Cris Scorza on Las Hermanas Iglesias

Commiserates I (globe), 2012, digital photograph

[Image description: Two women sit in identical positions next to each other on a white couch. They look directly at the viewer. Their facial features are very similar. They have brown hair pulled back from their faces and wear only white tank tops. The woman on the left holds her bare, pregnant belly, while the woman on the right cradles a globe in front of her stomach.]

CW: Pregnancy Loss

The love expressed between women is particular and powerful because we have had to love in order to live; love has been our survival. —Audre Lorde

Commiserates is a visual conversation, an affirmation, a gesture of understanding, and an exercise in futility.  In 2012, Las Hermanas Iglesias— the artist duo Lisa and Janelle Iglesias— began collaborating on this series of staged, intimate photographs. Today, the project is more than a visual record of a relationship between sisters and artists: it is an account that invites us to understand the joy and sorrow of motherhood. 

Informed by histories, philosophies, and lived experiences of feminism and collaboration, Las Hermanas Iglesias create work that generates growth and collective learning. Not only do they work together, but they also extend their process to the communities they convene, including the rest of their family, and in particular, their mother, with whom they have created several projects. Daughters of Norwegian and Dominican immigrant parents, Las Hermanas Iglesias grew up in Queens, NY, and now reside on opposite coasts, maintaining independent and collaborative art practices. Janelle Iglesias lives in San Diego, rearing her first child and teaching Studio Art at the University of California San Diego. Lisa Iglesias, older by a year, lives in Massachusetts, where she is a faculty member in the Art Department at Mount Holyoke College and is a mother.

Commiserates I (disco ball), 2012, digital photograph

[Image description: This image features the same scene as Commiserates I (globe), but now the woman on the right holds a disco ball in front of her stomach.]

Their Commiserates series employs both photography and performance. This work melds reality, the staged, and the documented strategies that Las Hermanas Iglesias used in the earlier Competitions, a parallel series where the two artists engage in amateur contests— including a bubble gum face-off and a jump rope contest— that bring back vivid memories of childhood-play and absurdity. It is the convergence of these subjects with that of the familial that connects us to Commiserates I (disco ball), 2012. In one of the first color photographs in the series, the siblings share a couch, sitting at the edge and wearing comfortable undergarments, looking intently at the camera. On the left, Lisa braces her spherical pregnant belly, and Janelle, on the right, holds a disco ball. Commiserates I (watermelon) and Commiserates I (globe) of the same year complete the first stage of this project, a project that, as one’s life journey, does not have a straightforward path.

Commiserates I (watermelon), 2012, digital photograph

[Image description: Again the same scene, with the woman on the right holding a whole watermelon.]

The intimacy and casualness captured in these photographs are reminiscent of American photographers Sally Mann and Tina Barney, who have portrayed rituals— especially common amongst women— familiar to anyone regardless of their socioeconomic background. In taking these snapshots without professional lighting and using less-than-sophisticated smartphones, Las Hermanas Iglesias are interested in documenting the performance they orchestrate and the unspoken narratives that connect them. Printed no larger than 8 x 10 inches, these images evoke the Polaroid effect that made photography accessible to artists and the masses in the 1970s.

Commiserates II (beach ball), 2019, digital photograph

[Image description: The same two women sit next to each other in a domestic interior and look straight at the viewer. The woman on the left has dark hair streaked with silver and holds her bare, pregnant belly from beneath. The woman on the right has dark hair cut in a bob and holds a beach ball on her lap.]

Six years later, Commiserates II portrays Lisa’s second pregnancy, and once more, the empathetic dialogue between these sisters reminds us of the complexities of motherhood. In Commiserates II (beach ball), 2019, pregnant Lisa sits next to Janelle, who holds a beach ball. With a pair of side tables and lamps, the staged setting presents an ordinary living room with white walls and blinds, yet the floral pattern couch offers a glimpse of Florida’s geographic context, where the photograph took place. The portrait contradicts our expectations, presenting two stoic bodies deprived of the socially constructed and marketable emotional bliss associated with motherhood. The unattainable expectations that rob mothers of the necessary need to commiserate about the exhaustion of bearing a child, losing control over their bodies, and the emotional toll it takes to prepare for birth. The photograph’s contradictions prepare for what, unimaginably, is to come in Commiserates III (cabbage), 2019.

Commiserates III (cabbage), 2019, digital photograph

[Image description: The same two women sit on a teal couch in a domestic interior. The woman on the left wears two halves of a cabbage inserted into her white sports bra. We see the top of a white undergarment around her waist. She does not appear visibly pregnant, as in the previous images. The woman on the right wears a white tank top, while a whole cabbage sits on her lap. Both women rest their hands, turned upward, on either side of them.]

Lisa and Janelle learned from mentions on breastfeeding blogs like Kelly Mom, medical journals, and doulas’ and grandmothers’ advice that applying cabbage leaves to the breast reduces engorgement, pain, and excess milk production. Photographed days after Lisa went through the stillbirth of her daughter Luna Astrid, Commiserates III (cabbage) testifies to the grief both Lisa and Janelle experienced with the loss of their daughter and niece, respectively. This development reveals that what began as a loosely defined project had become the vehicle for the sisters to connect and honor each other. Further, it is a record of the human need to empathize with tenderness and pain to heal, love, and survive.

In her book Bearing the Unbearable, Dr. Joanne Cacciatore— a psychologist with expertise in the trauma around child death— describes how grief can generate connectedness and compassion. Commiserates III (cabbage) exudes this phenomenon. In the image, Janelle presents an expression that denotes tension, a moment in time that contains the pain that is about to explode while she tenderly holds a small cabbage. Lisa sits adjacent to her, looking directly at the camera with a defiant gaze that challenges the viewer to reserve any judgment or pity. This image projects the connectedness and compassion that exist between Lisa and Janelle, and amongst sisters—familial or chosen— and as described by Cacciatore. 

Left: Commiserates IV (Lisa, December 2020), 2020, digital photograph

Right: Commiserates IV (Janelle, November 2020), 2020, digital photograph

[Image description: Two photographs, side by side, of the same women. They sit on similar blue couches in domestic interior spaces. In the image on the left, the woman’s hair is cropped short and she holds her bare, pregnant belly. On the right, the second woman’s dark hair is in a braid. She cradles her own bare, pregnant belly. Both look directly at the viewer.]

A year later, the project continues with Janelle's first pregnancy and Lisa's third. These simultaneous pregnancies occur alongside the pain of losing Luna Astrid, as well as the fear of getting sick from a pandemic that has claimed the lives of millions of people. Nevertheless, Las Hermanas Iglesias grant us a new series, Commiserates IV (Janelle, November 2020) and (Lisa December 2020), which portrays the forced separation caused by social distancing and lack of travel. In houses on the East and West Coast, each sister sits on the edge of similar couches, wearing nearly identical bras, and poses as they did nine years earlier. 

In Commiserates IV, Lisa uses distance to reflect on one particular facet of her experience with stillbirth: absence. She sits holding her round belly as she did years before, including round objects similar to the ones Janelle held in the Commiserates I series. However, these objects are somber, evoking the emptiness of loss and forced separation from the intimate relationship she has built with her sister. In the meditative image, Janelle’s gaze denotes anticipation and a cry for sisterhood’s connection. This iteration of the project is another poignant conversation in which absence and absurdity become an enduring gift of creativity and appeasement.

Birth Announcements 2012 & 2020, 2020, digital photograph

[Image description: Photographs, side by side, of two newborn babies resting on white blankets. They have light skin and dark hair. Next to the baby on the left is a large seashell, while next to the baby on the right is a ukulele. The babies are turned to face each other.]

The Birth Announcements 2012 & 2020 image that pairs Bowie (Lisa’s first child) and Gus (Janelle’s) with family keepsakes, the project’s fluidity continues as a timeline of these sisters’ lives. Janelle and Lisa will continue to photograph, capturing moments that invite reflection on interconnection and the need for empathy. They will look— as openly and directly as their gaze at the viewer— at mothers and others, at the conversations about trauma and compassion necessary to nurture our society and to love. 

Cris Scorza is Senior Director of Education and Engagement at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

You can find an open-source database of materials on pregnancy loss here.