I met Laila Espinoza Feik at the URBAN X INDIGENOUS gathering at SOMArts. Laila's paintings were exquisite, and her son Nyanga was a spark of vitality running around. My mother was visiting me at the time, and Laila and I connected for a moment about how essential it was for us as women to reclaim and integrate our whole selves--including our roles as daughters and mothers--even, or rather especially, in the spaces we inhabit and present ourselves as artists.
While thinking about images that affirmed my approach and philosophy as a diviner, I kept going back to Laila's work, and to the work of the other local artists I had met during URBAN X INDIGENOUS. Cece Carpio. Samantha Javier Curl. Monica Magtoto. Artists of color who are acknowledging, and drawing on, their lineages and ancestry--who are making artworks that are sites of visioning, resistance, healing, nurturance, resilience.
While thinking about images that affirmed my approach and philosophy as a diviner, I kept going back to Laila's work, and to the work of the other local artists I had met during URBAN X INDIGENOUS. Cece Carpio. Samantha Javier Curl. Monica Magtoto. Artists of color who are acknowledging, and drawing on, their lineages and ancestry--who are making artworks that are sites of visioning, resistance, healing, nurturance, resilience.
I chose Laila's painting "Impeccable Tongue", not just for its strong colors that signature the bonds between blood, life, woman, nature, magic, fragility, and transformation. A woman's face appears out of nature's darkmist--she gazes out like a warrior, gazes in like a mystic. This face that mirrors mine when I look at it is serene and strong of will. She shows her tongue, because her tongue and soul are linked. This linking is what makes the tongue impeccable, her power immense.
Laila Espinoza, "Ancient Tongue"/"Impeccable Tongue"
Laila offered to send a brief story of how the painting came about. Here is what she wrote:
Impeccable Tongue (originally titled Ancient Tongue)
I was sitting at the kitchen table. On an old wooden chair facing the door. Through the screen door I saw my grandmother approach. She opened the door and walked into the kitchen. A monarch butterfly flying above her head followed her in. She said to me, “Open your mouth.”
I opened my mouth and stuck my tongue all the way out. At that moment the butterfly flew into my mouth and lay her wing onto my tongue. When her wing was on my tongue, I felt and heard a burning, sizzling sound as the lines and pattern of the wing scarified my tongue.
A dream.
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