‘I am evoked’: An Interview with Diana Lizette Rodriguez

– Emily Trenholm – June 2020 –

Diana Lizette Rodriguez is an experimental artist who works within installation, painting, performance, photography and the illuminating world of poetry. A Mexican American artist from San Antonio, Texas that explores the fragmented decay the world portrays. Her works hold reminders of impermanence, and she creates these reminders with disruption, disorientation and unknown predictabilities. Inspired by her multimedia piece som / no / lencia, Emily interviewed Diana on her relationship to ritual, matriarchal lineage, and the intersections of poetry and prayer.

How does ritual inform your artistic practice? You ask, “Where do memories go during a cleanse?” What does this cleanse ritual signify for you?

This cleanse was something I grew up experiencing. My grandmother would cleanse us with an egg if we were ill, or had a nightmare, and I have some childhood memories of those moments, not many though. Possibly the memory that I remember the most is one between this line of dream or reality as I see that my memories go there often. It was when I was 10 or 12 and I was laying on the kitchen floor as Mama Chave, my grandmother prayed to Santa Maria Madre De Dios. This experience is the one I write about since I feel in my core very strongly. And maybe that is where memories go during a cleanse? To the core in order for you to be evoked, lifted, pushed to move it somewhere outside of yourself. If I were to think of this and relate it to my art process I would connect ritual then. Because that is how I create, I am evoked, lifted, pushed to move it outside myself.

The egg for me harkened to matriarchal ancestors, new life, beginnings. At the same time, the egg is often an existential symbol isolated from the larger cycle of life it’s a part of. What does the cracking of the egg here represent in terms of cycles and lines of lineage?

Mi Madre Soledad, Diana Lizette Rodriguez

This is such a beautiful question and I am glad awareness of the matriarchy is felt through this egg cleanse, and I think I’ll start using the word limpia for cleansing since that is the language I grew up with knowing. And so when I think of this limpia I can only think of my matriarchal lineage because it is the reason why this practice is still alive in my family. Therefore the matriarchal lineage being the reason for so much healing within my life and over the years I have realized how much weight that is for the women is to carry. Most of my upbringing I believed and have had ingrained that the women are the ones to do such a healing work, but the more I move away from this belief I awake to an awareness of how all the men in my family can also tap into this healing work. How I believe now they should do this healing work, should take in their own hands their healing, and should realize that the woman in the family won’t/don’t have to do all their healing for them. And this is where the image of the egg cracking becomes for me a cycle, a new way of life.

The egg must crack open in order to remove, liberate one from old haunting ways.

How/does the sacred feminine influence your work?

I don’t really know how the sacred feminine influences my work. I guess that is also a form language that I didn’t grow up hearing and so if I were to think of the sacred feminine I think of all las Virgenes, like mi morenita, La Virgen de Guadalupe, Mi Madre Soledad, La Virgen de San Juan de Los Lagos, Madre Fatima, and all other Virgenes. All these virgenes have influenced my work greatly because each one of them taught me something. In my Mama Chaves house, there is a blue and white painting of Mi Madre Soledad hanging in one of her rooms, against a white wall. This painting was done weeks before I headed out to move to San Diego and there was this inclination to do so. I wasn’t sure why this inclination to paint Mi Madre Soledad, but as the years go on I realize why. Las Virgenes are felt, seen, or heard and those appearances of them are the ones that influence my work.

In the poem, you evoke your grandmother’s last words — “el poder del trueno” (the power of thunder). I was struck by the emphasis on thunder, which is an imprint or an after effect of lightning. Do you consider the artistic practice the initial practice of ritual or the imprint of it — the video and written poem that we encounter after as viewers?

I believe it to be both. There are days when my artistic practice sways the practice of ritual and other days when art itself is the imprint of it. Allow it to be both because I do not believe that there is only one way to do both. I also believe that as viewers you get to decide what you believe it to be. I have had mentors in my life remind me that once my art is out there, being seen, read, heard, experienced by others it is not mine anymore, and when I first heard this I couldn’t really understand what they meant by this.

Yet I am in a place now where I don’t need anyone to understand any of my art, I just want the audience to experience it. To experience whatever arises in their own body to be, to be the reason they also want to create.

In the video, your poem and lines from the Hail Mary prayer are recited simultaneously. How/does poetry interact with prayer?

For me, prayer is meditation and throughout the years I have stopped doing sitting practices of meditation. And I guess that is because art has become that, poetry has become prayer. There have been many times where I have said that my creativity is my spiritually and yes I do still carry this belief, but I also believe that art has become that section in mass where you are on your knees praying. If I were now to bring God into this then I would say that maybe that is God, God is art.

still from som / no / lencia, Diana Lizette Rodriguez

Your work is in English, Spanish, and sometimes both. What is your experience writing in each language?

Of course, each experience is different and I don’t think they have a set experience of how it feels to work in both languages. I like to think that I am more fun and loud when I speak Spanish, but when it comes to writing in it I am more willing to complicate the language itself. I love working in Spanish first and then translating to English because there is this exciting manipulation I have to do to the English language. Translating to Spanish is a different experience, it almost becomes this reclaiming to old Spanish words, also a very musical experience, but I can also say this about the English language at times.

In one of your short fiction pieces, I was struck by this line: “My father said it was time. Time was what happened. People learned how to count and numbers became more important than oxygen. And one day it cracked. It opened itself like an egg and its yolk dripped down, therefore that water in the pond.” How does your work engage with time and the extended moment?

This is a very interesting short story to bring up. I tend to re-read this one and try to figure out what exactly it’s trying to convey, and I still find it that I can’t really figure out. Which is kind of funny? Right? But, to answer your question is that my work is always engaging with this concept of time, and extended moment.

The way it engages with the extended moment is this realization that it can be brought into words or visual, it can exist in many ways. I am brought to a recent letter that I wrote to my dear friend where I told him “And I feel like you have learned this too, or maybe it is just something we both will keep relearning. Because they are also lessons in eternity” and these words are the reasons why the extended moment comes into my work.

Your work includes poetry, fiction, and multimedia pieces — do you have a preferred medium? How do you choose what medium might fit a particular project?

I don’t necessarily have a preferred medium. I enjoy the process of every medium because I believe they all do something differently. This difference is within the result or process itself like painting compared to words. But, I do think that they all share something and that is the experience of creating. I am very interested in experimental art for a reason, it sort of has been the gravity that keeps me. I also don’t necessarily know how I choose a medium, it just happens. I just create without many thoughts and for me, this is the bliss of experimental art.

Diana Lizette Rodriguez pushes to work with a conceptualize intention, questions the reason for Art, and finds concepts like the 4th Dimension to be an idea in which her path wants to follow. To dive into. Questions such as “If I go to the 4th Dimension, would I be able to come back to the 1st?” arise and Rodriguez as an artist does not find the answer to such a question. She just creates. You can find her full portfolio of work here.

This is the first in WBC’s series of artist interviews. Are you or anyone you know an artist creating in the spirit of the sacred feminine? We want to connect with you! Please contact us at wisdombodycollective@gmail.com