Preserving culture through migrations, Mar Díaz Pacheco reflects on identity as daily construction—unearthing ancestral roots, weaving personal histories. In Buenos Aires, Mar seeks herself anew; finds solace in flavors, music, community. Through art, Mar takes an unapologetic stance—making Black faces seen, and challenging myths about their absence. ReVeladas, hija de la migración, captures Afrodescendent women in the present moment; it plays with time, proves their existence, demonstrates their beauty. To ennegrecer (blacken) el arte, Mar disrupts the canon's racist, classist exclusions. Claims space as collective victory—for ancestors, for feminism, for freedom. "Black is the color of freedom"

About The Artist

Maryury (Mar) Diaz Pacheco is a black feminist and visual artist of Afrocolombian descent. Around a decade ago, Pacheco migrated from her home country of Colombia to Buenos Aires, Argentina to study art therapy as she has a passion for using art to help marginalized populations and to create community. Pacheco is currently a member of a collective of feminist photographers called “Tejiendo miradas y Tertulia de Mujeres Afrolatinoamericanas (TeMA)”. Today, she works across artistic mediums, most prominently using photography as a vehicle to unpack her own identities as an Afrocolombian woman and a daughter of migration; in addition, Pacheco’s art practice aims to build community amongst black women in Latin America as she endeavors to make the art world more Black——to make Black faces and bodies seen and loved despite global efforts to invisibilize Blackness.

​About The Host

​Anya Miller (she/her) is a student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Sociology and Design. More importantly, she is a student of life—on a radical journey of learning and unlearning, each and everyday. As a human and as a scholar, Anya is passionate about the intersection of art and activism; public art and spatial production; ethnographic research, podcasting, and photography; social justice curation; and intersectionality. She hopes to continue gathering knowledge from the animate and inanimate environment that surrounds her in hopes of, one day, utilizing her energetic passion for humanity to leave this world a better place than she found it.
 Picture​self-portrait​, by Anya Miller
                 















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English Script



AM:
When asked where she comes from, artist Mar Diáz Pacheco says that she is not from one place, but rather she is from the collection of all of the places she has ever lived. 
Welcome to season 2 of Reckoning and Repair: The Art of Resistance in Argentina. In this season, we explore the stories and legacy of art activists from Bueno Aires and beyond. This is your host, Anya Miller, a lifelong scholar, activist, and admirer of art. I invite you to be present as we dive in.

Around a decade ago, Mar migrated from her home country in Colombia to Buenos Aires, Argentina to study art therapy. In our conversation today, Mar unpacks her identity as an hija de la migración—a daughter of migration—and as a mujer afrodescendiente—a woman of African descent, living in Buenos Aires. How does she preserve her culture in this new context, and what role does her art play in it? Mar takes an unapologetic stance as she endeavors to make the art world more Black—to make Black faces and bodies seen and loved despite global efforts to invisibilize Blackness. 

I want to begin with a discussion of your identity as a lot of your work centers around this theme. As much as you are comfortable, walk me through your identity and how you’ve come to understand it. Who is Mar Diáz Pacheco?

MDP
Identity is a process of construction, you know? A constant, daily process. It wasn’t a question that I asked myself as a child or adolescent, because in my family, we say: there are people of all colors. My family has always been nomadic—by choice or by circumstance. 

My grandmother on my dad's side was from Isla Baru, which is the island next to Cartagena. And well, Cartagena is the place where the enslaved people were brought into Colombia, where the ships arrived—the port city. My grandmother left there when she was young in search of opportunities. And well, she moved through various cities in Colombia. And then, my other grandmother on my mother's side was more Afro-indigenous, and she also left and was nomadic; she moved to and through many places.  

My dad is both blonde and the son of a Black woman. It’s something that always came up more in my college days, asking a lot of questions about where we came from, seeking to understand the migrations of my grandparents, of my ancestors. And well, as my identity has been a daily construction in which I’ve now reached the place of feeling Afro-Colombian and Afro-descendant but it’s from a personal position—like a personal search, not from a family construction, as if my family said, well, “We are this; we aren’t this,” etcetera, no! It’s present—my identity, our identity—in traditions, in food, in music, you know?  So, constructing my identity has been a process of uncovering all of those traces that were left by those cities—those migrations. And I feel that this identity is a fabric, you know? Asking questions, putting things together, weaving together who I am for myself.

AM:
The idea of identity as this woven fabric—that is such a beautiful analogy. In a similar thread, you migrated to Buenos Aires in your adulthood to pursue art therapy and to craft a life in a new city. How do you, as an Afrocolombian woman, preserve your own culture in this new place? 

MDP
I think that I preserve my culture through honoring the traditions, the food—preserving the flavors, looking for places to get certain types of food that are not easily available in the grocery store or in the supermarket, you know? It's like the flavors take me to a distant but also very close memory. And I think that kind of sustains me. And then, my culture is also preserved through encounters with others—actively searching for those roots of African descent here in this country of Argentina. So, like, at the beginning, I lived very close to San Telmo and it was like going to the local fair at San Telmo every Sunday to listen to the candombe. 

AM:
The candombe is a style of music and dance that originated in Latin America among the descendants of liberated enslaved African people. It became this source of power and a symbol of the life and joy of people of African descent in Latin America.

MDP
And, the sound—the drum—called me.

When one migrates, the only thing they take with them are their roots. And when you arrive at that new place, it is also an almost unconscious process of going to look for it—seeking out that flavor or that smell or that sound that reminds you of the culture. So, though I am living in Buenos Aires, I preserve–or rather, I try to preserve—my Afrocolombian culture by being in community with others, searching also for people of African descent, particularly women to share in my experience.

AM:
I’d love to delve into how that identity shows up within your work—within your art practice.

MDP
Well, in my art, I first take a strong stance, like, “Who am I? What do I do?”—recognizing and positioning myself as a person of African descent in a place where Black roots or Afrodescendant roots have been invisibilized and denied. And each time I create, I am forced to encounter and grapple with the myth that in Argentina, there are no Afrodescendant people; there are no Black people.
I took it as a challenge almost. I said, “If I’m being told and hearing that there are no Black or Afrodescendent people in Argentina, then I am going to look for them. I am going to make sure that they are seen.” And that’s how my first portrait project ReVeladas began, looking for women of African descent around the city to photograph. And, I always say that ReVeladas is—una hija de la migración—a daughter of migration. It is born from that search, from looking for what I am and who I am in this new place that I began to inhabit.

AM:
ReVeladas features black and white portraits that Mar captured of Black women—both friends and strangers—in Buenos Aires. It is offered as proof of the existence of Afrodescendant people, and more specifically, of the dignity and beauty of Black women. 

MDP
I was wondering: what portraits of women are shown in this country? How are those displayed? What bodies are normalized, idealized, and displayed in society? When I started to do this project, what I started to do was to capture images of women of African descent on the street, of black women. 
So I questioned, “Why do they say there are no Black women here if I see them? And even if you refuse to see them, I'm going to see them. I’m going to make them visible. I'm going to make this project reach the exhibition venues, the exhibition circuits, you know?”
And when people tell you, “There are no Black people. There are no Afrodescendant women. There aren't, there aren't, there aren't. . .”, people won't see them because that's what they've been learning, you know? So, of course, as I said, I began from the premise of, “I do see them.”
I'm going to show you that they are here—that we are here. 

Visitors at exhibitions always ask me where the photos were taken, and I say “Here.” They say, “Here, where?,” and I respond, “Here in Buenos Aires.” And people can't believe that they’re all images made here in this country, and not only in this country, but here in the capital. They can’t believe it, so I tell them, “Oh, this one was taken on La Avenida de Mayo,” “This one was taken in Parque de las Heras,” “This one was taken around the corner from here,” etcetera.

And what has begun to happen since this project is that many Argentine people have told me, “After seeing your work, I’ve actually started to see Afrodescendant people around the city.”

AM
The way that your art and ReVeladas, in particular, serve to create community amongst Black women is just so beautiful. Can you talk to me about your decision to photograph in black and white with this work? 

MDP
Well, the black and white—it was conceived of in ReVeladas because it alludes to the past, you know? Like, people see those photos and can think that they were from 200 years ago, but they really are from the present. So it's being able to play as well with the conceptualization that Afrodescendant people are part of a distant past, but they aren’t solely in that distant past, rather these are photos of the present. It's like playing a little with that sense of time and history.

AM
Your works hold incredible emotional and cultural significance, which leads me to wonder about how you see them fitting in with or disturbing the contemporary art canon? What do these works mean, more broadly?

MDP
One of the objectives of my work is to make the art world black—ennegrecer el arte. Many ways of knowing and modes of production are both classist and racist and, well, they are also born from this question of whose faces and bodies are permitted in art exhibitions. I’m striving to make art more black, to make the museums in this city that so often prioritize Eurocentric traits and views more black, and to show that other faces are beautiful and deserve to be seen. And, in a way, I feel great satisfaction that this has been possible along my path as an artist.

AM
I love how you talk about your aim to make the art world more Black. What does it mean to you as a woman of African descent to have this opportunity and this voice as an artist—to enter these spaces?

MDP
It is a satisfaction, but it’s not just a personal satisfaction. I feel that it’s a collective satisfaction, you know? Because it is not that I have reached those circulation spaces, but rather that we have all arrived. So yes, it is a personal demand, but it’s also a collective demand and it’s an ancestral demand. I feel a sense of responsibility within myself and a responsibility to our ancestors because it's like seeing our history and making it be seen. 
It is a contribution to art history. It is a contribution to political history. It's a contribution to feminism and to women's stories. This contribution is not made from a private place, but rather it’s a collective achievement.
And listening to the feedback from women is what generates the satisfaction of what has been achieved. Hearing them say, “Wow, we’ve never been to an exhibition where people that look like us are featured. Our faces don't make it to art spaces.” Nothing is like the satisfaction of a collective achievement.

AM:
The way that you claim space for Black people in art is so inspiring. I’d like to close by asking you about freedom: how do you see “freedom,” both as a concept and in relation to your art practice?

MDP
I’ve always said, “Black is the color of freedom.” I don't know what the abstract definition of freedom is, but for me, freedom gives me creative agency; it gives me art. It is being able to imagine, dream and create. Art gives me the opportunity to be free for even just a moment and the possibility to construct real freedom for Afrodescendant people, for Black people.

AM
Art gives the opportunity to be free for even just a moment. Wow. I deeply appreciate you for your time today, Mar, and for the revolutionary work that you are continually doing through your art practice.

Thank you for listening to Reckoning and Repair, a Center for Experimental Ethnography podcast. You can learn more and listen to extras at rnrphilly.com. 


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Audio Credits (in the order in which they appear)