From Inside the Bag

++This post is from the first edition of my blog entitled You Are Here++

On Friday night, I participated in a performance as part of the HTMlles Festival in Montreal.  It was my fourth experience entering and embodying the textile bags created by Colombian-Canadian artist Laura Acosta and that night, ladies and gentlemen, something magic happened.  In no way am I saying that the quality of the performance was some genius work of art… but rather that from my own, subjective experience as one of the bodies in the performance, it was life-altering. 

When I first volunteered to help out at one of Laura’s performances, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  My partner, who’s the one who got me the gig, said something along the lines of, “You’ll get in the bag, walk around, no big deal…” (typical).  When I got to the venue, finding out that I was one of the “performers” caught me off guard completely.  The only thing that kept me there was my commitment to my word and the glass of wine or two that convinced me that everything would be ok.  I stepped into one of Laura’s creations and played around in it, not quite sure what I was doing, but keeping my nerves in check.  The more time I spent in the bag, the more I found myself letting go to playful exploration.   

For the same exhibit, Laura invited me back to the closing of Returning to the Present several weeks later at Espacio México.  This time around, the other performers and I took part in a workshop the evening prior, which laid out a bit more structure to the performance.  Thinking about how our bodies are confined to certain spaces and movements in everyday life, this awareness allowed me to harness an energy with more purpose and meaning.

 

The more I embodied Laura’s pieces, the more comfortable I seemed to feel in my own skin.  Being in the bag, I was free to move in ways that my ego would never allow outside of the bag with my regular body.  Confined, yet liberated, I began to explore facets of myself not known to me before.

As the vernissage for Code : Corps rolled around, I walked into the venue naturally a little nervous, but with a sense of calm a past version of myself would not have had.  While my first two experiences definitely required an amount of daring, this combination of risk-taking and commitment had slowly developed into confidence.  Before this, I genuinely cannot say that I have ever been somebody with a strong sense of confidence.       

Stepping into that bag on Friday, I connected to the part of myself who is the migrant; the daughter of immigrants, also the children of immigrants, who descend from a lineage of ancestors never accepted by the people of the lands on which they settled.  During this period of celebration of Día de Muertos, being in that bag opened up the channels for me to connect with my ancestors and express their longing for a land that was never theirs.  At the same time, the space I occupied was my home and nobody could take that away.  For once, I felt and fully embodied what it meant to be a woman of Hakka descent – an identity of mine that I have struggled to connect with being Canadian-born and not having strong cultural influences in my upbringing.    

A special thanks to Laura, Santiago, Fran, Articule, and the festival for having put together and served as a vehicle for this moment of pure magic.