luna naumer mateos

NICO’S DOWRY

On November 2nd Nicolas G. passed away. Nico was a transgender guy living in New York. We didn’t know each other, but suddenly my instagram was full of messages and posts about his pass- ing. It struck me and for almost two days I couldn’t stop crying. I started reading and finding out about how much of a loving and caring person he was. The feelings of loss were not only in me but also in a big number of people that surrounded me, both friends and strangers to Nico. Everyone seemed to grieve Nico that weekend.
I decided it was important to do something about his passing.
I had recently started a dowry, a collection of four hand-woven tea towels. They had been planned to be made for someone but for a long time, while weaving them, I kept wondering who would they be for. I decided to share part of the dowry with Nico’s friends. Four tea cloths, one for each indi- vidual friend of Nico I could find, as an offering for remembrance.
Traditionally, a dowry is traditionally a linen woven and embroidered by a woman before she got married to prepare all the needed textiles for her future household. Cloths, sheets, table runners or pillow cases. First it’s her own making, as a young woman she would do her own, but if her moth- er or grand mother passed away, she would inherit the dowries. There is a tradition of passing the dowry from one to another, as a sign of being part of the same family or culture. It used to be a sign of personal ownership and identity for women too. Women would embroider their initials in them and the style and quality would be a signifier of their class and culture but also personal taste. The way the dowry was made would be a ritualistic link to her own family.
My dowry consists of white and purple cotton tea cloths. A flower pattern, made with a four shaft loom, is repeated in all of them.. It was important for me to choose a traditional pattern, as this one called Mary Ann Ostrander Pattern, as well as a pattern that could be made in a house loom. The beauty of this pattern is the complexity of the image that clashes with the simplicity of only needing four shafts to make it. This pattern, alongside other patterns from the same tradition, allows the
weaver to explore their individual touched with the teacloth. This was my way of adding my per- sonal trace to theta cloths, not with initials but with a pattern that almost looks like it was embroi- dered.
The dowry represents a transition. Traditionally, the dowry symbolised a woman’s change from sin- gle to married. From being part of her born family to a new family of her own. This time, with my dowry, charts the transition from appreciating a life towards grieving a death.
Textiles speak through a moment of grief. In many cultures there have been specific uses for textiles to help people cope with a dear one’s passing. A cloth cleans the death out of the body and leaves it pure and clean.
A textile gently covers the body to protect it and protect the people around not to see death in their loved ones.
Women cover themselves with black veils.
Handkerchiefs dry the tears.
Textiles can express the care that people had for the one they lost. It helps us to communicate the loss, the feelings, the respect we have for the one gone and their soul. It’s also a carrier of memories. It can be so significant to have someone’s textiles since their hands were there, where yours are now. They are gone but their remains are in their objects, their belongings or their memorials. Monu- ment comes from the latin monere, to remind. They are built to remember someone and to main- tain a physical presence.
My dowry is a monument for Nico, to be remembered by his loved ones in their domestic spaces. I’m not interested in public grieving in this case, social media somehow did a memorial the close days after his passing, I needed to make something that would last longer in the intimacy of the homes where Nico left a mark. ’The object is not abandoned, but transferred from the external to the internal’ as Judith Butler says.
Silverman and Klass are two psychologists who challenged the notion of grief as something to get over, they wrote Continuing bonds, a book where they talk about how the purpose of grief is not to let go, but can be found in ‘negotiating and renegotiating the meaning of the loss over time’. This can be seen as maintaining attachments to not only the person that passed away but their belong- ings can create new forms of attachment.
I fantasied about meeting Nico. Somehow we were close already by the links we had. Both of us visited Jacob Riis beach in Summer in New York City and frequented the same spaces. We never met but we stood so close so long. Those are some of the reasons why I got so close to his passing.

Somehow we shared the same spaces already. Almost like if we had been in the same house but dif- ferent rooms. Sometimes it seems that the trans community is already a family, whether we met in person or not, whether we know of each others existence or not. One can rely on this family with- out even knowing each other. People share and help each other when someone needs hormones, or when they need to raise funds for their surgeries or when they get outed and kicked out of their homes. There’s an immediate understanding of the shared experiences of violence, loss and loneli- ness that connect transgender people. They become chosen families. The idea of a chosen family is very important for those who have been denied the access to a biological family because of trans- phobia. It is very common that transgender young people find themselves alone and homeless after being kicked out from their families or when they decide to leave a home of abuse and violence. The transgender community creates homes and spaces for care, love and support. As a family, not only we share a life but we also are together when death comes.
We venerate our lives and together we grief our deaths but also we inherit things from each other.
Even though I didn’t know Nico, his friends were happy I contacted them, they were happy I was trying to create some memory and that, although it was through his passing, he was a linking thread for us to get to know each other. I first talked with Marina. This was only a few days after his passing. It was warming and welcoming to feel that my grief was validated. I feared that his friends might feel as if I was stealing their feelings, but on the contrary, they embraced my tears with theirs. I shared some words I wrote that helped me express my feelings. ‘Thank you for writing what
you wrote and thank you for existing and thank you for making me cry, in a good way’ were their words. They also mentioned how ‘this is so hard on the whole community’. All of a sudden it made sense to me that I had spent a weekend crying over someone I hadn’t know before. It was also clear to them that not only those that had personally known Nico were grieving, but also people around it. They also knew that I needed to see Nico happy in order to have space for myself be happy in
a world where I was not only denied the space to exist but also the space to be happy. Thats why having access to other transgender people existing is vital for survival. And that is why Marina and I both understood that loosing Nico was a loss for everyone. A space lost in the fight for our happi- ness.
While talking with Marina I realised how even Nico’s close friends had little access to the informa- tion about his passing. It was unclear to them what was the reason of his passing. It was so hurtful to know that the access to him could be limited by his biological family. It’s common to find trans-

gender people revoked their right to their own identity after their passing, and the chosen family the access to grief properly the loss of their beloved ones. Biological families sometimes cut contact with the ones who were closest. We are denied the access to grieving.
It was a few days after our first talk when I told Marina about the dowry. I told them that for me
it was important to create a chance for them to grief Nico. I was hoping the tea cloths would help them regain the physical space that was taken when he passed away. I wanted to make something that would give Nico even more presence in their homes, where he belonged.