THE ANTHEM
AND THE JAB
In Puerto Rico, I had always refused to perform it. I would play our anthem and then let someone else take over for the U.S. one. But this time, in Chicago, there was something conceptually and politically potent about a girl from Puerto Rico, standing in a boxing ring in North American territory, playing the U.S. National Anthem.
It felt like a reverse conquest.
I was coming from the so-called territory, now taking up space in the territory.
It was a symbolic inversion.
So I made my own arrangement. Right before my coach Johnny wrapped my hands, I laced up my boxing boots, stepped into the ring, and played.
Gratefulness: because boxing had helped me rehabilitate my arms after injury and let me return to the violin.
Love for my coaches: Bill, Johnny, for the dedication they gave to my education.
And the political complexity of what it meant for me to be standing there.
Minutes later, with the same arm I had just used to hold the violin, I landed a jab and scored a knockdown.
Coach Bill taught me that jab like it was a violin scale: with patience, technique, discipline and snap.
And it landed; in tune.
Body Work
My body of work, "Body Work," is an exploration of the hyper-mindful exercise that is to live with chronic pain and being constantly aware that I inhabit a body.
It is about that enduring existencial experience.
What does it mean to live inside a body?
To not escape it.
To fight it.
To fight with it.
To carry it and have to carry yourself.
What does it mean for the body to be mediated inside and outside?
in the visible and the invisible?
As a chronic pain patient, I was left with no other option than to be a brutally honest body.
I couldn’t pretend body.
I couldn’t perform body.
And it was then; when I stopped performing; that I began to be judged as if I was.
This work questions being questioned.
I found the perfect medium in the fight.
In boxing, because it made it all visible.