Reflexiones series
This work began as an exploration of the Spanish colonization of the Americas driven by Schafer’s desire to understand her maternal “mestiza” origin. In this series, she layers digital images to create immediacy and direct visual connections between complex events that have become abstracted or obscured both by time and intention. By layering, mirroring, and ordering selected images, Schafer seeks to shift historical authorship to restore and recenter truth. Through juxtaposition, she examines the awful irony of the near annihilation of complex indigenous social structures and systems of knowledge that occurred at the point of contact with diseases and with the inherently violent European presumption of cultural superiority. She examines parallels and causal relationships between the catastrophic historic loss of sovereignty and Latin Americans' contemporary migration experiences drawn north for a better life or asylum.
Using the idea of a mirror, reflection, and the Rorschach ink blobs, these works share an introspective process of reconciling a part of her ancestral history that is complex, shameful, horrific, and laced with greed, violence, and disease. The newest works in this series begin to explore the indigenous beliefs lost to her lineage and nearly erased in her life through colonization and cultural assimilation, and seek the possibility of a restorative process that reincorporates them into her life.
This work began as an exploration of the Spanish colonization of the Americas driven by Schafer’s desire to understand her maternal “mestiza” origin. In this series, she layers digital images to create immediacy and direct visual connections between complex events that have become abstracted or obscured both by time and intention. By layering, mirroring, and ordering selected images, Schafer seeks to shift historical authorship to restore and recenter truth. Through juxtaposition, she examines the awful irony of the near annihilation of complex indigenous social structures and systems of knowledge that occurred at the point of contact with diseases and with the inherently violent European presumption of cultural superiority. She examines parallels and causal relationships between the catastrophic historic loss of sovereignty and Latin Americans' contemporary migration experiences drawn north for a better life or asylum.
Using the idea of a mirror, reflection, and the Rorschach ink blobs, these works share an introspective process of reconciling a part of her ancestral history that is complex, shameful, horrific, and laced with greed, violence, and disease. The newest works in this series begin to explore the indigenous beliefs lost to her lineage and nearly erased in her life through colonization and cultural assimilation, and seek the possibility of a restorative process that reincorporates them into her life.
Corazón salvaje/ Untamed heart, 2022. Oil on panel, 30 x 24 inches.
Portal al corazón salvaje/ Portal to an untamed heart, 2021. Gold over digital archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle William Turner 310 cotton, 30.67 x 46 inches, 1/5 Edition of 5 + A.P. + T.P.
Codicia/ Greed, 2022. Gold and ink on Arches cotton 16 x 12.135 inches, unique
¿Empatía? (Las Casas y Cortés)/ Empathy? (Las Casas y Cortés), 2020. Mixed media: ink, watercolor, and gold details over digital archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle William Turner 310 cotton, 39.4 x 55.12 inches,
Edition of 3 + A.P.
Amándonos a nosotrxs mismxs I/ Loving ourselves I, 2020.
Gold on cotton, 15 x 19.5 inches, unique
Amándonos a nosotrxs mismxs II/ Loving ourselves II, 2020.
Gold on cotton,
15.25 x 22.5 inches, unique
