Mercedes Dorame
Mercedes Dorame is an artist working with ceremonial and landscape-based installation and photography. She explores her heritage as an extension of the Tongva tribe in ways that explore the historical and current atrocities dealing with the displacement of Native Americans across the nation. Still, specifically, she delves deep into her personal and ancestral stories. She was first driven by finding familial stories that were kept secret, which pushed her to analyze family photographs and question her relatives about their personal stories. She was also hired as a consultant to sites in her area where the bodies of her ancestors are being exhumed and displaced because of city development. This has led her to explore the importance of inhabiting the land and our connection to the cosmos as major elements of her culture.
Mercedes Dorame’s installation piece at the 2018 exhibition Made in LA at the Hammer Museum
Something that her father said as he was training her to do the work of exhuming native bodies was her responsibility “to remind people of the humanity of these remains. These are people’s uncles, family members ...” which has struck me to reflect on my personal reasons why I, as an artist of color and an immigrant (who has been affected by displacement and assimilation in some ways) have been overtly choosing not to create work that directly deals with my culture. Because of this immense responsibility to do it properly and to give justice not only to the blatant atrocities but also the many ways in which we face concealed, subtle racism from others and inwardly towards ourselves, which is extremely taxing to unpack. This sort of work takes so much strength, courage, time, and space to reflect on the complexities of it all that I am not ready to nor fully equipped to deal with just yet, but it is something that I deeply admire within Dorame’s work.
Portal for Tovangaar LA
Something that Dorame uses to create her work is a process of reflection, research, and exploration concerning the landscape as it pertains to her culture. She investigates the importance of the land and how it informs the ceremonial and ritualistic expression of human existence within these spaces. Dorame combines the process of photography and material examination to create elaborate installations, mapping out her ancestral histories. By observing the installations, we get a sense of archaeological exploration, anthropological research, and cultural issues that affect the work in one way or another.
It was very surprising and inspiring for me to learn how deeply intricate and elaborately conceptualized her installations are and how profoundly it is tied to her culture in every way. It is nice to learn about how indigenous bodies are integrally connected to the astral plane, celestial bodies, the natural world, historical/ancestral lineage, and collectivism.
It seems that Mercedes Dorame isn’t attached to the aesthetic outcome of her work and is more interested in whether the work expresses the narrative that she wants to put forth. Having such openness towards the work allows her to be free to take inspiration when it presents itself to her. An example of this is she goes through old negatives of photographs she has taken in the past looking for an “Indigenous body”, and as a consequence, through rummaging for images, she was able to find postcards from her travels to Yosemite and other significant landscapes. Dorame’s way of developing a process to create work has to do with the importance of being open to the experience of living her life and retrospectively analyzing and reflecting on the occurrences and how they relate to her messaging.
Dorame’s work is informed by her identity as it relates to the Tongva people, especially her ancestors and revitalizing the culture that is seen to the external world as “extinct.” By creating narratives toward changing the perception of her culture, she is able to make a difference in how the Tongva people are represented. Being able to cultivate an art practice allows the artist to push the audience to question their beliefs about socio-political and cultural issues.
Breath, Spirit, Wind - Hikaayey
EARTH THE SAME AS HEAVEN Series
It was inspiring to notice that although Dorame explores installation-based work, her practice is rooted in photography and careful analysis of an image, which leads to installation. Her creativity shines through when all aspects of her personal anthropological findings, photographic evidence of civilization, and anecdotal information come together in a cohesive body of work. In this way, the use of photographic media, materiality (with the use of red string, fabric, concrete, etc.), along with the context that informs everything, allows her to express the narrative of human experiences with space.
Written by: Clarisse Abelarde