Healing, memory and spirituality

Fe is Felicia Montes’ artistic name; it is short for Felicia, but it is also means faith in Spanish. Fe’s father was born in the North of Mexico, in Chihuahua, and her mother was born in Los Angeles. Fe belongs to two women’s artistic collectives: In Lak Esh and Mujeres de Maiz. Her artistic practice includes poetry, spoken words, multimedia installation, floetry hip-hop and the healing arts. She identifies as a Xicana indigenous artist and lives in the Los Angeles area.

I find her work significant because a) it centers on both individual and communitary decolonial healing, b) it provides a queer, feminist representation of the Xicanx identity and c) it challenges and reclaims traditionally masculine forms of artistic expression, like hip-hop.

I will first analyze Fe's art as a source of decolonial healing, for both herself and the audience.

Fe is known for holding healing workshops with students, activists and community members: for instance, workshops on self-care (Moss 2016). She considers them her practice of the healing arts. Holding workshops is important because it involves sharing knowledge that is usually gated and because it emphasizes the role of the artist in the community. In an interview with Diana Carolina Peláez Rodríguez (2012, 88), Fe affirms: “Being Xicana means understanding the different parts of the self: yourself, your family, your community … weaving those and understanding those working together … how it manifests in the community? A lot of events … They’re important, they bring education, they are also empowering … like to have one about healthy food, one about motherhood, one about your first period.” Fe Montes pushes the boundaries of art-making because the responsibilities of the Xicana artist extend beyond herself, to her family and her community.
An example of her inclusion of the healing arts in her public, community-based artistic practice, is the Botanica del Barrio Rolling Remedios Cart, “an alterNative mobile medicine cart that aims to spread and document wellness remedies, recipes, herbs and plants used in Mexican traditional medicine” (feliciamontes.wordpress.com). This cart, which also challenges the boundaries of art, is important because it aims to bring back to communities of colour an important form of knowledge connected to indigenous memory and spirituality, that was undermined for centuries by colonialism, patriarchy and whiteness.
Making art by using a rolling cart is also significant because it blurs the boundaries between the artist and the audience. It is especially significant since this is art made by a woman of color for people of color (who generally do not have as much access to art because galleries and artistic spaces are usually in white, richer, gentrified neighborhoods).

The themes of memory and spirituality are also present in the collective “We are the Land” altar for the Day of the Dead 2008. The altar/installation features prayers pinned on a map of Central America by women of the collective Mujeres de Maiz (women of corn), alongside an indigenous altar, with corn, soil, seashells, pumpkins etc. I like the installation because it is a collective art form, that involves both the personal (through pinned written prayers) and the political (through the places of origin of these women). It reminds me of Aurora Levins Morale’ idea according to which personal healing is simultaneous with collective healing, because personal history and collective history are "intertwining histories" (Morales 1998, xxiv). I also like this piece because it shows that the cultural aspects of the indigenous identity (like a particular type of spirituality) coexist with the more political aspects of indigeneity (like migration and displacement).

I also like this work because it involves an indigenous, non-Christian altar, which embodies the politics of spirituality/memory that Laura Perez identifies in Chicana art. This installation seems to be trying to reimagine and reconfigure spiritual practices that have been lost through indigenous cultural genocide and immigration. Pérez describes the trauma of colonization as “a frightening of spirit from one’s body/mind in the colonial and neo‐colonial ordeals” (Perez 2007, 21). Chicana artists then become curanderas, or cultural healers, who reintegrate the colonized psyche, using memory and spirituality. Fe also acts as a curandera, by recuperating a vision of the world based on interconnectedness through community art and events (“In Lak Ech” means “you are the other me”), in a society fragmented by colonial and neoliberal relationships. Mayley Blackwell (2011) calls this process “retrofitted memories”: a form of political counter-memory which uses fragments of history that were erased by colonialism and patriarchy. The same concept is also present in Morales’ work, through the concept of medicine stories: stories that aid personal healing because they tell the truth about both personal and political abuse, thereby shattering the cages of lies which hold survivors trapped.

As such, “the invocation of the spiritual” in the work of Fe “is politically significant, socially transformative, and psychically healing.” (Perez 2007, 25) Montes also appeals to her indigenous ancestry and spirituality in another public performance piece, Raramujer on WorldWide Drumming Ceremony.

She herself analyzes the impact of these forms of art and activism, in the same interview quoted above (Pelaez Rodriguez 2012, 110): "Al honrar los valores “naturales” de lo femenino desde la raíz cultural imaginada, las conexiones con la madre tierra y la valoración del poder creador de la mujer en un nivel sagrado, la eficacia simbólica se traduce en confianza, seguridad y sensación de empoderamiento para otras mujeres". ("By honoring the natural attributes of the feminine, starting from the cultural roots, to the connexions with mother-earth and the sacred, creative power of women, we generate confidence, security and a feeling of empowerment for other women.") She sees her spiritual-artistic work as intertwined with her feminist activism.

The politics of memory and spirituality are also present in Fe’s poetry, where she constructs and examines her own decolonial healing, through the concepts of autohistoria-teoria and personal decolonization. Her poetry collection is titled “Ten fe” - “Have faith”/”confidence”: spiritual faith and also confidence in the revolution/empowerment of indigenous women. On the cover, there is a photo of Fe as “La Virgen de Guadalupe”, a virgen revered by indigenous Mexicans. (Once again, Montes appeals to her Mexican and indigenous roots.)

In Ranchola Blues, she writes:

"Sacrificando su self y su corazon quebradita

Reenacting la conquista en la pista

Porque me han robado la tierra

Me han robado la cultura Chihuahense,

Mis raices raramuri,

Me han robado la esperanza,

Mi paz, mi dignidad,

Hasta la semilla de mi familia.

Me han robado todo ...

Pero no, pero no - La Memoria". (Montes 2011, 26)

The poem also exists in video form, as a video-poem, where imagery of spirituality and nostalgia abound: candles, corn, pistas with ranchera dancers, photographs of indigenous Raramuri women and old family photographs. Despite all the losses that the author and her family have encountered at the hands of colonialism (of indigenous culture and identity, land, hope, peace and dignity), she is consoling herself with the fact that she still has her memory. Remembering the truth and telling the truth through her art is a form of resistance (which also echoes Morales' ideas). However, the truth must be decolonized: it must be severed from the self-hate ingrained in survivors. 

In “Re.evolutionizing Me” Montes writes:

"Yes it’s been a long time

505 years plus to be exact

but I’m gonna start with this simple little fact,

that a Mestiza is one born of a rape

and every day she lives it manifests in self-hate.

Grrl, you know what I’m talking about

could it be those abusive guys with lies

or that chemical dye and burning lye.

[...]

Addicted to wholeness

yes, I need to feel me

I even think I’m the Chicana Power MC

everyday giving of myself to be free.

[...]

See the weight of La Malinche, La

Llorona, y La Chingada are all on my back

for this reason it seem I’m always on the attack ..." (Montes 2011, 7)

Through this piece of autohistoria-teoria (Anzaldua 1987), she identifies in her life and in other indigenous women's lives the remnants of their herstories (the self-hate), and describes trying to get rid of it through artistic expression, as an MC. Again, the personal and the political come together, as shown in Morales’ work: the history of colonialism and sexual violence against indigenous women continues to manifest itself through the self-destructive behaviors of Mexican-American women today.

In Sacrificios, the spiritual is once more linked to the political:

"Flesh offerings 

Come daily in Xicana ceremonies

As we skin our piernas,

Pluck our brows,

Beat out pelo,

And tat and pierce our piel

These not so sacred ways

Becoming reminders,

Marks of memory,

Wounds of wisdom . . . 

As we come full circle

Becoming holy sacrifices

Within our own temples of worship. 

Becoming the bread and body 

With our own flesh and blood."

“We turn to the North, the place of the wind, associated with elders and the energy of maturity. It is the direction we often turn to for guidance from the ancestors. The North also powerfully supports our practices of introspection and reflection. The poem “ Sacrificios ” by “artivist” Felicia Montes is largely guided by the energies of the North. “Sacrificios” speaks to the sacrifices women make in order to survive on a daily basis. Many times these efforts, or offerings, can lead to our bodies’ destruction. Oppressive ideologies of gender and race are consistently negotiated within our conscious and subconscious states, or, as Anzaldúa noted, in the in-between, transformative space of nepantla.” (Facio and Lara 2014, 135) Xicana women are caught between their ancestral spirituality and their over-sexualization by contemporary patriarchy. Their ancestral rituals and offerings have disappeared; now, women only make offerings of themselves, on the altar of patriarchy. 

Fe Montes has created both individual and public community-based artistic works that focus on memory and spirituality. Her practice is a form of cultural resistance, which aims to prevent indigenous spirituality and knowledge from disappearing, and a form of activism, by facilitating healing for both Fe and her audience.