Work in Progress: “I am Life”
Working draft for "I am Life" mural on the Lena Street Wall, O'ga P'ogeh Owingeh, NM
This fall, Three Sisters Collective, and myself will be taking on a large scale piece recognizing the untold story of Pueblo lifegivers who continue to live and thrive in Northern New Mexico
Naya works on the sketch outline for "I am Life" at the Lena Street Wall
“Three Sisters Collective https://threesisterscollective.org/ is an Oga Pogeh (Santa Fe) based Pueblo/Indigenous women-led grassroots organization.
Autumn Dawn Gomez (Taos Pueblo) is the lead artist for a new mural that will soon be installed at The Lena Wall (www.thelenawall.com).
The temporary mural will be installed in the late summer and Autumn of 2024 on the Lena Wall building at 1805 Second Street, at the corner of Second St. and Lena St, to the left (north) of the new wheatpated mural just installed on the building by Chip Thomas (jetsonorama).
The design is made to be in conversation with the Chip Thomas artwork, referencing and inverting Oppenheimer’s famous quote that he made referencing the Bhagavad Gita “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”
The mural inverts this as: I am life, Creator of worlds.”
The new mural honors and prioritizes local Pueblo/Indigenous culture and values, and elucidates the differences between these and the settler colonial nuclear bomb production happening now and soon increasing in Los Alamos as well as the ever expanding nuclear industry, i.e. nuclear corridor in southeastern NM, as source of job creation and economic stability for New Mexicans.
The right-center depicts a pregnant Pueblo woman, with her energy radiating outward and animating the world around her, illuminating the original lifegivers and caretakers of this area, who bear the brunt of the environmental degradation these industries cause. We are the land, the land is us. There is no differentiation.
The three women to the left are portraits of 3 Pueblo elders:
-Marian Naranjo (Santa Clara (Kha’po Owingeh)- Founder and Director of Honoring Our Pueblo Existence (H.O.P.E.) at Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico and member of Flowering Tree Permaculture.
-Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez (San Ildefonso) founding member of Tewa Women United : https://tewawomenunited.org/2020/02/get-to-know-twu-staff-elder-kathy-sanchez
-Henrietta Gomez (Taos Pueblo) https://www.taosnews.com/magazines/taos-woman/eight-women-of-impact-henrietta-gomez/article_205f0554-a3bd-11ec-82c6-b3fa76bbd273.html
Also depicted are sacred symbols reflective of Pueblo cosmology: the four directions with the four colors of corn, corn plants, clouds, water, mountains, etc.
The entirety of the piece is about rematriation, the return to the connection with our original mother, Mother Earth and the wisdom she provides that has been overshadowed by almost a century of nuclear colonialism's devasting impact on the land and bodies of the original peoples of New Mexico and all inhabitants. Here the mother(s), are both archetypal and embodied beings, encompassing the cycles of life, including traditional agriculture that is the core of Pueblo culture that has been compromised due to the contamination of local lands and waterways by Los Alamos National Laboratories.”
