulous ground which colonialism stands upon?
Hence, I use the concept of the retablos to trouble the archives. In the Philippines, particularly in the island of Bohol, retablos are mini altars that have niches for saints. In Mexico, retablos are folk art which people ask a retablista to say their thanks for prayers that are answered. In recent history of Peru, the retablo is literally the theatrical setting of peace after many violent years of uprising. The retablo is very much powerful in these cultures as not only to house the deities, but also to affirm cherished prayers. So, I thought, what of prayers that remain unanswered?
For me, those are more powerful because answered prayers are miracles, and miracles are about clarity. Hence, unanswered prayers are liminal or in between, as if stuck in limbo.
I studied the Mexican retablos as well as the Peruvian retablos and they are garish and beautiful. The Mexican ones can be seen like comics with beautiful script of prayers to ground the image. Writing down the prayers is performative mark-making stating your intention, which is in itself agentic.
Hence, I work on these jungle retablos which are images of the slowly creeping of the wild to the overwrought. Colonizers have sought to tame the jungle as offering to their kingdoms. With tamed jungles, resources can easily be pinpointed and extracted. Taming is what the archives are. The retablos I did are prayers to understand the necessity of messiness, that power need not be vertical and clear, but it can be differently lit horizons. These are prayers to invoke safe voyages across archipelagic thinking and across tropicality. This is not to raze the jungles and sift through the ruins to be placed in museum cabinets. This is slink with the vines, and to glide across the muck in an attempt to not just survive the jungle but to embrace the inner jungle and relish in veins and roots but still emergent enough to tell the tales.
Jungle Retablo III