Congratulations to Josephine Sacabo on a gorgeous new body of work!
THOSE WHO DANCE
“…those who dance were called insane by those who could not hear the music” – NIETZSCHE
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This series is an homage to Nahui Olin (b. Carmen Mondragon), the muse, artist, poet, social rebel and great beauty of Mexico in the 1920s – a woman who mesmerized the artists of the period – Diego Rivera, Dr Atl, and Edward Weston among others – with her extraordinary beauty, her intelligence, and her extravagant, uninhibited behavior.
a precocious free spirit who believed in the power and the beauty of herself as a woman.
a woman who considered her body the shape of her spirit and refused to hide it.
a woman who loved passionately and to extremes.
a woman whose tempestuous and tormented 5 year love affair in a ruined convent with Dr. Atl, famed painter and
volcanologist , became the scandal of the day. He was to refer to her henceforth as ‘mon dragon’ (my dragon).
a woman who lived her sexuality freely and without prejudices.
a woman who bowed to no man or woman and courageously lived her life as she saw fit.
a woman who loved art, poetry, sex, cats, flowers, Paris, the sea and the sun.
a woman whose eyes spoke volumes.
a woman of poetic delusions.
a woman who took the sun in as her lover every morning, carried him through the streets of Mexico City and laid him to rest at the end of each day.
a woman who daily visited her young blind niece to read Cervantes, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas and Voltaire to her.
a woman who at the death of her last great love withdrew into sadness, poverty and solitude.
an old woman who with her small government pension fed all the stray cats in the Alameda park of Mexico City.
a woman who having been born into the wealthy conservative Mexican aristocracy was shunned by her family and supported herself – beholden to no one – for the rest of her life.
a woman whom the social elite declared insane and thereby erased.
Special thanks to Elena Poniatowska for her chapter on Nahui Olin in her book “Las Siete Cabritas”and to Adriana Malvido for her book “Nahui Olin” and to Elizabeth Gillette.
