Ashley Ortiz-Diaz
Dead Letter
At the hand of Ashley Ortiz-Diaz, simple paper or muslin takes on the texture of hide- of skin that has been stretched, tanned, wrinkled and worn, revealing the evidence of time and every occurrence and encounter that comes with it. They are larger-than-life envelopes with torn edges and nearly abstract, soft-focus imagery rendered in dusty charcoal and graphite, or the deepest black India Ink. An envelope is a shell and a container; it protectively bears meaning and a message, but must be torn- ripped open- in order for the message to be revealed. Ortiz-Diaz’ has lovingly reversed that role: the evidence of the message is the message. These shells represent the intimacy of communication- of what we may allow ourselves to write down on a scrap. But they also serve as an elegy to the ghosts hidden in the darkest history of the Americas: of how easily and holistically Black and Indigenous peoples in particular, were subjugated, slaughtered, and then buried in the hopes of being forgotten to time. These shells represent the destruction ongoing today: their blackened and sooty forms resembling scorched landscapes. They are the message. Will you receive it?
To learn more about Ashley Ortiz-Diaz and her work visit:
@mineralspiritz on Instagram
For inquiries regarding the works in Dead Letter, please visit the artist website or email aortizdiaz4@gmail.com
anemone
“They will find the bones
that were always there
screaming an old memory
The delusion of disposal, that
to hide a thing from your own eyes
is to cause its non-existence”
To: the children buried in unmarked graves at the hands of the Catholic Church in the residential schools of North America. For the First Nations Penelakut, Tk’emlumps te Secwepemc, Cowesses, Ktunaxa, and Keeseekose.
To: the Black people who’s cemeteries (and there by their record of history in the landscape) have been developed over for housing projects, made into lakes for golf courses, and paved over for parking lots in the South. For Zion, and Keystone and others.
To: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, island and costal communities.
To: wildfire season and the Amazonian land protectors.
untitled, floating poem I
“I don’t see monsters in dark corners anymore
And the black of an unlit house is comforting
I see monsters in bright faces”
