SHAPESHIFTER DRAWINGS

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​After the Enigma poems of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

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SOLO:

​ Irenic Projects, Pasadena
March - July 2020
Curated by Mike Hernandez

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​​GROUP:

​Otherwise Revival, Bridge Projects, Los Angeles

Jasmine McNeal and Cara Megan Lewis, Curators

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​​​Shapeshifters is a set of eight large shellac ink drawings on handmade Kozo Washi paper.

 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) wrote twenty satirical ‘Enigma’ poems in response to indifference to the suffering of the poor among the elite of colonial New Spain. She died while ministering to the sick on the streets of Mexico City during an outbreak of cholera. Sor Juana shears dread, wonder, nature, faith and passion into terse rhyme. Contentious, paradoxical and perverse, her writing grapples with the tension between language and community. She presides over this strange new world where fear of contagion gives agency to non-truths. Like the Enigmas, the Shapeshifter drawings aim to embody ‘the delight’ and the ‘hellish plight’ in their shimmering, seductive and snaring traps.

Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal (2015), translates: 
​¿Cuál puede ser el contento
que con hipócrita acción
por sendas de recreación
va caminando al tormento?
~
What can be the delight
that with hypocritical gesture
along pathways of leisure
goes trekking toward a hellish plight?

​Link to full text PDF from Ugly Duckling Press

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"In the drawings, McPhee used shellac and metallic ink on handmade kozo washi paper, creating a choreography of flames that trace the contours of the grasses and creek beds of the Plains, and dance themselves into a revival-like frenzy. Contemplating the question of despair, the drawings condense atmospheres of a spiritual storm, surviving, with Sor Juana, in states between snow and fire.'  - Jasmine McNeal and Cara Megan Lewis, curators, Otherwise/Revival, 2021

​​Open edition catalog : Shapeshifters, by Christina McPhee (2020) on Blurb  

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