Coyolxauhqui
sterling silver, burnt and branded pearls, rubber tubing
2025
From RISD J+M Pearl Lab; made with pearls donated by Tiffany & Co.
“Each irritant is a grain of sand in the oyster of the imagination. Sometimes what accretes around an irritant or wound may produce a pearl of great insight, a theory,” says Gloria Anzaldua about her theory of the Coyolxauhqui Process. Pearls have long been associated with fertility and life, but for Anzaldúa, this is more specifically rebirth or reconstruction. The burning of pearls explores my practice of remembrance, or re-limbing by creating charred scars that expose the endless layers of nacre made through trauma and time. By exposing them to an element they would never be exposed to without human intervention and extraction, the allure and fantasy of the untouched pearl is broken. The force of heat becomes violent and scarring yet tender in its fragile preservation of these materials.
Playing off the format of the bolo, the mechanism of the slide, that which joins the cords, is multiplied to create limitless sites of connection as long as the wearer negotiates them. Bolo cords become manifestations of Coyolxauhqui’s dismembered joints.
Formed into miniature constellations, the burnt pearls can be reoriented and re-homed in various placements within the structures. Gloria Anzaldua believes that “the border is moveable,” and this bolo allows the wearer to reconstruct their own impermenant and flawed manifestations of the borders within Coyolxauhqui’s fragmented body.