The genesis for this project began in 2018 when I was working as an English instructor for a refugee family in Dallas and I began researching my own ancestors who had fled to and from Mexico. In reading the oral histories of women who made this arduous journey on foot, I began to conceive of a performative work that would ritualize a connection to my ancestors who crossed landscapes and borders.

The performance took place in the Utah desert on September 22, the date of the Fall equinox, and the moment when the sun appears to cross the celestial equator. The constant celestial movement of the sun was referenced as a parallel to the human body moving across terrestrial landscapes. I chose the site of the performance to be in the desert near Nancy Holt’s “Sun Tunnels” because the tunnels connect the individual in the isolated landscape with the universal as the sun and stars are framed within the cylinders.

The performance consisted of myself and seven female participants walking through the landscape in a choreographed formation coinciding with an auditory element of chanting. All the female participants wore hand embroidered dresses and additionally I wore an enormous 30 foot long circular quilted backpack. Inspired by James Baldwin’s statement that, “We are our history, we carry our history with us,” the backpack is worn as a literal manifestation of this historical weight and the quilt is referenced as a symbol of the often unseen labor of women’s hands. The title for the performance, “All The Soarings Of My Mind Begin In My Blood,” is an excerpt from a letter written by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.