Author: Estrella Pezo

Just came across some questions on my personal agenda: What structures support my authenticity? What boundaries allow me to be? Can I include authenticity in my sense of belonging? Can I feel that I am a variation within my system of references? In what ways do I feel transgressive or different?

What does it mean to be authentic in practice? I don’t know if I arrive with answers or truths, but this question makes me think about my way of creating and working. About how everything I do involves a complex, yet rewarding, opening of the heart. That is, I manage to stop residing in my head in order to give myself a space to feel with my hands: folding paper, writing, moving images on a computer to connect with what I’m trying to express from the suggestive silence of those narratives that are not oral or written. And that’s how I return to the meeting point with one of my cohort’s friend, who was just sharing his notes with me regarding the act of writing and the possibilities of translation that it entails. What do we translate when we write? What is trans-localized? As he mentions, I share his view that it is the affects that are relocated. That’s where the magic of the narrative act lies for me: the power to give a second chance to an other that resides within us.

So, this leads me back to think about one of the questions on my agenda: what structures support my authenticity? Generally, they are rigid categories we are born into. Methods of survival to not rock the boat too much in a context in crisis, where we try to be functional in the best way possible, aware that along the way not everyone will be performing in the same way, or with the same act of care. Nevertheless, we don’t stop trying. But at some point those categories break because they wound us, they judge us. That’s how I ask myself, if boundaries are healthy, how have I been learning them? They were taught to me as walls, but perhaps they are like mountains that can be crossed to reach new explored territories.

The mountains allow me to be. Throughout my practice they have made themselves present to remind me that my pace is not a problem, because like the haiku that speaks of the little snail crossing Mount Fuji, I too reach another horizon. That’s how my practice keeps transforming: it is restless, it is curious. It is not satisfied with something “well done”, but with something that can generate an echo of continuous molding, especially if it can be shared with others. The mountains are the geographic and affective space where I can reflect on what is working well and what could work better. This is where it sometimes gives way to a demanding character. The temperament of someone who believes they must suffer to achieve, for whom nothing is ever quite enough, and I consider this partly my cultural inheritance, a continuous dialogue, perhaps even in its most unforgiving aspects.

I was born in a context with possibilities and privileges, but affirming that does not imply denying everything that comes with growing up as a woman with migrant parents in a chaotic city: as wonderful as it is violent. In that sense, my first roots are situated in the fear of burdening others, of being a problem, of being weird and having no restraint. However, years later to the present day, I find myself somewhat different. I no longer stop doing things out of fear, rather I keep doing them because I love them very much. So, when I think about the question from my agenda: What boundaries allow me to be?, I address it with another question: “Where else could I find other roots?”. That’s how the transformation of my practice begins. Finding common nodes with strangers: those we meet in the space of a consultation, workshop, class, or creative accompaniment, a space where our completely foreign and differentiated contexts can coexist with kindness and weave a common language: the visual and editorial arts.

And it’s that I feel that when we are in front of a stranger, we become uncomfortable, because we find ourselves face to face speaking “the same language”: in this case, Peruvian. But, what happens when we enter an imaginal space where languages have no geographic or linguistic categories? What happens when what we share comes from a color, a scent, a sound, or a texture? Curiosity and doubt emerge. The desire to understand appears, and also the frustration of not feeling the same. But the arts are adaptive in essence, so we turn to another one to navigate the discomfort with intuition, and with that, perhaps turn the communicative restriction into an expressive possibility. In this way, it is possible to create meeting bridges, where we are seen in our most uncomfortable parts, those that sometimes rest in secret.

This is something that also sometimes comes to my mind: sometimes, when I am in front of someone I don’t know, I feel freer to share something that is very personal and uncomfortable to me, but that, of course, is also ready to come out. However, sometimes I find it more challenging to reopen something personal with someone I’ve known for years. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe someone else shares this same “mischief”, but it leads me to think about how there is a powerful and beautiful possibility to create safe and deep spaces to speak about the unspeakable among strangers, as long as we can have an anchor nearby, like when they teach you to swim and show you the gutter you can hold onto so you don’t feel like you’re drowning, while you start taking your first swims.

So, what is my authenticity? Is it a “what” or a “how”? I believe it is like the trunk of my tree that comes from multiple roots but branches out into many, many branches. Like the book that is inhabited by multiple narrative resources to be able to unfold diverse stories. That’s how I feel, live, and seek to create books: as bridges between the different, within me and between us as communities. That is why I see editorial practices as states of belonging. Like time-spaces for witnessing doubts and experiences that can be held as learnings (or their pivotal points). In this way, I don’t relate creativity to talent, because it has to do with a quality inherent to human beings, rooted in their openness and ability to respond to diverse environments or contexts of crisis. This connects me to the question of if I can feel that I am a variation within my system of references? I confess it’s something I’m not sure about and I don’t know if I ever will be 100% sure (something to perhaps keep revisiting later), but I do have to recognize that I am in a continuous process to better understand and propose editorial practices as another type of affective environment, because I think that books (such as manuscripts, quipus, engraved stones or wooden tablets, canvases, logbooks, notebooks, and diaries) have historically been and continue to be an important repository of personal gestures imprinted in that creative response, previously mentioned. That’s the meaning of artistry for me. And that’s the mindset surrounding the arts that I’d like to rehabilitate in the world, as many others are already doing it. After all, building communities with artistry is doing so by bodily interconnecting with others by a purpose, a question, a search, an initial curiosity that will or might navigate through similarities, conflict, change, yet hopefully keeping the same horizons.

So, in what ways do I feel transgressive or different? Like an image I saw once: remaining kind and tender in a world that is often cruel. Trusting. Trying. Hoping. I guess constantly taking care of the child in me that allows me to turn a limit into a guideline, rather than a wall, one that leans me towards curiosity by questioning the shape of things and how chaos can be a fun, emotional and authentic way of seeing them from another point of view: the one of a “stranger”. And books are the threads that aid not losing that image: new, different, complex, yet beautiful because it’s necessary, kind, compassionate and freeing. So an image, created and cared, to be witnessed along others. 

• Notebook of processes:
  
  Dialogue is at the center of accompanying processes, so I’m always taking free notes I can later reread to order my thoughts based on three questions:
  
  a) What’s being expected?
  b) What’s needed?
  c) How could I help?
  
  This helps me recognize the extent of what I can do as a facilitator and what the participant must do on their own to reach what they are searching for. It’s also important that I am always looking to hold and shape expectations toward becoming searches.

• Foraging archive:
  
  I always think that the primary material for any sort of personal or collective creative process begins—or is sparked by—searching within. Therefore, a personal archive, whether old or recent, is very important for understanding the context of our questions and the purpose of what we’d like to create. With it, we have a starting point from which we can decenter and dive into the process. I think of these as emotional, yet tangible, anchors that emerge as allies in a process that will (safely) tap into the unexpected or the uncomfortable, but necessary.

• Dialoguing with the uncomfortable:
  
  I see this as essential, though not from a morbid perspective, but rather as an opportunity to search and contemplate beyond what we take for granted or how we’ve maintained certain perspectives—individually or collectively—on themes we want to work with in our creative processes. Active listening is important to register what a participant brings when sharing or discussing certain topics: what words they use, what gestures, body positions, voice tones or volumes. This can even help reveal practices in their daily life that are important yet not fully recognized, which may help them understand something challenging to share that holds a crucial piece of personal identity—a narrative that could expand to illuminate a sociocultural issue.

• Periodicity as caring:
  
  I think it’s important in my work to maintain periodicity—that is, consistency in scheduling meetings (for example, once a week, at roughly the same time or day). This helps build an ecosystem of care, offering physical and emotional reassurance that we will meet again during a process that might bring frustration or uncertainty. These feelings are important to sit with, not necessarily resolve, though I do provide some guidelines so participants can navigate their processes with full autonomy, exploration, curiosity, and doubt—trying and finding their own resources and strategies. In my experience, this has been possible thanks to the “promise” of seeing each other again in a week.
  
  Before establishing this rhythm, we first have an initial meeting to check our chemistry, introduce ourselves, see how we might work together, and determine the amount of time needed or manageable to reach a final piece or closure of the process. This applies to one-on-one tutorials, but in a workshop setting it shifts to an orientation talk or session where information is shared, which can also reassure individuals interested in participating. The workshop is then structured into sessions, but I try to leave an asynchronous week with no classes, during which participants share a final draft before submitting or presenting their completed work.

• Creating an ecosystem of work:
  
  Making the space comfortable. This ranges from curating playlists to accompany certain guided experiences or activities, to gathering references and texts that can serve as catalysts for questioning, especially at the beginning and midpoint of the process. It also means turning the workshop studio or classroom into something more home-like: inviting students or participants to move desks aside if they’d like to sit on the floor (space permitting), and keeping various creative tools within reach—scissors, pens, pencils, colors, glue, post-its, masking tape, clips, blank paper, etc.—along with something to eat or drink so people can help themselves when needed (cookies or other snacks on a table, glasses, a jar of water, juice, coffee, and so on).
  
  The most essential part of this is the check-in moment: we don’t start directly with the session’s agenda, but take a few initial minutes to see how everyone—including the facilitator—is arriving. This allows the workshop to tune in subtly yet meaningfully to the participants’ states and to adapt the plan if needed. It also helps build a safer, more trusting climate, which makes it easier to sustain frustration or other complex dynamics within the group—and to turn the group itself into a resource, rather than positioning the facilitator as the sole problem-solver or “savior.”

Thinking through practice: How can memory act as a lens to reflect on this? How does this re-signify my hands as a space? What kind of body does my frustration become?

We have been foraging through sources on storytelling. This week, we engaged with the works of Joseph Campbell and Matthew Dicks, tasked with identifying biases in their approaches to this complex, yet wonderful, narrative art. By dialoguing with their ideas and reflecting on how shared experience enacts a performative sense of belonging, I began to navigate a series of questions.

Campbell’s model of the “hero” who conquers “underdeveloped” parts of the self reveals a moral discourse that strikes me as potentially pretentious or idealistic. Why must we sacrifice an elemental part of ourselves (a part deemed “wrong” or “immature” by a moral standard) for some abstract “greater good”? If experience-based learning is foundational, then our earliest identity-shaping experiences are crucial to understanding how we became who we are. Therefore, the complete denial or suppression of these parts through a heroic-ritualistic process can be dangerous, problematic, and ultimately hurtful. Perhaps it is more about relocating that archetype or dialoguing with it. This draws my attention to the inherent bias within the very concept of “sacrifice.”

This is not to promote individualism or a narcissistic viewpoint, but to argue for seeing the self as an interdependent core, around which others orbit and are orbited in turn. Furthermore, if mythology is built upon archetypal narratives, what becomes of the vast diversity of other archetypes?

Shifting to Dicks’s suggestions for capturing fleeting daily moments, I find he largely overlooks contexts of high stress. His proposal, sadly, lacks any mention of this. He does not consider how to adapt the assignment for cultural contexts where priorities are different, and the rhythm of life is so intense that there is no time to write, for example, five pages about one’s day.

What if, instead of or alongside “compromise” and “faith,” we were to focus on hope? How can we practice hope, not as an abstract concept, but as an identitary practice that sharpens our perception of these moments? How can we apply this “homework for life” when the day feels endless? Is the goal merely to feel “better,” or is it to notice something fundamentally different?”

I’m starting to understand why I’m interested in the gesture language of my hands: because that is the bodily-space where I noticed for the first time my Cocoliche’s (my dad) most vulnerable side: his anxiety (and how he copes with it, just like me). This is a part of my affective heritage.

I’ve long-lived with an injured arm, one injured by someone who I love and still do (although we’re healthfully changing). Now that I’m reading about the importance of somatic sense, touch and the nuclear role of the hand in the practice of touch, I’m wondering about the paradox of it having some receptors, like nociceptors, that feel pain. So, I’m wondering, if my hand could express what she felt or thought of when being violated, what would she have to say? Or how does the rest of my body still live within that silenced expression? Is it still silenced? What aspects of my nowadays touch comes from a place of violence or fear, or how has it shaped towards faith and safeness? Is it possible, then, to change our language of love through touch? Change it from its institutional hierarchy to search for a more heart-opened, difference-tolerant, way of witnessing and listening to each other, to just be (together)?

Which is the path of the heart? Where does it go? How does it keep going? Maybe its footprints are like personal flags which keep the trace on which our boundaries are built. Now, this has always been an issue for me: as a kid I wasn’t able to fully understand boundaries as healthy identity practices, but would see them as bricks to build up thick walls. But this week’s group encounter was able to gift me a different way to see them, a perspective I’ve been thankfully able to harvest from my last years in therapy.

So, this made me think of how each brick builds, instead of a protective wall, a huge canvas in disposition for diverse storytelling acts. Therefore, these bricks can also build bridges thanks to the presence and usage of languages in all its modalities. What is most important is to create from the inner, deepest feelings. In this way, some experiences can be unblocked, hence, can be part of a critical fable: one in which we can have the chance of unveiling or resignifying truths.

Not quite sure if I can answer this, but one of my clues is play. Play as a platform for social inclusion, as a way to accept others, but especially the “others” within myself. Maybe this can be an opportunity for opening conversations of love: ones in which we can sensitively embrace vulnerability, while connecting present, past, and ancestry into an embodied wisdom. One through which we might heal.

When thinking about the path of my heart, I guess I can tell where and when it started, but I have no idea of its future directions. Just hoping they are different from the ones I’ve known. As long as I and we can all get a diverse amount of unpredictable and unexpected experiences, I believe there is a chance to repair the heart’s way of being. And that’s exactly the thing: it is not about making things better, but different.

A home is more than just a physical space. It is a performative extension of our politics, cultures, philosophies, spiritualities and affections: all of which shapes who we are. Therefore, as it can be found within the word “performance”, it’s all about the forms we need to be, to live, to feel the spark of existence. This might be the reason why home is a safe temple of self. So, it’s about feeling love towards the forms that are guarded by homes, forms that also feel like perforations at times, because similar to what Barthes defined as “punctum” in photography, these forms can only be exteriorized when tapping and dialoguing with special parts of our vulnerability.

So, how can we find those forms? How do we identify them? My proposal is to contemplate the day to day small gestures, as the ones performed by our hands, that tell an important amount of information about someone or someplace. Thinking on how the hands move, are used, or rest can be a way of holding, shaping, letting go and holding again all of the heart’s paths and their new ways to coexist, witness, share and love.

My practice lives at the crossroads of the book and the classroom, where presence
is the essential material. So, when thinking of the harvest yielded by  changes after 2022, I find myself constantly learning that virtual materiality is not an absence, but a different kind of skin, one that opens a new lexicon of sense and cognition. It asks us to keep searching for meaning not in grand events, but in the daily, sensory iterations of connection: presence found in the synchronized breath and the solitary echo alike. In this search, the gesture becomes my compass. More than image, it is performance, a vulnerable architecture that allows sensitive dialogues to begin. And if the “body” is no longer a single geography, but a fluid concept, an identity playground, then the internet becomes a stage for new gestures to be born. These gestures are inter-textual, woven from many voices, a silent language waiting to be recognized. This is how we begin to shape a context. This is the quiet, vital work of building a community.