In the absence of a Codex or Quipu how do we know the use of ceremonial sound instruments—objects once abundant across the Americas/Abya Yala?
To create these images, I draw on a variety of sources: archaeological records, field studies, and the early writings of Franciscans and Jesuits documenting their first encounters with Indigenous peoples. I also gather knowledge from my family, the land of my ancestral homelands, and a lifetime of listening to elders around the fire, observing how certain ceremonies sustain the vital energy of life.
These photographs seek to build a diasporic archive, while questioning how we produce images for the present that are rooted in a future-past. In doing so, they subvert the colonial use of photography, offering a counter-narrative that challenges its historical role in shaping perception.
There is a form of conjuring that happens when all these sources collide, perhaps something is remembered.
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It is said that the first Vulva emerged from the ocean. As she woke up from eons, she felt the sand beneath her, the water ebbing and flooding. She was delighted and astounded; the world of the land seemed so different from the world of the ocean. She could not float anymore, nor create at will, for a while she stood by the shore, looking up at the sky feeling the breeze. However, immobile, and with cravings, she decided to ask the birds to gather for her a drop of fresh water, a dollop of the finest sand and a shell full of soil, with these, she will make a form that can carry her. The water became the blood, the sand became the bones and the soil became the skin and organs, she grew a body. As she tried her new invention she desired to walk as far as she could. Waving goodbye to the ocean, a giant conch was washed up right next to her feet? She brought it close to her, held her by her mouth, blew and this was the first sound.
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At the tail end of the neolithic period, when humans started to settle in territories, a culture in Abya Yala arose and with them the first anthropomorphic instrument. They created a flute in the form of a woman, with digitation holes around her ovaries and a hole to blow air in her cranium exactly around her parietal lobe. It is presumed that the rites for women were plentiful and done often. There are so many flutes found with similar shapes more than any other representation of shaman, warrior, or scribe. The sound is bi-tonal with just a few hertz difference between each hole. This fraction of difference creates a sound akin to loud cicadas at night. They are so ancient that there is no record that the early missionaries ever saw them, but they do mention women rites, and their demonic, secretive ways. For approx. 1,500 years, these flutes were continuously made, and then they suddenly stopped. Were they hidden? Did the rites change? Was their use no longer needed? I learned how to make them. I am curious to solve this puzzle, but when I play them, they simply say, "Play me more and more often.”
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