LETICIA BERNAUS

Zoobiografía (Metrópolis Libros, 2015) is a collection of portraits, still lives and self-portraits accompanied by an essay in which I discuss womanhood, life and death, as well as the ways in which love, art and religion contribute towards resisting death.

 

From Zoobiografía:

 

Yesterday my grandmother Hortensia’s dog, a dark brown Doberman, died. Hortensia used to cook for her, meat, noodles, rice. She’d brush her teeth. She made her a bed from scraps of fabric, and she even crocheted a colorful quilt that she’d tie around the dog’s neck Superman-style, tight enough that it would stay on all winter. My uncle helped bury her in the yard behind the house, under an ancient ombú that already shaded a few souls: two dogs, a hamster, a rabbit. Grandmother wrapped her dead dog in a nude-colored sheet my mother used to practice painting on fabric. Spongy, sky-blue flowers, partially painted, rest on her chest in the shape of a fan. They covered her with dirt and marked the grave with a plant that spits out iridescent leaves. “Now she will take care of the plants,” she says. My grandmother lost the last living being that depended on her, I fear she’ll lose the will to live.