ARTIST STATEMENT

In the last few years of my research-oriented travels, I have spent time in the remote corners of Northeast India, where the elders still worship the sun and the moon and speak an unscripted language that is rapidly dying; stayed with the last remaining headhunters; visited deep in the heart of the San José del Pacífico, where the Mazatec curanderos still journey beyond earth with their young sons and daughters; met with the Tana Torajans, who still bring their dead back to life in the triennial ritual of Ma’nene; and shared stolen laughs with the last tattooed-faced women of the forgotten Chin mountains; while capturing portraits of cultures who have survived colonization and managed to keep their traditions alive.

Being a woman traveling solo naturally gave me a place within the communities of women wherever I went. They took me in, fed me, advised me and protected me. To spend time with indigenous women who are so in touch with their femininity is a blessing. Yet, so many of these women have faced atrocities and changed the forma mentis of their tribe solely through their strength and support of their sisters. Many of the ring-necked refugee women, who were heavily exploited in a tourist village in Thailand managed to escape and return to their homeland of Myanmar to create a new life for themselves and their daughters, making an income through weaving. Their daughters now wear removable rings around their necks for tourists to photograph.

The Sapera tribe of Western India practiced female infanticide until less than fifty years ago, when the women adopted a performance dance to become the primary bread earners, changing the entire patriarchal structure of their society into a matriarchal one and putting their tribe on the world map. They are now teachers to thousands of international women who come in to learn the dance from them and make an income in their respective countries, hence not only empowering their own girls, but women from all around the world. It is the  nature of the feminine to adapt easily and go with the flow. Yet there are other qualities that showed the power of indigenous women time and time again. The wisdom in their eyes, power and softness co-existing in their beings, owning their sun-burnt and wrinkled skins, communicating with nature to summon powerful forces, walking barefoot in the scorching desert with power in their stride— these are the true emblem of resilence and femininity, of ancient wisdom and an adaptability to the new.

The photographs in this exhibition represent tribes of women who either follow a matriarchal culture or have changed the status of their tribes to empower their girls. It is an ode to the spirit of sisterhood, to an undying connection to the natural elements of our planet, of an innate ability to co-exist with other living beings and to showing up for each other. “Empowered women empower women.”