Shifra Goldman and Poetic Arte!

Saturday night I attended an event of Latino American art, poetry, and academia in celebration of one great artistic mind, Shifra Goldman. If you don’t recognize her name, don’t worry, I didn’t at first either, but I assure you, you have felt her influence. A Jewish American academic, who came from a Yiddish and English bilingual family, she is attributed with being one of the first to call for the conservation of Siquiero’s whitewashed Olvera Street mural, “Tropical America,” when most people forgot it existed. Her critical analysis and books, Dimensions of the Americas, Contemporary Mexican Painting in a Time of Change, had major influence in the European and American art worlds of the 70s and 80s when many believed nothing of significance could be birthed in Latin America, and generally made such names as Rivera, Siquieros, and Orozco world-known.

All this I knew about Shifra, the writer and Latino art champion, before I walked into Avenue 50 Studio on Saturday night, but what I gained by being apart of this celebration was so much more. We began with an acoustic guitar performance by her son, Eric Garcia. After playing two songs, he invited in his preteen son to accompany him on violin, and instantly the crowd was uplifted. The shaggy haired twelve year-old talent was nothing less than charming. Next was film director and writer, Jesus Trevino, who read from his memoir, Eyewitness. He shared a section about Shifra and his time with her, and her influence. As he read it was clear that many in the room know her personally. He spoke of her work with “Tropical America," her philosophy on politics and art (they cannot be separated), and it was like I could hear the audience smiling. The next performer, a poet, Ramon Garcia, was also fortunate enough to know her personally. She had taken him at a time when he was new to Los Angeles. He appeared young, and I wondered how exactly they met. How was he so lucky to have dinners with her at a bad French restaurant in Echo Park? “Taix” he shared with the room, and many laughed. Bad food, but good discussions, a majority of the 60-70 people now crowding in the tiny art studio agreed. I realized that I was only a visitor; I have never met Shifra, but I now wish I could have.

Other poets, Gloria Enedina Alvarez, Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, and George Kalmar, shared poetry and memories, as well as members in the audience, and every story told was like it’s own special gem. Artists, poets, friends, a son, all were touched by her in some significant way. And it seems if you had come to know her, you were certainly influenced by her critical and caring mind. She was a mentor to artists, and other lost children of Los Angeles, and I began to wish I was a little older, a little more lost, a little more hungry and that this surrogate mother could be mine too. I imagined sitting with her in Taix drinking a dirty martini and listening to her speak about art and revolution. I wondered what heated discussion we would have, and how she would generally “school” me as I make notes in my mind. If only.

She is bedridden now, and in the final stages of Alzheimer. Her son shared that he visits with her daily, and before coming to this event he sat with her. He recorded a minute long video of Shifra knotted in her bed, her brilliant mind somewhere locked in the darkness of the past. He carried her into the event on his white Apple laptop, and it was then I remembered Frida Kahlo.


Or I should confess, the movie Frida (Shifra may not have approved since it seems she didn’t care for Hollywood). I remembered the final scene, where Frida, one leg amputated and very ill, lays in bed on the opening night of her exhibit. I remembered the doctor’s order, and how friends carry her, heavy wood-carved bed and all, to the event to celebrate, to see the culmination of her work.

In some way Shifra was there, and we celebrated with her.

UPDATE: Sadly, Shifra Goldman died from complications to Alzheimer at 85 on September 11, 2011. For more on Shifra's life and legacy, you can read her obituary at L.A. Times here or this piece by Adolfo Guzman-Lopez at KCET. She will be missed.

ESLABONES: State Terrorism and Resistance in Argentina

On Friday I headed to UCLA for a panel on Argentina's political prisoners from the Dirty War of the '70s and '80s, and the book Eslabones, a new volume of stories, poetry, and testimonies of political imprisonment and torture from Cordoba, Argentina. In grad school I wrote my critical paper/academic thesis on witness poetry from Japanese internment camps of WWII compared to poetry from the book Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak edited by Marc Falkoff, and I went to this panel with a continued interest in human rights activity with concern to political prisoners and torture, as well as how the writing process affects those who have experienced such horrific crimes.

Alicia Partnoy, the author of The Little School: Tale of Disappearance and Survival in Argentina, which speaks of her experience as a tortured desaparacido, spoke of the need to tell these stories as "a need to record history," to ensure people never forget.She joked that she writes her story now because someone told her, "We are not getting younger any time soon," but the importance of sharing her experience is no joke as she recalls the process as liberating: "It has to be liberating."

The highlight of the afternoon was Dr. Irene Martinez who read her poem, "Chichi Bruja/las balerinas," from the Eslabones collection that recalled one of her compañeras in prison who would tease Irene for having over grown eyebrows. Once this woman found two scraps of metal during the 20 minutes a week they were allowed outside. The scrap metal became makeshift tweezers this compañera used to reshape all the women’s eyebrows as their personal beautician. Of course, my paraphrase of her poem does not do it justice, but I found it a beautiful story of disappeared women, kept from homes and family including their young children, interrogated and tortured on a regular basis, finding some sense of normalcy, of tenderness, in something as small as two scraps of metal acting as a ballerina’s feet on their eyebrows.

"Being beautiful was also important," Dr. Martinez shared with the room. Partnoy nodded in agreement, and shared how women would make mascara out of toothpaste and ash.

After her reading, Dr. Martinez went through slides from a photography project entitled, "Flying Away of the Mattress." The first slide showed three women, naked, blindfolded and sitting on a floor lined up as if in a sled. She explained that they were forced to sleep multiple women to a mattress, but that the nudity was her artistic interpretation. She stated that these artistic renderings "help me get it out of my system," and that making artistic choices, like the nudity, helped her to "own it." This reminded me of the book Poetry as Survival by Gregory Orr who said “To name something is to assert control over it" (30). It would seem that Dr. Martinez found a form of expression that allowed her to take ownership over a horrific and harrowing experience that has helped her to cope while also educating others.