Josephine Sacabo’s return to the city of her birth for the 30-year retrospective exhibition of her mastery of photogravure offered not only an enriching visual experience, but also the opportunity to meet the renowned artist who for more than 50 years has lived a life in art.
At her artist talk the day before the exhibit opened in the TAMIU Fine and Performing Arts Gallery, students, faculty, some of her childhood friends, and members of her family heard her say that before she held a camera she had wanted to be a poet.
Sacabo’s imagery informs this gallery viewer and countless others that neither did she abandon poetry nor did it take leave of her.
I have often found myself contemplating what an artistic life can be. What does it mean to pursue a creative practice from a border city? What do we learn when we encounter an artist like Sacabo who has spent a lifetime developing a language of her own — a lexicon of poetry translated into images that breathe, bodies that seem to float beyond the material world, and an atmosphere in which sensuality becomes almost intangible.
In the series El Mundo Inalcanzable de Susana San Juan, Sacabo turns to Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, the haunting novel set in a ruined Mexican town populated by wandering souls. Susana San Juan, one of its most enigmatic figures, inhabits a world shaped by memory, delusion, and the violence of the forces surrounding her. Sacabo describes her images as an attempt to depict this world through the eyes of its tragic heroine, dedicating the series to “Susana San Juans everywhere who will not be possessed.”
I found beauty in seeing female desire expressed through rhythm, mystery, and delicacy. Women’s bodies are frequently represented through visual conventions that privilege a masculine point of view. Sacabo invites us to consider another possibility: a woman’s body and desire as part of an interior world that does not belong to the viewer.
Thinking of Susana San Juan through this lens, I began to understand her not simply as a tragic character, but as a woman whose inner life resists external control. In Sacabo’s interpretation, the camera becomes a means of approaching that interiority. The images do not merely illustrate a literary character; they offer a visual meditation on what it means for a woman to remain, in some essential sense, beyond possession.
Another of Sacabo’ series, Oyeme con los Ojos — inspired by the life and work of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz — opened a different but related conversation. Known as the Tenth Muse, from a convent Sor Juana challenged the restrictions imposed on women in seventeenth-century colonial Mexico through her intellectual ambition and literary achievements. Her presence in Sacabo’s work recalls the long and ongoing history of women finding ways to express themselves within structures that have attempted to limit their voices — in Sor Juana Inés’ case, the Inquisition.
If Susana evokes the intimate territory of female desire, Sor Juana reminds us of the intellectual and creative force of a woman determined to think and write beyond prescribed roles. Together, these figures suggest that the inner lives of women cannot be reduced to the identities imposed upon them.
There is a song by Uruguayan musician Jorge Drexler that says, “Nada se pierde, todo se transforma” — nothing is lost, everything is transformed. I kept returning to this idea while thinking about Sacabo’s trajectory. She initially wanted to become a poet and found another language in photography. Her love of poetry and literature never disappeared. It simply found another surface on which to exist.
As one who continues to look for examples for what the life of an artist can become, I left this encounter thinking about how limiting it is to imagine ourselves as only one thing. A creative practice can evolve without abandoning its origins. A woman’s desire can be expressed without being reduced to someone else’s gaze. A poem can become an image and still retain its essence.
Sacabo’s return to Laredo reminded me that we are never only one thing. We are the accumulation of our experiences, the languages we discover, and the forms we have yet to find. Nothing is necessarily lost when we change. Sometimes, we are simply becoming something else.
(Neo Laredense Seyde García is a human resources professional in international trade and logistics. She lends her support to the arts in both Laredos in numerous ways, among them by writing about exhibits and artists. She can be reached at seydeg91@gmail.com.)
