Migrating Perspectives

Dani Zelko, Mexico City. Signs read “Memory Collection,” “Talk to me and read yourself,” “Tell your story today,” and “The present is confusing.”

“We all have reasons for moving,” says artist Dani Zelko. For people making the decision to migrate to another country for employment, those reasons are many and complex, usually rooted in economic needs or racial or sexual injustice in their home country. Separated from their families and culture, working a physically taxing job for up to ten months of the year in a foreign country, the trauma is severe, and without being granted permanent resident status they find themselves with barriers to things like healthcare.

The Covid-19 crisis has made the situation worse. Migrant workers have been declared essential workers, remaining active through the pandemic, but their work and living conditions make it impossible for them to social distance. Some have not received wage top-ups that other essential workers received. Those that have lost jobs due to Covid are ineligible for supports such as CERB, and as a result some are starving. In Ontario alone, more than 1300 farm workers have contracted Covid over the summer, and 3 people have died.

Despite all this, they do not feel like victims. “Yes, they are locked in a racist system,” Zelko says, “but they are full of joy and ambition, love and grace. The way they handle situations, the way they work together, the way they hang onto their own culture while getting involved in a new one. They offer guidance to us all." Zelko says they made him realize he could change his life, and now he’s helping them to change theirs.

“Language is a matter of life and death.”

— Dani Zelko

Argentinian artist Dani Zelko works at the intersection between poetry and contemporary art, creating work that focuses on subverting notions of power, borders, and hierarchies. He has spent the last two years documenting the lived experiences of migrant workers in Argentina, Chile, Spain, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, and at the border of the U.S. and Canada.

At each location, he uses the same procedure. He walks through places where migrant workers are active, and invites random people to sit with him. He writes down everything they say by hand. When they pause, he goes to the next line, as if writing a poem. Sometimes there are pauses of half an hour without speaking. Zelko waits, letting them find the words to tell their “poems” in their own time.

The next day he prints out the poems and puts them together into a book. He then offers the person he spoke with the chance to read their poem to a circle of nine people in a public space, sometimes attracting upwards of 150 people to watch and hear the stories. Afterwards, Zelko gives away the books to whomever came to listen, and makes them available free online (links at end of article).

Zelko describes a wonderful alchemy that comes from this process of translating the spoken word to the written one, and then translating it back to the oral. It heightens the individual's experience of themselves. They hear themselves reciting their lives, hearing their stories for the first time. Zelko believes this 'hearing of the self' offers an opportunity to change how we perceive ourselves and our experiences. We hear the words we use and realize we can choose different words next time. We have the ability to change our story.

In one of his books, “Language or Death,” we meet Mohamed Hussein, an older Bangladeshi man working in Spain, who was in need of medical assistance. He phoned an ambulance for six days, but was ignored because of his difficulty speaking Spanish, and he later passed away from Covid-related illness. "What would it take in a country like Spain," Zelko says, "to have just one person on the other end of the phone who spoke Bangladeshi. Language is power and resources. There is something in language that we are fighting.”

Herkyka Miranda and Juan Luis Mendoza de la Cruz, aka “The Sunflower Man”

That fight is on here as well, in a different country and a different art form. Hamilton dancer Heryka Miranda was introduced to migrant farmers in Niagara-on-the-Lake as “the woman who does healing with dance.” A student of embodied forms of learning and dance therapies for over 15 years, she grew up in a vibrant immigrant community in the Mid-Atlantic United States. She spent her twenties learning about the push and pull factors of the forced migrations of Mexican and Central American refugees to the U.S., many of whom were “directly impacted by the horrific civil wars supported and funded by the U.S.”

When life led her to St. Catherine's, she worked slowly and carefully to build a trusting rapport with several farm workers. “This is the time engagement takes.” It was seven months before she proposed the idea of participating in a series of workshops that would focus on an experiential dance for relaxation for migrant workers.

She delights in the way they introduce themselves. ‘I work with grapes,’” or ‘You know that Christmas tree you enjoy?’ For Miranda, this “tells you everything about their relationship with the earth.”

Heryka uses approaches and philosophies founded in movement based, expressive arts therapy and land dancing. Land dancing is a method that comes from Indigenous dance/theatre that she was introduced to by Indigenous multi-media dance artists, in particular Rulan Tangen from Dancing Earth Indigenous Contemporary Dance Company. The focus for her was to explore the relationship between the bodies of migrant farm workers and the seeds that they sow, plant, grow and harvest.

She invites a participant to share a body part they use in relation to the work they do, and asks if that body part could make a sound, what would it be; she asks if the food they grow could speak, what would it say; she asks them to imagine smoke sending messages home to their loved ones; she asks them how they use their body to grow the plant. She says they are amazed because no one asks them these questions. Though initially hesitant, the work brings them much excitement and joy because “dance, music, self-expression is deeply entrenched into Mexican culture and its encouraged and celebrated.”

Dance is a language that is unspoken and values vulnerability, exploration and risk-taking, so workers are able to explore parts of themselves they may keep hidden in their day to day. Miranda recounts workers rolling up their pants to show her the damage to their knees, or speaking of back pain, carpal tunnel, arthritis, but the worst trauma is always emotional. “The biggest sin of colonialism is the separation of families.” Away from their loved ones, dance offers a re-introduction to intimacy with one's own body.

Behind Miranda’s process is the belief that "we can heal ourselves without speaking," that dance can play a role in alleviating feelings of loneliness and isolation and offer an outlet to express the myriad emotions buried deep in the body.

“There are stories hidden in the body. Stress. Memory.”

— Heryka Miranda

One worker formed a special bond with Miranda. Juan Luis Mendoza de la Cruz has worked in the Canadian farm system for 30 years. Miranda immediately identified him as an artist. She would ask him to take off his shoes and walk through the alley between the plants, to feel the soil beneath his feet. He said he'd never walked barefoot on Canadian soil. Such an experience brought him to recall moments in his childhood in Mexico jumping in puddles. They worked together developing trust through dance, and it was obvious to Miranda from the beginning that she was working with an artist. Speaking of the precision of planting seeds and preparing the soil, De la Cruz would say “You are the land. You are the sunflower."

‘The Sunflower Man’ as she calls him, feels nourished from his experiences with dance. It brought self-confidence and offered a different perspective on his already intimate relationship with nature. He and Miranda have since created a dance piece together and perform at various events and festivals. The experience for migrant workers of participating in an artistic experience is not only empowering, but as Zelko points out, it helps them “recognize that their voice has a political use. It is an invitation to participation.” Case in point, De la Cruz is now one of the voices active in speaking out for Canada to grant citizenship to migrant workers.

Part activism, part art, Miranda and Zelko’s work is shifting not only how migrants are perceived, but how they perceive themselves. They are an essential part of our workforce, putting themselves at great risk to grow the food that we eat. Granting them permanent status wouldn’t just be about giving them access to healthcare, emergency income, or fair workplace conditions, it would be about working to erase systems of colonialism and offering these ‘artists of the earth’ the respect and dignity that they deserve. These are people with great knowledge and artistry, and their voices need to be heard.

Canada admits 60 000 migrant workers every year. 20 000 in Southern Ontario.