The Digital Rituals of Cherish Marquez

By Jensina Endresen

Cherish Marquez lives for liminal spaces. Marquez’ digital rituals function as a space where the ancestral past and the eerie electric future hold hands. To experience her work is to stand still in an all-encompassing moment, to be engulfed in both warmth and warning.

Marquez was born in 1989 and has lived much of her life in desert landscapes from Texas to New Mexico. The sacred symbols of her work are therefore not haloed gold icons, but dust-colored plants that somehow survive in the wild high heat, gnarl-limbed, and lacertinian. In Yucca, a work from the Voices of the Desert Series (2021), these organic talismans are introduced quietly. The screen blinks black for just a moment before what appear to be vertebrae, or perhaps seeds, rise within the screen: they are floating, flying, freed from the constraints of any surface or surroundings. We extend outward with the seeds, land back on the origin spine, and are dropped to ground-view in front of what now reveals itself to be a yucca plant.

Native to arid parts of the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean Islands, yucca is known for its panicle flowers and sword-shaped leaves. Far from being just tough protective elements, the fibrous stems have a history of Indigenous use as stripped thread, bundled and swift-cut to make paintbrushes, or rolled into woven rope. Their roots can be immersed in water to make a cleansing agent and their blooms can be eaten. The plant is also highly regarded for its medicinal uses and accompaniment in religious rites.(1) Yucca is multi-functional, resilient, and regenerative. It shows up as much in holy time as it does in ordinary.

Marquez calls the yucca, “the sword of survival. The seed pods fall to the ground without the guarantee of life but will find a way…through the harsh conditions of this seemingly lifeless land.”(2) As a Queer-identifying Latina woman who advocates for victims of sexual abuse and people with disabilities, Marquez’ technological landscapes could be seen as built-in allegories for the violent terrain those of difference too often find themselves navigating. By showcasing the seeds as ever-present and pollinating, Marquez presents us with a vision of a transmutable future. While shaky, and on ground not fully formed, the seeds still persist.

Inclusion and equal access are important aspects of the artist’s work; nowhere was this more tangible than in her 2021 exhibition: Voices of the Desert at Union Hall in Denver. The gallery included both digital works, where viewers could gather together to wander worlds created, and physical installations of desert plants, illuminated like small saints on a black background. This multi-armed approach encouraged interactive, communal play, and offered different ways of participating with on-screen objects. By holding simultaneous space for both the material and the ephemeral, Marquez’ work as whole functioned as a sort of oral history, always unfolding, that documents the sacred surrounding us.

The unfolding, floating frames of mountains in Yucca, and the shedding sun-deity of Between Both, are suggested, versus fixed, realities. Marquez is merely the map maker; it is up to we, the seeds, to settle in and fully form the future. By taking viewers on a journey through lands cast in shadows, Cherish Marquez reminds us to not just be travelers towards, but builders of, our own timeline.

Works Cited

(1) “Ancestral Pueblo Native Plant Use,” United States National Park Service, last modified 14 February, 2017, https://www.nps.gov/band/learn/historyculture/native-plant-use.htm

(2) Cherish Marquez, “Exhibitions: Voices of the Desert,” accessed 2 February 2022, http://cherishmarquez.com/voices-of-the-desert

Watch Yucca and other works from Voices of the Desert on Vimeo