Many New Mexicans are familiar with the word querencia, a Spanish noun with no direct English translation. Querencia is also the title of a new exhibit at the H+H Arts gallery, which is located on Canyon Road in Santa Fe.
The exhibit documents the work of environmental activist and documentarian Jack Loeffler.
Loeffler, who is about to turn ninety, attends the gallery opening wearing a black bandanna that used to belong to his friend, the late environmentalist Ed Abbey.
“And you may have seen a flag hanging in the exhibition with a red monkey," he adds. "That's Ed's flag."
The flag is also black, and emblazoned with an iconic red monkey wrench, a reference to Abbey’s novel The Monkey Wrench Gang.
The flag is among many objects and photographs that document the history of Loeffler’s presence in the Southwest. Originally, the theme of the exhibit was more focused on activism.
Celestia French is Loeffler's daughter and the curator of the exhibit. She says that at first the exhibit “was going to have been called resistance, because Jack has always been a counter-culturalist. And at this time in history, we were trying to inspire people to get excited and invigorated, to see how we can all contribute to the greater good in the long term and possibly in the form of resistance.
But Loeffler began to reevaluate the theme as the exhibit emerged. "A few months ago, he realized that so much of the work that he had been doing revolved around his connection with all of these places and all of these people. And so it ended up becoming more about his connection with place.”
“Connection with place” scratches at the surface of the meaning behind querencia. The audio component of the exhibit begins with a definition by Loeffler’s friend Enrique Lamadrid: "Querencia is a folk concept. It's a sense of belonging, it's a sense of rootedness. Querencia is the place where you know you belong. Sometimes it's the place where you're born. It's mobile; you can develop a new querencia in a new place, but how do you set down roots in a new place? There's many ways of doing that, of becoming part of a new place."
The first time Loeffler heard that, he says, it resonated with him immediately. “I'd heard the word, but I had not really understood its complexity. And it was such a beautiful rendering is off the top of the head, that that is what initiates the soundtrack that goes along with the exhibition."
Loeffler’s view of humans rooted in an interconnected world has served as the basis of his environmental activist work. “I've spent my whole life actually as an environmentalist and also trying to preserve indigenous mindedness and trying to forward the notion that we really do have to straighten ourselves up and focus our attention on health of the biotic community and really recognizing that every single plant, every single ancestor out there is kindred. You know, we're all cousins when you come right down to it.”
His perspective has also been informed by indigenous American teachings. Tessie Naranjo, Loeffler’s neighbor and a member of the Tewa pueblo, recounts how close he was to her late sister, Rina Swentzell: "I would go visit my sister at Santa Clara. And here Jack was sitting there in the kitchen, and they were talking. Jack and Rina were very, very close with each other. They talked and they talked.”
Loeffler's perspective of querencia aligns closely with traditional puebloan thought. "In the pueblo world, the concept of relationship is very basic. It's very foundational. I need to live relationally. Jack loves to live relationally. And so that's why I'm drawn to Jack, and that's why Rina was drawn to Jack. This pueblo concept called relationality has so much importance and basic truth for those of us who are pueblo."
The concept of relationality can be expanded to include everything on Earth, says Naranjo. "Me and human beings, me and the animals, Me and the mountains, me and the clouds, me and the insects. Because everything has life. That's why we should naturally have a relationship to all things. And if we have a relationship to all things, then comes this other concept of respect and regard for the other.”
But while the predominant theme of the exhibit is connection with nature, the element of resistance is still very much present. Like her father, French interprets querencia as a connection not just with the local area, but with the entire biosphere. “We have our local querencia of wherever we feel like our soul belongs," she says. "But also we all belong to this planet Earth. And if we don't start, I don't want to say behaving as such, but at least acknowledging that and doing something, I think on behalf of this beautiful place that we live, whether on a macro or micro scale, it's going to get a lot harder for us all to be able to survive.”
Querencia will run at H+H Arts until August 19. Loeffler’s audio collages from the exhibit are available on the website of the Alquerque-based Rewilding Institute. To listen to them, go to rewilding.org/querencia.
