Grain Publication
Saskatchewan, Canada
Artiste invitée / Featured artist
2021
Veuve 1-10
Illustrations of divorce
I met a woman in Mexico who wore a heavy silver rosary around her neck. The sound of it always preceded her arrival, clinking like the chains of the thurible. She smelled like church, like incense, or prayer candles, most likely those she burned for her son, or her husband. These candles and photos she erected on her altar. God had granted her a blessing she told me, but for her, it had felt like a curse. For so long she had been afraid to fall asleep. She was afraid of dreaming. Sara didn’t want her dreams to come true. Sara dreamed of a headless son, and eventually she bore such a child. Sara dreamed of her husband dying, and so they found him, a gun in his hand. Fifteen days, fifteen days she said between a dream and a nightmare. Later, a widow and a childless mother, she realized that God had tried to prepare her, that the dreams had been intended to help her. Her story really moved me. I had been having recurring dreams of my husband dying in my arms. At night I’d wipe the tears off my face and slip my fingers under his back, his weight on my fingers like a trap. A few months of dreams and he slipped away from me. There was no gun, just disappointment and sadness. I was a widow before he left me. I’d been prepared. The drawings I’ve produced in this series attest to a year’s worth of grief. These moments I captured for myself, just so I knew they were real, at least to me. - Zoé Zénon
Drawing #10 – Collaboration between myself and Alexis Cruz Gomez
