RACHEL CITRINO

Awakining Meena

In 1996 I began a series of paintings of snakes and madonnas…the madonnas being shrouded female figures. I was dealing at that time with some medieval imagery and symbology but the shrouded woman began to evolve then. She became La Tristezza three years ago when I visited a family of women in mourning for a husband, a brother and a son and the image of this 93 year old mother shrouded in black sitting by the fireplace burned in my brain as I traveled on a train from Abruzzi back to Florence. A very tiny pencil drawing grew into La Tristezza and while working with this image another shrouded woman emerged out of clay: the whispering woman under the burka. Originally part of a series of heads last year. Surfing the web I came across www.RAWA.com and was educated and moved. I realized that my woman whispering under a burka had to be Meena. Here is her poem.

I WILL NEVER RETURN
I'm the woman who has awoken.
I've arisen and become a tempest through the ashes of my burnt children.
I've arisen from the rivulets of my brother's blood.
My nation's wrath has empowered me.
My ruined and burnt villages fill me with hatred against the enemy.
Oh compatriot, no longer regard me weak and incapable.
My voice has mingled with thousands of arisen women.
My fists are clenched with fists of thousands compatriots
To break all these sufferings all these fetters of slavery.
I'm the woman who has awoken,
I've found my path and will never return.