Bilocation: Travels Between Worlds
Regarding saints it is held that they can be present in two locations at once, without regard to the limitations of time and space. They celebrate communion with one group of people, meanwhile providing comfort to the sorrowful at some great distance away. To those skeptical of miracles it is impossible for matter to occupy different places simultaneously; the more acceptable theology distinguishes between supernatural spirit and corporeal existence. Natural science dismisses the possibility altogether. To be transported to another location—through a taste of food, an old photograph, a spoken accent, the recognition of a familiar plant or bird—is understood to be a kind of metaphor, a memory from some other time and place briefly dis-locating us from where we really are.
The refusal to acknowledge that a person can be present in two locations is especially cruel to migrants, refugees, and peoples of a diaspora. It is expected that a second or third generation will come to their senses and fully inhabit the new homeland; failing assimilation, a first generation burdened by memories of somewhere else is pitiable. Perhaps this is why some of the most affecting testaments in the Geneseo Migrant Center archives are expressed through art: a secular form of the miraculous that tells the truth of being in two places at once.
In a drawing created by Emilio Alvarez León, Earth appears with several of its solar system neighbors against a starry background. This is where things get more wondrous, since among the smaller stars there are also four-pointed natal stars--so called because they symbolize the Star of Bethlehem and whose shape is said to prefigure the crucifix. And if North America has been foreshortened, with Mexico and Central America made relatively larger, it seems the planet has been rotated a few degrees to return a farmworker sojourning in Western New York.
For more than two decades, participants in the Creative Artists Migrant Assistance Program (CAMPS) have worked with visual artist Julia Stewart-Bittle to create mandalas. In a literal, etymological sense they are circular compositions. In many of the world's spiritual traditions, moreover, mandalas are cosmological maps or objects of contemplation to facilitate journeys. The outward travel of bodies and the inward travel of spirits is understood to be a false duality.
Mandala drawings created at CAMPS workshops. Top Row: Omar; Ernestina Altamirano; Emilio Alvarez León; Ruiz Pita. Bottom Row: Eva Hernandez; Lucezita; Ramiro Valázquez Rodriguez; Jabneel Pacheco. Click on a thumbnail to view the full-sized image.
Some of the mandalas pictured above enact a symmetry that characterizes Hindu, Buddhist, Mayan, and Aztec traditions: Ernestina Altamirano's remembered colors and patterns of blankets; Jabneel Pacheco's vision of earthly spheres in harmonious alignment. Other, more pictorial mandalas enact a journey back home. There are the names and icons of specific family members, with a prayer for un dia mas. The golden eagle of Mexican symbology appears on the national emblem, or watches over a small village. Even colors of the Mexican flag render an anthropomorphic heart-face ambiguous: is the artist referring to a specific person or, given the red-white-green color palette, Mexico itself? Or perhaps both? Te extraño; I miss you.
The Geneseo Migrant Center materials are filled with what might be called Departures, Arrivals, and Connections. That is, sometimes it is recorded only where the travel originated, like a farm or migrant labor camp; the exact destination is unknowable to us. Humberto Santes, working at the Plato Brook Farm in Arcade, NY wishes he could "return to the time / That has already passed," but knows that "Now when I want to speak / With you, brother, I only need / To remember you, and I feel that / You are here." A father, a beloved daughter named Deysi, a group of childhood friends, a "scary place" in a village, the sea--these and other endpoints all originated from some nondescript farm. In other cases we have record of a place like Esmont or Veracruz or Pinabeto, declared like an incantation, to record the arrival home. Oliver Murphy recounts the many places he has labored since leaving his home in Savannah, now including somewhere else in Western New York, "But my favorite memory is / working with my Daddy."
Rarest of all are the pathways corroborating that a traveler has been in two places at once: bilocation. Like any other miracle, the outward aspect of its connection may appear humble or at first inaccessible to those lacking imagination. At or shortly before painting "The Cherry Workers are Picking," Juan Cavazos lived in migrant housing at the Long View Fruit Farm not far from Sodus, NY. He had crossed into America in 1985 and worked in several states. Cavazos' unsparing critique of American agriculture originates in lived experience; a cherry picker winking at viewers confirms that as consumers they're in the orchard, too. His uncanny form of implication may have been learned from Mexican muralists like David Alfaro Siqueiros in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon.
Brothers Diodoro and Samuel Gonzalez Perez, along with their cousin Avelino Gonzalez Perez, created dioramas made of popsicle stick structures. The house shown here is decorated with a mariposa, or butterfly. The miniatures look like Folk Art, with all of the circumscribed praise that term often implies. But as Diodoro explained, “I made the figures with the objective of remembering something of my village." A basketball court on which the family competed as a team together was the focal point for their diorama: looking down on the miniature, they were transported to the village of Chincanaque de Pinabeta, in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Houses, schools, a marimba band...everything organized itself around the court. The mariposa house shown here was given to Sylvia Kelly, director of the CAMPS program, and it remains available for travel to those with open hearts.
Works Consulted
-- Howell, Jayne. Interview with Diodoro, Samuel, and Avelino Gonzalez Perez. 5 Nov. 1992. Courtesy of Geneseo Migrant Center. Hyperlink here
-- Murphy, Oliver. "Savannah, Georgia All My Days." Voices of the Harvest. Ed Sylvia Kelly. 1992. Hyperlink here
-- "Bilocation." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. Hyperlink here