Occasional Paper Series #50
Treescapes
by Alexandra Délano Alonso and Marco Saavedra
“Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, ‘Stay awhile.’”
Mary Oliver (When I Am Among the Trees)
We’ve each been looking to the trees for a long time. One of us painting, the other writing, with, by the trees. In the middle of the city and its noise, finding the branches. Standing, inquiring, returning. Why the trees, how we belong to each other, are questions worth asking again and again.
These paintings and poems are part of ongoing conversations, of many layers, of many trees, of what we lose and find under their canopies, in blooms, in dirt, and seasons.
What walking among the trees has taught us is that every art is an invitation to the mutuality of life. Through paintings, it means creating an opening of treescapes and orchards for people to become a part of and inhabit. And every exchange of poetry is a welcoming to community, listening, growth.
Alexandra Délano Alonso is associate professor of global studies at The New School. Her research focuses on Mexico-US migration, memory politics, and transnational practices of resistance and solidarity at the intersection of art, activism, and community organizing. Her publications include Mexico and its Diaspora in the United States (2011), From Here and There (2018), and the co-edited volume Borders and the Politics of Mourning (2016). She is also author of the poetry collection Brotes (2021) and is co-director of the short film Fragmentos (2021). Her current projects include a book of haikus (towards & away) and the co-edited volume Las luchas por la memoria contra las violencias en México.
Marco Saavedra is a Mixteca painter. He works at his family’s mutual aid kitchen and Michelin-listed restaurant, La Morada, in occupied Lenape Territory (The Bronx, NY). Saavedra has co-authored “Shadows then Light” (2012) and “Eclipse of Dreams” (2017). As a member of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, Saavedra infiltrated the Broward Transitional Center in 2012 to secure the release of dozens of immigrant detainees. This campaign was featured in the Sundance award winning docu-thriller “The Infiltrators” (2019). In 2021, Saavedra received political asylum. His latest art show “coo’o” invites you to walk together, to paint, to write, and to breathe.