La huesera (The Bone Woman), is an old Mexican story of a woman who gathers bones in the desert. She collects all sorts of bones but her specialty is wolf bones. When she has assembled an entire skeleton, she sings to it until the wolf comes into being. The creature runs away eventually transforming into a woman who runs free towards the horizon.
According to Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves, the bones represent our indestructible life-force. To sing means to say on the breath the truth of one's power and one's need. La huesera is the ancient archetype of the crone, the one who knows, the one who is within us. In Jung symbology, archetypes represent patterns of our own psyche.
My fascination with ancient stories brought me to this project. I use self-portraits to re-enact my own version of La huesera in an environment surrounded by fog (Credit: Fog x FLO by Fujiko Nakaya). I use fake human and dog bones as well as wings, a signature in my work to represent freedom and transcendence.
Mujer,
mujer tardía
sumergida
vives en tinieblas
esperando la muerte
Mujer,
mujer malentendida
no te avergüences
de tu sombra
una luna gibosa te llama
para fundirte con el plenilunio
Mujer,
mujer bruja
dentro de ti está lo que buscas.
Recoge tus huesos.
Enmienda tus alas.
Mujer,
mujer gitana
baila, baila,
aúlla
para ahuyentar
a la muerte
© 2023 Claudia Ruiz Gustafson . All rights reserved
