Peruvian Angels

by Gabriela Jackson

On a cold and dirty bench,

They lay down their tired young lives.

Over the crude streets of reality,

They walk with their small bare feet.

Behind the back of the indifference,

They meet in secret with their tears.

They have no valid reasons to smile,

It seems like for them the sun will not rise.

They are angels,

Angels from heaven

Whose joy and glow have been stolen

By selfishness and evil.

All they know is the pain of never-ending hunger,

their only companion is the unmerciful cold.

Their little hands reaching out

hold on tight to broken dreams

while their eyes silently scream: “I need you!”

They are angels

who from a cold and dirty bench

witness empty days and endless nights

While we, elude them in our hearts.

El Corazon de Frida

By Gabriela Jackson

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), one of the most influential Mexican painters of the middle twentieth century, once wrote about her paintings, " They are the most honest expression of myself, never taking into consideration the judgments or prejudices of anyone."

Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits can be shocking and unappealing to the eye; the infamous unibrow, the female mustache, and the virile features can easily detract people from looking further into the meaning of her paintings. Frida Kahlo, however, never intended to please the crowds, belong to an artistic movement, or fulfill a set of conventions.

With her art, she just sought to express her reality, and the brokenness of her body and heart by employing elements from Mexican culture, European Realism, Symbolism, and Surrealism. Primarily, Frida used painting as the confessional for her soul. Each brush stroke on the canvas became an intimate and therapeutic experience.

Of her one hundred and forty-three paintings, fifty-five are self-portraits. Those self-portraits often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds. From all of her self-portraits, “The Two Fridas” (1939) is the most painfully autobiographical; it exhibits a deep and shameless representation of her own personal reality.

"The Two Fridas" is an oil painting of women sitting on a bench outdoors with a turbulent cloudy sky in the background. It is a two-dimensional piece, almost replicating a stage with a painted backdrop. Its form is static, and the lines are fine and detailed. The harmonious combination of white and bright colors reflects Mexican folklore.

The composition’s main focus is the two women who evenly occupy most of each side of the canvas, and mirror each other in size and posture. On the right, one Frida wears a Tehuana costume and holds an amulet that bears the portrait of her husband Diego as a child. On the left, the other Frida wears a white Spanish wedding dress.

Both Fridas sit in frontal position, holding hands, with their hearts fully exposed. The Mexican Frida’s heart is whole while the Spanish Frida’s heart is broken. From the amulet that the Mexican Frida is holding, springs a vein that travels through both women’s heart. The Spanish Frida keeps the vein from a massive hemorrhage by holding its end with a surgical clamp. Drops of blood drip from the cut vein staining her European white dress. Although, this piece shows inertness and introspective seriousness, its meaning is far from static, inert, or theatrical.

Frida Kahlo painted “The Two Fridas” after her divorce from Diego Rivera, the love of her life and her husband of ten years. This painting is highly symbolic; it is a revelation of herself and of all the sufferings accumulated throughout her life, with her divorce being the pinnacle of her agony.

In this work, Frida acknowledges her mixed blood, Mexican Indian and Spanish, both different but inseparable. The two Fridas also represent the sexual, psychological, and emotional duality in her life. The Mexican Frida is the one Diego fell in love with. The portrait of him when he was a child suggests that she loved who Diego used to be, or that he was an immature person, or a combination of both. His portrait pumps blood up to her heart but, inevitably, tears the other side of her as well, reflecting the tortuous relationship with the man she loved and hated at the same time.

The Spanish Frida, on the other hand, is the one who has been rejected. She is more sophisticated, a resemblance of what the artist has become. She is passively bleeding to death trying to save herself with a surgical clamp which holds the end of the cut vein right over her womb, symbolizing her traumatic previous abortions and her inability to have children.

The presence of the surgical instrument also implies all the surgeries Frida had to endure after surviving a car accident. She suffered fractures of her back, collarbone, and ribs, as well as a shattered pelvis and shoulder, and foot injuries. The condition of the Spanish Frida, an open empty heart unable to generate a heartbeat, seems to be what is left of Frida when making this painting.

The blood represents the passion that once allowed her to live and now is leaving her lifeless. The blood has to do with love, excruciating pain, loss, perhaps a comparison to the sufferings of Christ; he was broken physically and spiritually. Yet, in the midst of all, there is no desperation or cries for help; the two Fridas are motionless, their faces contemplating in a fixed state of introspection as if the suffering could not be either overcome or ignored. There is a certain hopelessness that comes from a deep realization of a broken cycle, a broken vein, a shattered existence. Nevertheless, there is also a hint of pride and stubbornness in the pose, a determination to survive.

This painting is very profound because it shows Frida at the core of her being; it exposes her heart. If the spectator allows himself to explore the meaning behind the images, he or she will see Frida’s exhibition of her own scars on the canvas. The portrayed pain will seduce the spectator to contemplate the work with the same intense and static introspection with which the two Fridas contemplate their own being.

The spectator will realize that the anguish of “The Two Fridas” is not only restricted to Frida’s life but is a universal reality. The difference is that Frida boldly expressed her suffering through painting, even with a “failing” heart, and with the hope that the turbulent cloudy sky in the background will soon pass.

She

Free-Appropriation: Just an Echo, Not a Creation

The Helene Hegeman case as a free-appropriation writer is an example of one of the strong negative effects of digital media. Growing up in a media-saturated society, the new generation of artists is strongly influenced by other people’s ideas and has lost the ability to form their own with originality and freshness.

One of the famous excuses is that every story has already been told. Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” wasn’t the first painting in history of a city landscape at night with stars on the sky. However, his work was innovative and showed originality in color, strokes, technique, and perspective. Now tell me, how innovative and original is to copy and paste other people’s words and make a book with them? That is called plagiarism and is banned by most of civilized societies in every shape or form.

Of course, a painting and a story are different artistic mediums. A painting can be made of anything and people don’t have to understand it to appreciate it. A story, in the other hand, has to be understood to be appreciated, it has to make sense to the reader, it cannot be completely subjective. And that is where the point of “every story has already been told” has some strength. Stories will always have the same background, humans and human condition, a common backbone; a hero in a journey, trying to accomplish something, finding obstacles, overcoming odds, winning or loosing the dream, coming to understanding with reality, and finding a resolution.

We can use music as an example, there are only so many chords, however the way a musician arranges those chords using a particular tempo and rhythm is what makes it original and maybe even innovative. Can we say that all songs have already been created? I don’t think so. Why then, when talking about writing do we have to conform?

It is truly sad, no doubt that digital media has many benefits, but has also fed confused and lazy writers. Maybe instead of the hours spent digging for ideas online, contemporary writers (and any kind of artist really) should leave their comfortable chair and travel the world, know other cultures, meet people in a very personal way, explore new beliefs, and experience a world outside of their own. They will realize then, that there is much more to say and write about, that there is something new to be told in a unique and fresh way, that you can tell it as none else can.

By conforming to the idea that there can’t be a new Shakespeare, or a new someone who would enrich the world with an innovative piece of work, is a defeated way of thinking that will pass to the generations to come, our children won’t do more than copy and paste because they will believe that there’s nothing new or revolutionary in them, and what a dull and sad world that would be.

Poem Remix

I'm exploring the idea of remixing existent works to create a new product.

The following poem is a mixture of five different poems from latin poets that I love: Cesar Vallejo and Pablo Neruda.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.

But no one saw us today hand in hand.

As though to reach her, my sight looks for her.

My heart looks for her: she is not with me.

It is raining, as never before; and

I have no desire to live, my heart.

I am alone.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.

There are in life such hard blows . . .

And those bloody blows are the crepitation


Of some bread getting burned on us by the oven's door

In you the wars accumulated,

You swallowed everything, like distance.

Like the sea, like time, In you everything sank!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.

Over the Thursdays, the shoulder bones, and the solitude of the roads,

Over the memory of the woman whom I loved and lost…

The rain has stopped,

Shadows fall in my soul.

Feminism and Digital Media

As I was editing the video for the last project, I thought about digital media and women. The woman of the 50’s was a wife/daughter who took her of her home, cooked meals, watched the children, engaged in crafts or artisanal hobbies, and created a warm home for those around her.

The woman of today is very different. Yes, there are women who stay at home and take care of their families, but do they enjoy it or do they whish they were doing something else instead of being stuck in the house?

Now, let’s remember that we are bombarded by media everywhere we go. Has digital media help change the role of women in society by preaching feminist trends and ideas? Are we unsatisfied women because we are not like that woman on TV whose world seems perfect?

I am not saying we should go back to the 50’s because as lovely as it seemed, there were many things that needed to change. I do agree with the motivations that started the feminist movement, it was not only the right thing to do but it was necessary. However, along the way, it seems like this movement has gone too far to the point where women are trying to break the traditional role of women at all costs and this is affecting society. And surely, digital media has helped with this process.

Digital media is a powerful tool that so often portrays feminism in an extreme way. And since we are so used to it, we take it as normal and acceptable, maybe even as something positive. I guess we could say this is one of the ways in which Digital Media is bad for us as a society even though we may be momentarily blind to the effects.

Many shows on TV show the prefect woman as the boss, the career person, sexually promiscuous, demanding, harsh and controlling. On the other hand, guys are portrayed as weak, complete idiots, and utilized by women.

I believe that men and women are equally worth and valuable, and thus, should enjoy the same rights, protections, etc. However, that does not mean that we are equal, because we are NOT. We are to complement each other and that means differences in roles. We often criticize the traditional role of women: stay home, clean, cook, and take care of the kids, and we seem to look at the role of men as an ideal. Why is that?

For decades, it is like if women were trying to prove that they are as capable as men. Capabilities should not be in question, and what if women were not as capable as men? Would that mean that they are not as valuable? Certainly not. And what kind of capabilities are we taking into account? My husband is capable of doing things I am not capable of and I am capable of doing things he is not, and that is perfectly ok.

Ironically, I believe that in an attempt to destroy the traditional role of women, the feminist ideas are also destroying the role of men. While women are becoming less nurturing and motherly, men are becoming weaker and less fatherly. For instance, there are many families, where the man is the player in the background, the immature character, the woman is the boss in the house, and the children will more likely listen to the mother than to the father. The truth is that deep inside women do not really like weak men, so eventually they get sick of their husbands. It is a vicious cycle.

The truth is that most of women do not hold extreme beliefs about feminism, they just want to have the opportunity to choose what works best for them. But there is a heavy pressure out there, which reaches us through the different forms of media, telling us we are to be more extreme. This pressure is shaping our brains and the brains of the young girls who tomorrow will be mothers.

The American Dream

There has been a major leap of technological advances from the decade of the 50’s until now. Our generation doesn’t know what is life like without a TV or a computer. The beliefs of our parents and grandparents are very different from ours.

I am fascinated by the 50’s in America and decided to make a comparison for my video project. I feel like the ideals and dreams that were born during that decade have taken America into what it is now. For instance, consumerism, suburbs, and the comfort of the American lifestyle in general, were strongly pursued during the 50’s and are deeply enrooted in our contemporary American society. All these advancements have been made possible by the development of new technology, including digital media.

People in the 50’s were very enthusiastic about all the new things that were happening. They were positive about the future and embraced the idea of having children to spread that happiness. They had the house with the white picket fence, the boy and girl, the dog, the working father, the warm meals, the perfect mother, etc.

Over fifty years later, there is a generation who is quite pessimistic about what surrounds them. Things are dull and stressful. The bliss of technology is in question. Everything has changed, the American Dream has become more expensive and difficult to achieve, creating frustrated citizens.

Americans are very concerned about achieving the American Dream but still, they know it is possible and that gives them hope. The political and economic disillusionment of the later years, has definitely affected the positivism of the American people.

The American dream is much harder to reach. Some of the people I interviewed believed that technology and digital media have reached a point where they are as destructive as they are productive. Therefore, what got us here is now taking something away from us.

I gathered different video footage from commercials, movies, and TV shows from the 50’s and paired them with the interviews creating a short of what it used to be and what is now. But at the same time, there is a historical message about the American spirit of endeavor and hope that will never go away no matter how difficult things become.