Reflective Exchange: Honoring the Children

Who names the leader?Wet, dirty floor.Three generations of men in the pictureOne generation of woman in the other camera.

We all watch infantslike we are protecting our own heads.Stairs lead to the chairs,Busing families inside.

Little HandsMaking meaningTogethernessA gentle touchApply pressureever so slightlyDelightMoments of wonder

Hand to God—Boot-level view—This is the only photographtaken by a mother too.

Utopian Center for Civic LoveTwo small teachersYellow, purple, red, green, blue, and clear.

Sound engine.

Field notes, March 6, 2016. “Today was miraculous. During our asset mapping, I approached a house right across from our mural site. A Catholic nun answered and told me her family had occupied the house for 100 years. Her sister, a midwife, lived in the house for 83 years until her death. She assisted in the birthing of over 1,000 children in the Cayo District, giving life to the community. She told me the mango tree is gone as well. Rotted away after 100 years. Claims the White American pastor of the church killed it. Used to be right in the yard where the mural will be. She asked, ‘Can we paint a mango tree?’ RIP Meredith Sanz.”

The youngest of generations. Family relations.  My nephew, their cousinMy daughters have Belizean blood in  their veinsBlue like the Caribbean SeaFlowing red and spicyLike Marie Sharp’s extrahot pepper sauceTheir family seems likehalf the country’s populationEverywhere we gofrom one side of the country to the nextsomeone we meetseems to be related to them.My daughters' inheritance BelizeThe little known precious Jewel

    Whisper into my eyes.  If there were home on the inside.    Roaming on the outside—And Rome, by whose call do we gather?

Precious loveWho is she?So beautiful, mouth parted slightly  and eyes cast downwardInclusive or exclusive?The fine lines and bold markings  blur the boundariesA mother’s wish, an artist’s dreamExplosions made from stardust

Harper and Pilato Process Memo

Entering dialogue with each other has challenged us to rethink the authenticity and accuracy with which we present our ethical commitments to the communities we engage with.

We are impatient and frustrated with the structures of institutions that stand between artists and their loving collaborations with other human beings.

As we work our way past thousands of words that shape and obscure the landscape of where our practices have taken us, real questions rise roughly, past manicured intellect, embodied in care. We work through this dialogue together and stand with women around the world to fight against the patriarchal structures that will have profound effects on the children of the future. Through our simple prompts, we hope to engage the reader in the tender loving kindness that we both believe is the foundation of working with children.

These memories outline the silhouette of meaning left by the most loving times of our work in recent years. And so, we choose to represent to you, kind reader, five photographic images from the exhibition PUBLIC SCHOOL (2017), created in a collaboration between Rachel Harper and Jim Duignan and presented for half a year at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, along with four photographic images from the mural “A Painted Conversation” created as part of Natalia Pilato’s dissertation research in the Cayo District of Belize, Central America.