The Somatic and Textural Language of Patricia Belli: Recrafting Social and Political Bodies in 1990s Nicaragua

Lesdi C Goussen Robleto

doi:10.5070/r74155763

Abstract

“The Somatic and Textural Language of Patricia Belli: Recrafting Social and Political Bodies in 1990s Nicaragua” looks at early textile assemblages by the contemporary Nicaraguan artist Patricia Belli. Opening with the seminal exhibition MESóTICA II: Centroamérica/re-generación—which took place in Costa Rica in 1996—the essay positions Belli as part of an emerging generation of experimental artists who were working in the aftermath of the Central American Crisis. Contextualized within this period, I argue that Belli’s textile assemblages from the early 1990s emerge as affective containers of personal and collective memories endured by the region. By reworking secondhand clothes imported from the United States, Belli recrafts garments into visceral containers that evoke disfigured and mutilated bodies. Thinking beyond normative constructions of the body—and in particular, feminized bodies—Belli’s textile assemblages emerge as subversive constructions that privilege unruly and undisciplined bodies. Through these textile inquiries, I explore how the artist forges a system of sensitive communication that emerges as a medium for healing—evidenced through the recurrent appearance of lesions, scars, and fractures. Looking at her work alongside other feminist practices taking place regionally, this essay also explores emerging feminist artist networks that are rooted in somatic languages that challenge normative modes of knowledge-production and communication.

Highlights

Title The Somatic and Textural Language of Patricia Belli: Recrafting Social and Political Bodies in 1990s Nicaragua
Femalia evokes the fleshy slits of vaginal openings, punctuated by the delicate wrinkles of cascading labia—yet around tight stitches, where the fabric puckers and pulls, the composition morphs from vaginal folds into scapes of mutilated skin
In all of its somatic provocations, Femalia challenges how we read the body against the textures of gender constructions and trauma

Summary

The Somatic and Textural Language of Patricia Belli: Recrafting Social and Political Bodies in 1990s Nicaragua. Femalia evokes the fleshy slits of vaginal openings, punctuated by the delicate wrinkles of cascading labia—yet around tight stitches, where the fabric puckers and pulls, the composition morphs from vaginal folds into scapes of mutilated skin Along these textures, stitches blur into sutures, where the corporeal labor of healing is made evident through fibrous lesions that resemble scars. Throughout the essay, I am interested in how Belli performs feminine disidentifications with materials and practices that have been gendered, or otherwise feminized, to give form to the precarity and fragility of trauma—both embodied and externalized Through her works, I consider Belli’s desire to engage and undo constructions of femininity and the containment of bodies through the disciplining of subjectivity. I propose that Belli’s textile assemblages initiate a somatic language that reworks gendered materialities into fluid and capacious textures, giving rise to undisciplined subject formations that directly respond to social and political realities during this period

Unravelings in the Aesthetic Field

Recrafting Bodies

Fiber Cords of Memory

Contested Threads

Feminist Knots

Becoming Part of a Feminist Jungle