Alejandra Glez, an Art Collection and Afghan Women
Déborah Gómez
La autora es escritora y catedrática de Español.
We spoke with her on the phone a couple of times because we were in love with one of her art pieces. It was an immediate connection. Later, we decided to travel to Mexico, where she was visiting, to meet her. That first encounter impacted me. She walks toward us with a great smile, and we embraced. She gets lost in my arms. “You are so thin,” I said to her, and looking at her face I discover, beyond her smile, those bags around her eyes that were too familiar. I wanted to cry as did my sister and mother twenty years ago when I landed at Bogotá airport. They were the body and the face of hunger, of want, the very same hunger and want I had experienced during the 1990s and that she was experiencing today, thirty years later. However, this essay is not about the suffering of the Cuban people, nor about our suffering, Ale’s and mine, for having been born female under a patriarchal Communist dictatorship. Ale’s humanity, which has come to awaken mine –sometimes numb- knows no boundaries.
Despite the pandemic, the days we spent together were magical: yoga sessions and breakfast at the shore, visits to the Mayan ruins, photographs at Azulik’s Sfer Ik –that architectural marvel that brings peace to the soul- and unending conversations about life, women and art. Alejandra surprised us, being so young and so wise, so sure of what she wants to do, to build: that infinite desire to help and to transform lives through her art.
This grand young woman, who is just 25 years old, already has an impressive artistic oeuvre that includes photography, performance, video art, among other artistic practices. Misogyny, gender violence, marginal identities, and difference –anything that subverts the ideals of the feminine imposed by patriarchal society- are some of the themes that she approaches through her artwork, oftentimes brutal while simultaneously liberating and cathartic. Ale uses her lens –and at times, her body- where it makes one uncomfortable, where it hurts the most, to speak to us of injustices and traumas, and above all to remind women that we are not alone, that our experiences are not isolated incidents.
We had to succumb to so much charm, to so much strength, to so much desire to denounce and to change the world. While sitting at a table in the Filosofía Restaurant, in what decades ago was the residence of one of the most notorious and feared drug lords, surrounded by art, Ale convinces us that our souls are collectors’ souls, and that we should think very seriously about the future of our own (very incipient) collection. “I am not too clear yet about its focus,” I replied, “about how to go about it, but what is clear to me is that it must be a collection of women’s art.” And, in that space, gazing at the same ocean that the feared drug lord once stared into, an art collection was born, whose purpose would be to empower women artists, a project we will likely talk about again at another time.
After our visit to Mexico, nothing would be the same. Life cannot continue to be the same once art has invaded it. Miami has not been the same for us, and we cannot be the same in any other place. Spain has also not been the same after Ale’s arrival. In just a few months, a hurricane named Alejandra Glez had made itself felt. Having won the IV ENAIRE Foundation Prize in Young Photography; having her work shown this year at the PhotoEspaña and JustMad festivals, with a solo retrospective exhibition at Aurora Vigil-Escalera Gallery, and her participation in group exhibitions at the MIA Art Collection and the Luciano Méndez Collection, among many others, Ale continues to follow her path, transforming lives, gifting hope.
Hope is, precisely, what Afghan women need right now. The Taliban have return and with them the restoration of sharia law in its most ruthless and extremist version. In just a few weeks, new rules have been implemented that curtail the education of women and their participation in public life. A new cabinet has been formed, which is made up of a group of ministers none of which is a woman. Despite its assurances that the rights of women and girls will be respected within the limits of Islam, it is very possible that Afghanistan will return to a state where women will be deprived of their fundamental human rights and be granted a minimum of autonomy. Not only will they be forbidden from studying and participating in political life, but also from working outside the home, leaving their house without a male family escort, showing their faces or any part of their bodies, which will require the compulsory wearing of burkas. Under Islamic law there is also the possibility that public beatings will come back, as well as stoning, child brides, corporal mutilation and other barbarities that would seem impossible in the 21st century.
While the world is trying to process the horror of this way of life, Ale is already knocking on doors, asking: “What can I do?” She asks: “In what way can I help Afghan women?” Then she learnt about people in refugee camps in Poland. She learnt about Nilofar Ayoubi, a long-time activist of women human rights in Afghanistan, who was forced to flee the Taliban with her three children for fear she would be assassinated. Alejandra understood that with her art, she could offer these Afghan women and girls a glimmer of hope. “Burka”, her most recent artwork has been exactly that hope. Nilofar, who shall receive most of the profits from the sale of this work, has said: “A perfect illustration of the suffering of Afghan women! Thank you, Alejandra, for that beautiful piece.” We join the Afghan activist in her gratitude: Thank you, Ale!
