SHARING A COMMON UNIVERSE

Justina Fuentes, WBB artist in her
studio in Oaxaca

Crispina Navarro, WBB artist weaving at her studio in Sto. Tomas Julieza

This exhibition springs forth as a spark that ignites a mountain. The artists began their work knowing in advance that it would travel around the world. Thus we find an extraordinary effort by hundreds of women joining their wills to discover something that we all have in common: the desire to express deep feelings through art.

The women artists have come together to declare, with their art, sensibility, and creativity, that they share a common universe. They participate in a planet that expands and unites us beyond the borders of political differences, religious ideologies, and aesthetics. Beyond everything there are similarities in all human beings. There is a humanist dimension that has no borders.

Women Beyond Borders is an effort toward the peace and harmony that must prevail in the world. An effort that synthesizes the desire to unite and to combat the real enemies of us all: hunger, sickness, injustice, inequality and pain in all their forms.

The will that moves mountains has become a reality, "The dream of a common language", as Adrianne Rich stated. The language of art in these boxes expresses the feelings of each woman who participated, and of all women in their daily reality. Women Beyond Borders tells much more about the human condition than all of the peace agreements that have been signed in the world today.

Ceci Castelblanco, WBB assistant in Oaxaca

MARGARITA DALTON, Poet/Anthropologist
Lomas de Sierra Juarez
Oaxaca, Mexico
October 1998

Liliana Ribeiro , Nostalgia Box	Mari Olguin , Untitled
Josefina Aguilar, Untitled	Josefina Aguilar, WBB artist at her studio in Ocatlan
Mari M. Olguin, Director of La Casa de la Mujer and organizer of WBB Oaxaca	Cynthia Martinez, WBB artist and organizer
Rowena Galavitz, WBB artist/organizer and Geles Cabrera - WBB artist	Crispina Navarro, WBB artist and her sister with Lorraine at the opening of WBB Oaxaca
Lorraine Serena, Mari M. Olguin, Sam Erenberg, Elena Siff WBB co-founder, Saritha Margon and her daughter at reception for WBB at La Casa de la Mujer	WBB Exhibition, Oaxaca