Rebecca Nava Soto on Indigenous Roots, the Creative Process, and Motherhood
I met Rebecca by responding to a call for volunteers at the Wavepool Gallery back in March – even as strangers, we easily slid into an exchange of expression, direction and trust as we brought her vision to life for TLACUĀ PAHTIĀ. Across the two shows I’ve had the honor of helping her install, we’ve shared intimate words of wisdom, encouragement and vulnerability. These rich moments were embedded in the materials we lay on the ground as ephemeral offerings – an ode to the beauty of sacred communication over time on Earth.
Coming back to interview her for Women of Cincy was a full circle moment. Nothing can be done to recreate the beautiful conversations we’ve had over the last nine months, but this feature was an opportunity to capture something that could be easily shared with the world; a chance for others to get a glimpse of the perspective Rebecca brings to the community.
We met at her studio and worked on an experimental mixed media art piece while chatting. As we intuitively played with her selection of colored wood shavings, our hearts opened organically.
Interview by Sophia Epitropoulos. Photography by Lauren Neal.
What have you been up to lately?
Right now I have this collaboration going on with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at the end of November.
I’m also teaching at the Cincinnati Art Academy on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then I have studio time Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Other than that, I'm just trying to stay still a little bit – I say that as I'm running around like crazy today! In terms of the studio and producing work, I’m trying to honor some time to experiment too. Also distilling the summer… This year was so long and intense. It takes time to distill the experiences and I feel like a lot of people don't get that time.
Tell me what your creative process looks like.
My process is different – it merges into my lifestyle. I'm always taking in lectures, audiobooks, and podcasts. I’m a professor and a mother, so I have to multitask and I always have to have a sketchbook nearby – I’ve got one in my studio, in my car, in my purse, in my kitchen and by my bedside. As an artist, you have to be available to put an idea down (even if it goes nowhere).
I like to do a little grounding and communication exercises with what I like to call the unknown element. This could look like a body scan from my head down to my feet and just feeling what's going on. Any sensations I feel physically or mentally or emotionally, I’ll just write them down without judgment, and then I like to write down where I hope to be moving into a desired state of being in those areas. Sometimes I'll just write down a dream that I had that was significant. I feel that that's a way to access that unknown place that's communicating with this waking part of us.
The world is always talking – it’s trying to communicate with you. When I sketch and journal, I’m able to tap into a much nicer space. I’ll start to see symbols and synchronicities in the world and it becomes very poetic.
I try to encourage my children to do these grounding exercises too. We have sketchbooks around the house so that they can just have that avenue to reconnect with those intangible parts. It slows you down a little bit and kind of primes you for creative work.
So, you’ll start by grounding yourself, asking “Where am I at?” “Where do I want to be?” “What feels right and how do I move through what I’m feeling?”
Yeah. And then, “What am I supposed to be paying attention to right now?” Once you do that, then you're able to kind of put down what's coming into your quiet, still mind in that moment. That's a starting point – then I take in a lot of research and lectures and audiobooks and things like that, then I'll sketch some of those ideas.
How do you decide when to show something to the world?
I have multiple outlets that I work in and let ideas coalesce until it makes sense to execute them through a show.
I try not to be in hustle mode as much and trust that things will come. I had this old professor preach this. He said, “Just make your artwork in the most true and authentic way and everything will follow from that.”
Rather than hustle and agree to everything that’s presented to me, I like to go to a quieter space that focuses on what I’m trying to tap into and play with more. It’s hard to trust it though because we weren’t brought up that way in this world.
What do you feel is true in your work? Or what has to be true?
To me, the true thing is to trust the inner voice.
I think we have a lot of voices happening within. For me, there’s a religious upbringing voice, a parental upbringing voice, a societal upbringing voice, and so on. There’s a therapy model that's called Internal Family Systems – you can use that to find your real voice. It’s such a hard task to find this real voice because we’re shrouded with all of this programming. Becoming familiar with what I think I know about this voice is helpful – for me, it’s the one that’s instant but really quiet.
So listening to that voice, being able to pull it out and listening to it – that's what you consider to be true in your work?
Yeah. Being able to balance and listen to the dialogue of all the voices. Some of them will need separate work to deal with, but overall, it’s a long process and conversation.
I’ve done that Internal Family Systems therapy before, but even still, I'll catch myself reacting to things in a certain way that I thought I had handled and moved past from. When that happens, I’ll do some of those grounding techniques you mentioned and keep asking myself “Why?” until I get to the core to see what’s really going on.
Getting to the core, yeah. I’ve had an old voice resurface recently and it was causing some intense self-doubt. I started to personify the voice and talk to it – things like, “I see you’re here. You are not me. Why are you here? Where did you come from?” You can trace things back in that way.
I like to do rituals to release that kind of density of feeling – it helps lighten it. For me, it’s kind of a healing process to do work in that way whenever self-doubt comes. I feel like they should teach a class on self-doubt in art school.
How do you think these techniques connect to your art?
A lot of these rituals and ways of seeing world views have really been born out of my reconnection to my Indigenous heritage, which I've really been obsessed about for a long time. But only in the last three or four years did I really start to experiment with the idea that it was a path forward and not just an artifact of the past. I try to go back to pretending or imagining a contemporary art world where art history was experienced through an Indigenous canon rather than the Western European canon. What would that look like, you know, or what would the Latinx/Indigenous continuum of art history look like? I look at a lot of the methods and processes that I did growing up within my immigrant communities.
My parents were both born in Mexico, and they immigrated here to the Midwest – first Chicago, and then here to Cincinnati. I look back at the traditions that these communities carried on. For example, in Mexico during Semana Santa, the week before Easter, we do this big wood shaving piece with Christian Catholic iconography on it with the community – it was just so satisfying to see it come together. I was captivated by the materials and the colors and really just hypnotized by it all, so I did research into those wood shavings and I realized that they actually predate the Catholic influence and it goes way back into Indigenous practices and offerings, so I started to use the wood shavings to create these kinds of abstracted forms. The abstracted forms were also inspired by the Mesoamerican pictographic languages that are like a parallel to the European abstract processes actually, where you take something from the man-made or natural world and bring it down to its most salient point to create a symbol.
The pictographic language, the process of material, and ritual – even making papel picado, baking pinatas during holidays or birthdays, and making Mexican flowers out of paper with my mom growing up was all really influential. I wanted to use those materials but expand on the process in my own way.
Can you talk more about how you revisited your heritage and upbringing, and how that’s seen in your work?
Yeah. I've started to open my mind up and question if these indigenous worldviews and rituals were true – like, what if they really worked? When I was younger, even though I was obsessed with Mayan hieroglyphs and pre-Columbian art history, I was very much a materialist and believed in science – the thought of writing things down in a journal and using your imagination to think about where you want to be and manifest something seemed unattainable. There was no evidence and it sounded crazy to me. But eventually, I started to believe that these intangible realms can really be something you can engage and work with, and that they can help you and they can hurt you.
I've sort of been playing with this notion. Scientific materialism can be seen as just one way and I don’t think it’s delivered for a lot of people.
What do you mean?
I think a lot of faith was put into the idea that science would deliver everything for us. And then people lost faith in religion, so it's like, okay, that's understandable. Now, there’s this beautiful space of, “Oh my gosh, yes, we have science” and “I don't know.” I of course believe in science, but I believe that there's more and I'm happy to now be engaging with the unknown a little bit more.
Has motherhood changed your approach as an artist?
With my mom – we got to work together this past spring in the TLACUĀ PAHTIĀ project at the Welcome Project where I had a residency and she made a meal inspired by Mesoamerican healing foods. She was my first teacher for art because the way she cooked was very much like, “Okay, this piece, this material,” and then just kind of put everything together. I think there's a parallel with food – food is composition, it’s texture, it’s different temperatures. Growing up, seeing my mother in the kitchen was the closest artistic process I had seen.
About me being a mother – gosh, every single day, there is an entire universe that happens with my kids: exciting, interesting, dramatic…it’s an experience that’s been a fuel to check in with myself more.
It takes your life away but gives you life at the same time. As my kids have gotten more independent, I started to do more studio time. It started out with just one morning or afternoon a week, but the work was just flowing out. I had no direction, no proposal – nothing, but I just was working on a lot of these little pieces here. It’s like the gates opened up.
Maybe it was all pent up because you weren't able to sit down and make anything for so long. It was your body's way of being like,”Alright, just throw stuff down, we'll figure it out later”.
Yeah, I think that's what happened. I had this incredible experience of giving birth and was fortunate enough to be home with them as babies. I was always journaling and sketching, but was never doing anything in the studio. Once they got into preschool, it started a period of my most fruitful work.
I think there's something about being pushed by something that either breaks you or invigorates you – I would say that’s how they changed me. There was this challenge of how to sustain time to do the things I want to do, but I’ve been figuring it out.
Who is an influential woman in your life?
My Grandmother in Mexico, Elizabeth (we call her Licha). I believe that she's 96 years old right now in Mexico and I'm sad I don't get to see her as often, but I feel so close to her. I don't know how to describe it. She’s always been devoted to prayer and has a really silly sense of humor – just this sort of childlike kind of joy that’s hard to maintain in life. She’s always been dedicated to herself in her spirituality and praying. When I’d go visit her in her home, it felt like a place on Earth that was a protected zone – I felt like I was a part of something just being there.
I didn’t have the privilege of growing up near her but I still feel close to her. I think it's because of that commitment she's made and it ties into what I'm rediscovering in my work and having that kind of courage and belief in the unknown.
Women of Cincy is a certified 501(c)3. This belongs to you. Consider supporting future stories with a donation.