A Deep Connection to Home
Nadia Hernández, an artist from Venezuela, has many things she misses about her home country. She hails from Mérida, a city of 200,000 people located on an alluvial plain high in the Venezuelan Andes. “It becomes very sensorial, the things that you miss,” she says. “The list can be endless, from my childhood home to the sensation of being surrounded by mountains … to going hiking and smelling the different flowers and feeling the mist descend from the mountains when it’s getting dark, when the night’s falling. But mostly, it’s the people and the connection to my childhood home and my family.”
Hernández was born in Venezuela and moved to Tucson, Arizona — a city with “a very strong Latin American presence” — when she was nine. At 16, she moved to Brisbane, where she studied fine arts at the Queensland University of Technology. She now lives in Melbourne, where she is part of a growing Venezuelan community.
Like many members of the Venezuelan diaspora, Hernández is unable to return home, even to visit, due to measures put in place by the country’s repressive political regime. However, she finds ways to connect with her culture through her artmaking.
The Power of Protest Music
One way Hernández connects with her heritage is through her art project, which traces the history of Venezuelan protest music. This project aims to create an evolving archive of protest songs. Its latest iteration, Para verte mejor, en todo tiempo (To see you better, at all times), is a multidisciplinary installation currently on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW).
Venezuela has a strong tradition of protest, especially embedded in sonic culture. In recent years, millions of people have protested against the government of President Nicolás Maduro, who is currently in prison in the US awaiting trial for drug trafficking.
Hernández grew up listening to Venezuelan protest music. “It’s music that I still continue to listen to in my studio when I’m working,” she says. “Often, it’s where I gather my sense of strength or understanding as well. I feel like [that these songs hold] so much power and knowledge in the lyrics.”
A Growing Archive
Para verte mejor, en todo tiempo comprises three elements: a textile collage, a soundscape, and a mural spanning the walls of the gallery space. The wall painting is site-specific, marking the first time it has been accompanied by this project. It traces the journey that the project has taken, featuring the majority of the collaborators involved in the work.
These collaborators — Venezuelan artists and members of the global diaspora — have contributed to the 46-minute soundscape that accompanies the work. Hernández invited different artists to reflect on the political power of songs and either recite fragments from lyrical phrases or offer whatever they like in terms of a sound bite.
Among the new additions to the soundscape in the AGNSW show is a five-minute clip recorded in Caracas by Venezuelan educator and cultural practitioner Eileyn Ugueto. “She is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of Afro-Venezuelan dance and singing and musical heritage,” Hernández says. “In her contribution, she takes the protest song archive back to the 16th century, and she invokes a living memory of songs of labour and musicalised prayers.”
Fragments from a lecture by Venezuelan artist Abraham Araujo “tracing the shift from 90s compilation culture to a new era of sonic risk and avant-garde music … are interspersed with songs from a mix he created”. The soundscape also features field recordings — of rain falling and other everyday sounds in Hernández’s hometown — the artist made 10 years ago, when she last visited Venezuela, composed into the mix by Melbourne sound engineer Thom Pringle.
Art as a Form of Protest
So, does Hernández consider her work as a form of protest? “Definitely,” she says. “It has been since I started making it. I think art’s a powerful form of self-expression and protest, and I think that the message can be the work. And for me, the message in these works is also about sharing our vast cultural traditions and preserving them in the diaspora.”
Like many of her compatriots, Hernández has had to observe the recent political crisis in Venezuela from afar. “Since I’ve left the country, I haven’t stopped seeing what’s happening in Venezuela,” she says. “I have family there still.” These connections, made distant by geography, are nourished through art.
“So much of [my artistic process] … is based off family stories, anecdotes, relationships and a desire to preserve an aspect of our everydayness, even though we’re all physically apart,” Hernández says. “It’s an everyday practice.”
Para verte mejor, en todo tiempo (To see you better, at all times) is at AGNSW until June 21.
