When Trenton artist Tamara Torres was a little girl, she decided to create her own religion. “I thought I was going to be a pastor. I remember hearing my dad talk to people about religion and thought ‘why is religion so difficult? Why is everyone completely obsessed with the thought that there’s one religion that saves humanity? Why are there so many arguments about who’s right and who’s wrong? I can create my own.’”
The daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants — and now an artist in the current Artworks exhibition of Latina artists — Torres spent much of her childhood homeless in Trenton and supported mainly by her father, Heriberto Torres. “My father raised my brother and me. He was a good man. He worked odd jobs and did his best,” she says. Despite her father’s efforts, Torres — who does not speak of her mother — often found herself sleeping under bridges or at the homes of friends. Then things got worse when she was nine and was raped. “I won’t talk about the details,” she says now. “I think that breaks your character apart. It happened, that’s all.”
The assault marked the end of her childhood musings on spirituality for quite some time. “My thoughts about religion went away after that. Before that, I thought the world was difficult and tough, but I still had this optimism — butterflies and rainbows.” The traumatic event also led to a kind of reverse-spiritual awakening. Instead of imagining her own religion, she stopped thinking about God altogether. “You get to a point where you think, okay if this is how life really is after something so painful, then there must not be anything out there. So you just push it down.”
But Torres’ life took a turn for the positive when a friend gave her a 35mm Pentax camera so she could take pictures of him. The gift changed her life. She began taking photographs and never looked back.
“Art saved my life,” she says. “It really did.”
The turn continued. When she was 16 Torres volunteered for the Edison Job Corps and earned her GED. She then attended classes at Mercer County Community College, where she met more people who encouraged her to become an artist. She still communicates with some of them years later.
“They’re amazing teachers and amazing friends,” she says. And now Torres — who has an 18-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter — makes her living doing her art and working for New Jersey Manufacturers. “They are beautiful and wonderful,” she says about her children. “I’m so proud to be their mom. They’re both geniuses. I’m not joking. They’re way smarter than me, and that’s all I can ask for.”
While stories from her unpredictable childhood were dramatized on the stage of Passage Theatre in 2010 as part of its production of “Trenton Lights,” Torres has since taken charge of her own story — through photography, collage, abstract painting, and fashion design, and her often shocking and controversial work has been seen not only in Trenton, but in Chelsea, Rome, London, Milan, and Calabria. To create visual and performance art she has put together a team of collaborators — models and actors — to push both buttons and boundaries.
“It’s gotten to the point where models will ask me ‘Do I have to bring Band-Aids?’ One time a model lay down on broken glass. We were very careful but still … I can’t believe she did it.”
When her father, also a visual artist, died last year after a traffic accident, Torres — facing another life-altering event — began asking questions that she had not confronted head-on since she was nine. “Somehow,” Torres says, “I found my way by creating a more personal spirituality.”
Torres, now 37, is making an active return to spirituality through her art, as shown in “The Mujeres Exhibition,” a group show at ArtWorks. It is curated by Trenton resident Eva Loayza — a press secretary at the New Jersey Assembly Majority Office and former staff writer for the Times of Trenton — and features the work of Torres, Esperanza Cortes, Guadalupe Reyes, Jennifer Rivera, and Mary Valerdo. The show, organizers say, is the first Latina art exhibition in Trenton — one “exploding stereotypes and showing there’s a world of Latina art beyond Frida.” For Torres, the invocation of the daring 20th-century Mexican painter Frida Kahlo has particular significance.
“When I was in school, we had to go to the library, and I opened a book about Frida. I couldn’t believe what she was getting away with. And I thought if she can do it, I can do it.”
“Mujeres” is on view at the main ArtWorks gallery from Tuesday, September 6, through Saturday, October 1. The free opening reception on Saturday, September 10, will feature a one-night-only performance by Torres that is described as a “constructive feminist interpretation of the Last Supper conveying spirituality and corporatism.”
“I’m recreating the Last Supper live,” says Torres, who creates exhibitions and opportunities by directly contacting galleries.
“I call it ‘the Last Conversation.’ I thought really hard about everything that was going on socially. What if we had a conversation where religious leaders all sat at a table and talked about whether or not religion had lost its spirituality? Has that made society go a little bonkers? I’ve got Muslim, Catholic, Buddhist, Baptist. Some are religious leaders and some are actors, and they’re playing various spiritual figures. I’m gonna be Jesus. And when I first mentioned this project to various pastors, they all said ‘Why do you have to be Jesus? Are you having trouble finding a guy to be Jesus?’ And I thought ‘That’s the one thing that bugs you?’”
The interviewing of spiritual leaders, while necessary for the development of the work, wasn’t an entirely positive experience for Torres.
“I got so drained with some of them and their manipulation. I’d come out of there thinking ‘I guess I will go to hell.’ To me, that’s not a spiritual leader. Religion is a corporate business. You shouldn’t have to pay a religion to be part of it. Anytime I talk about spirituality or do an art piece on it, it’s very personal. I want to connect to other people out there who want spirituality but don’t want to be connected to a religion.”
The seeds of Torres’ new work were planted when she traveled to Italy for an exhibition.
“I was in Rome and there were all these homeless women outside a church begging for money. Then I went in the church, and I was surrounded by paintings and there was such a sense of peace. But I saw people coming in and paying 50 cents for a candle and it was like ‘Here’s my 50 cents! Now I can go to heaven!’ Then they walked outside and ignored the homeless women. I don’t get that. You shouldn’t have to pay a toll to get into heaven. And just think about all the money they put into churches in Rome. This goes back centuries. Religion corrupts people’s minds. It’s because we want a safety net. We want someone to tell us everything is going to be okay. So we just follow along because we’re too scared not to.”
Spirituality isn’t the only theme in Torres’ work. She’s also a committed social issues advocate.
“What I’ve learned about myself is that I’m a feminist,” Torres says. “Go figure. I always believed in feminism, but I didn’t know I was one. During my last show in Rome someone told me I was definitely a feminist, but I was undercover and needed to come out. I hope I’m part of this feminist wave because the older feminists opened all of these doors, but the younger generation of women doesn’t know anything about them. In their heads, they’re just like ‘I can work, I can do whatever,’ but they don’t know where that came from. They’re like ‘What do you mean we couldn’t vote?’ You have to go to college to learn women’s history. They don’t teach it so much in high school. We need younger feminists to keep things moving.”
Torres shows no signs of stopping or giving up on her art. Nor is she likely to back off on the more controversial elements anytime soon.
“I’m proud that I’m pushing those limits,” she says. “This kind of feels like my goodbye to Trenton. I was homeless here. Raped here. Abused here. Met the coolest friends here. Cut class to go to museums here. But now it’s time to step out of my bubble and push myself outside of Trenton. I’m scared, though. I think ‘What happens if I put myself out there and I fail?’”
Yet for Torres, the answer to that question goes back to the night she spent walking through Rome.
“One night I got lost on my way back to the hotel. I spent hours walking in the rain and suddenly I felt so open. I had this conversation with myself about what I wanted to do here on earth. I wanted to make art that can create real change. This brought me back to the optimism I had when I was nine. I went back to that place in my heart. After everything I’ve been through, I think there’s got to be a reason I’m here right now.”
The Mujeres Exhibition, curated by Eva Loayza and featuring work by Tamara Torres, Esperanza Cortes, Guadalupe Reyes, Jennifer Rivera, and Mary Valerdo. Artworks, 19 Everett Alley, Trenton. On view September 6 through October 1, Tuesday and Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Opening reception, Saturday, September 10, 6 to 8 p.m. Free.
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“Secret,” by Tamara Torres.,
