Stephanie Elizondo Griest shares her journey learning the stories of female artists around the world Tuesday in the Amphitheater.
ARIANNA NEVAREZ
Staff writer
From India to Rwanda to New Zealand, Stephanie Elizondo Griest traveled the globe to ask the question “Is art enough?” and recorded stories of women who have found their spark through dance or theatre as she navigated her own journey of centering art in her life.
“My goal is to show you that you are not alone in this radical decision you have made by placing art at the core of your existence — a little reckless, maybe, but you are not alone,” Griest said.
At 10:45 a.m. Tuesday in the Amphitheater, Griest shared stories of female artists and her own journey as an artist with the audience. Griest is an author from the Texas-Mexico borderlands and is currently a professor of creative nonfiction at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Each artist has their own moment where they find their “initial spark to create,” according to Griest. Hers happened in her father’s garage, where his drumming transported her and turned her into “a rocket blasting through the cosmos.” As an artist, Griest said the power of imagination transports her.
“That became my talent and ambition,” Griest said. “I, too, wanted to make art that transported. I just had to find my form.”
She told a story about her grandmother, Madge, who kept every letter Griest had written her. The idea that her writing kept her grandmother company motivated Griest as she went to college and began authoring books.
Three of Griest’s books, All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands, Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines and Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana, took up her 20s and 30s, but she said it was the “purpose of [her] life to write these three books.”
Though they were “the joy of [her] life,” Griest said they were also “the nightmare of [her] life.” All the years she was writing, she didn’t have financial or personal stability, but she was doing the thing she loved.
“There was an inverse relationship between how hard I worked on my art and how responsibly, economically, I managed all the other aspects of my life,” Griest said. “And as more and more of my friends started getting married, having children, a question really started haunting me: Is art enough to justify all of these sacrifices?”
In 2014, Griest began asking women from around the world if the sacrifices were worth the pursuit of art. From dancers to musicians to writers, she found each story so “revelatory” that she kept seeking them out.
“Listening to these women reflect on their own internal strife in art, their insecurities, their jealousies, their disappointments felt deeply cathartic,” Griest said. “But what truly moved me was hearing how their art had enabled their survival of externally imposed trauma, like racism, like misogyny, like genocide, like war. As the United States began its descent into authoritarian rule, their stories became a guide for how to power the group.”
Griest then transported the Amp across the world by sharing women’s stories about their relationship with art.
In India, Griest talked to revered classical Indian dancer Surupa Sen. Sen practices for 9 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is not paid a dime. Instead, the money goes back to her village to fund the teaching of the next generation of dancers.
When Griest asked Sen if art was enough, Sen said when one dances, they “don’t feel any difference between who is watching [them] and who [they] are. That balance is what [artists] live for.”
Griest’s next stop was Rwanda, where she met Hope Azeda, a playwright who was raised as a refugee in Uganda. Azeda composed a play to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, which created an emotional response for audiences watching it; yet, she turned this into a moment of community support.
Griest then met Māmā Mihirangi in New Zealand, whose ancestors, Griest explained, were deprived of a role in the economy that British colonizers established. Now, Mihirangi advocates for Indigenous women’s equality by using music as a platform.
“Meeting women like these helped me realize that by passing on the wisdom gained from my own teachers via my books, via my students, I, too, was upholding a lineage — the lineage of art,” Griest said.
Though she was upholding this lineage, Griest said amid her research, she still hadn’t decided if she wanted to have a child or not; her body made the decision for her. Two weeks into her book tour, she said she realized something was wrong, went to the doctor and found out she had a cancerous tumor in her ovaries.
As this was happening, Griest said she was mainly concerned about her hair, which she said was a feature that was “the most Mexican thing about [her].” She said she did “not feel part of [her] lineage without it.” Through this time of hardship, she reflected on the things she’d done throughout her life, knowing the statistic that fewer than half of the women diagnosed with ovarian cancer survive even five years.
“The shock I sustained was visceral, but when it wore off, an even more powerful emotion replaced it — a galactic shock of euphoria,” Griest said. “Because all I have ever wanted to do in this life is travel the world and write about the people I encountered along the way, and that is exactly what I have done. I realized in this moment, art is enough because all we will ever have is this moment. If art is where we find the most meaning, the most joy, art is how we must feel it.”
Following her cancer treatment, Griest started belly dancing, where she felt she could reconnect to her body. She said belly dancing was a place where “being surrounded by so much visible beauty makes [her] forget the diminishment of [her] own.”
Griest closed with a reflection on her father and his relationship with drumming. Soon after she was cancer-free, her father was hospitalized. As he lost his ability to do things like brush his teeth or slip on his shoes, he still knew how to play music with his drumsticks. Now, his granddaughter, Analina, plays the drums, and Griest said her father is “actively channeling his art through his granddaughter.”
Griest said that the passing down of art is not only inheritance, it is “immortality.”
“This all brings us back to the question of the moment: Is art enough?” Griest said. “Yes, because as these women around the world have shown, art is inheritance. Art is reconciliation. Art is dissent. Art is revenge. Art is medicine. Art is unzipping your body for a spiritual orgasm in the palace of the moon. Art is self-actualization. Art is lineage. Art is love. Art is immortality. Which now brings the question: What is art to you?”
