Where My Belly Button is Buried (Donde enterraron mi ombligo)
Citlali Fabián | Mexico
My mom told me that when a baby was born in my Yalalag community, our ancestors carefully covered their placenta and umbilical cord in a clean piece of cloth and buried them into their patio houses, covering them after with a palm hat. The ritual represents the roots of the newborn being planted, reinforcing their connections with the land and community. In an offering, we are part of the land, and the land is part of us. We become part of something bigger.
This series of images and manipulated photo objects are the start of a personal process of healing from the suffering of colonization, in which photography is a ritual to explore the role of women in my community, my relationship with my roots, territories, and migration movements. In this practice, I direct the feminine energy to heal these wounds, to revive in my tongue the language of my ancestors, to understand and keep the ancestral knowledge, to encourage my people to appreciate our heritage and feel proud of our origins. Each stitch, scratch, and brushstroke is an act of resistance, a reaffirmation of my existence, that sustains my connections to my family, community, and land. Creating this body of work is a curative ritual to explore the different elements that shaped my duxherha (the whole, body, spirit, and soul), to bury my fears, and sow strength for the ones coming. In each piece I insert elements of my culture and family history – a thread, a plant, a seed, a tree, charged with different meanings – to link the stories of my ancestors. In this way each object tells their story for those who look under the surface.
“I’m very grateful for this opportunity to reflect on my own practice, to question everything I have done and will do. Practicing photography will never be the same. I started thinking I would go out into the world, but instead, I turned into myself. I embraced my fears and vulnerability, and I had the chance for the first time to validate the active role that my fellows and I play in our communities with our work. I’m finishing the program with fresh eyes and inspired by the amazing creators that I’m proud to call family.”
This project is a chapter from a larger body of work called Ben’n Yalhahj (I’m from Yalalag). My main goal with this project is to make images of my people for my people, to reunite my extended family and create our family album. By sharing my work with my community Villa Hidalgo Yalalag in the Oaxaca's Northern Sierra, I hope to bring back to my motherland the love and collaboration I have received from my relatives in the different territories we inhabit, to maybe impacting their own perception, the relevance of value our practices, to keep practicing them, and spread our culture.