Antigone, ritual after rituals: Campesino Blessings

with Solano Fonseca. Cocorote, Edo. Lara, Venezuela 2012

Photo credits: Gromanski Lameda
In the pictures above, I am with Sr. Solano Fonseca. He and his family gave me shelter the night before going to do N.3 ritual: Crosses and White Banner at the ambush site, which we could see from his home. When I went back to his home two weeks later, we went through a path towards the river. Señor Fonseca carried a machete with him all the time—just in case we encountered venomous snakes. I wanted to see and record this river that my father waded in, as he tried to evade the army siege, the night before he was disappeared in the ambush.
Señor Fonseca is one of the elder campesinos from Cocorote. He had a beautiful and proud way of carrying himself. For my last ritual, Sr. Fonseca bestowed on me a blessing with gestures of his machete—an acknowledgement of our kinship and connections to this land.
Photo credits: Livia Daza-Paris
I took the pictures above on May 29, 2012, at dusk. With the volunteered help by the campesinos from the hamlet of Cocorote, the white fabric in the images was draped. With this ritual action, we made an impermanent memorial to those killed and disappeared there by the specialized army in the 1960s. Initially, there were 100 meters of fabric.
Given the uneven terrain of the mountain, we could only attach about 70 meters. These pictures were taken from the home of Solano Fonseca, one of the participants. His house is in the hamlet Cocorote, about 6km from the mountain where our ritual took place. This ritual action can be seen in Ritual N.3
For more information: Livia Daza-Paris, At the edge of the (far-) End: an event revealed through rituals. ELSE Journal for International Art and Creative Media Issue 01. Published by Transart. Editor Teobaldo Lagos Preller. Peer-reviewed article. January 2016. https://en.calameo.com/read/003167138eee8c6d8ee56
Review by Albeley Rodriguez: La creación: un dolor trocado en vida vibrante Review by Constanza Rogatis: https://www.artnexus.com/Notice_View.aspx?DocumentID=29887A Space Gallery: http://www.revolutionaryforms.org/uploads/2/8/0/2/28025631/grieving_empire.pdf