José Luis Martínez Velarde
Extending Friendship in Uncertain Times
During the last summer break of my high school years, I underwent a sudden growth spurt, which seemed to be at least twenty centimeters, as far as my family and I could tell. When the time to go back to school arrived, just when I believed I had finally reaped a rare benefit from the otherwise unsettling experience of teenagehood, I discovered a rich and complicated pattern of stretch marks that webbed across my lower back and went down to my outer thighs. Fueled by an ability for exaggeration typical of teen spirit, I felt my body attacked, transformed without my consent. What had been smooth, even skin only weeks ago was now scarred, and I felt shame. I grew a habit of hating them. I struggled deeply to recognize these new canyon-like wounds as part of myself, and I envisioned ways to keep them hidden, covered under layers of clothing. I effectively developed walls that surrounded my scars, making it easy to disconnect from them, to pretend they were not there. They became a discomfort that I needed to keep at a distance, away from my own understanding.
As I navigated my discomfort, my high school senior year proved to be a moment for deepening the friendships in my life. Perhaps it was due to the pressurized environment in which we were all expected to determine our next steps after graduation. However, this was also a time when most of us were experiencing growing pains in both our minds and bodies. We were each filled with our own set of insecurities, unrequested changes, and experiences. Pimples, heartbreaks, body parts growing and de-growing. Stretchmarks. We were all, in reality, containers of our own shame, insecurities, and fear. At a stage of life filled with anxiety and change, friendship provided a toolset that offered us to open up, decompress, and face our fears together. Through intimacy and humor, we found ways to face our own hurt, bringing to light and putting words to our biggest fears and sorrows. Friendship allowed us to develop empathy for others' struggles, and in that process, for our own.
It is tempting to think of the rituals and pleasures of friendship as a parade of happy memories filled with childhood friends, birthday parties, and late-night chats. And often it is precisely that. However, my intention here is to draw attention to the more subtle kinds of connections that friendship enables. Our friendships and the intimate dynamics we develop through them often serve as productive avenues for accessing our darkness. It is usually when we do put down our walls and allow ourselves to be vulnerable that we can recognize the things that might secretly torture us, that threaten our confidence and peace. Friendship here becomes a precious tool, capable of enabling us to grasp the richness and complex nature of full-hearted human experience, both light and dark.
At a time when my maturity was still forming and I didn't know better, something so mundane as the scars resulting from growth proved capable of casting darkness over me. It was through my friendships with others and the conversations I had with them that I began to grasp that I was not the only person experiencing something like this, and that, compared to many other problems present in my intimate circle, this was indeed minuscule. Only after bringing my shame to light, I was able to question what could be so controversial about a body capable of creating new layers of skin when it needs to?
Soon, the scars became the feed from which our friendships were nurtured. Other people’s fears and shames emerged in the conversation, representing physical or mental scars. It was through my relationship with them and my love for them that I was able to offer empathy and care, and I was fortunate to receive the same in return. Through this, I learnt a valuable lesson which I keep coming back to again and again. Our worst fears and our biggest shames become instantly diminished when shared.
In ways that mimic a troubled adolescence, we are now living in times of distress and uncertainty. Our actions and systems cause the world to convulse into one crisis after another. Our lives, environments, and futures are under threat, and the paths to action may seem too daunting for many. Many even prefer not to engage at all. In times like these, many people choose to disconnect, to build walls. It becomes tempting again to grow inwards, to dwell on our own limits, trying to escape our complex darkness. And yet again, we must remember that in times like these, our capacity for friendship offers us beautiful ways to connect and navigate the complexities of our present. We must make use of it and face the other, listening to their tribulations and fears, understanding them as our own. We must know that we are deeply connected, even in the most divided times. It can guide us towards actions that honor our conscience, adjusting what has been misaligned and reconnecting with what lies misplaced. The strengths of our friendships in darkness provide us with the vitality to continue, guided by the signs that point us forward.
In more than one sense, the core elements of my thesis project seek to connect with the darkness of my scars and fears through the establishment of friendship. Far from the innocence of growth-marked skin, these scars now provided me with insights into the ridges of my being. It led me to confront frustrations present in my own experience of design practice, steering away from new and shiny materials and turning towards what we usually discard. Cardboard packaging waste, a staple material left over from consumption cycles that harm our world, gradually became the primary material in my project. In engaging with waste, I was able to confront the joys and troubles of queerness and migration. Both experiences have touched me deeply in my life, positioning me often at odds with the world around me. From feelings of shame over who I longed to love to the legal, financial, and personal challenges of migrating from Mexico to Sweden at a time when the world seems to be closing in, these experiences have deeply informed my position in the world, as they involve my relationships with others.
Following this, waste, queerness, and migration turned into the core central pillars from which the friendships in my project bloomed. Discarded cardboard, through its capacity to travel and be shared, facilitated tangible collaboration with people and hands beyond my own. Reflecting on my own darkness, I sought to connect with people embedded in these dynamics, leading me to collaborate with Newcomers, a group of recently arrived LGBTQI+ migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in Sweden. Through working together, I was again able to understand that my problems were not unique. Understanding, yet again, that they were echoed through many people, and recognizing this, we became a community.
Materialized through a series of humble seats made from cardboard waste, the pieces in this project represent more than a design exploration. They embody the complexity of the friendships and darkness that were necessary for the conception of this project, present in material research, collaborative making, and intimate conversations around love, trauma, displacement, and hope—the experiences of queerness and migration in a convoluted world. This project does not claim to offer solutions to the troubles and scars that surround us. Yet it does aim to stand as a tangible reminder of what becomes possible when friendship guides us. As a way to challenge the walls and borders of today, it offers the beauty of recognizing ourselves in others.
Developed through collaborative workshops at Rainbow House, a queer community center in Gothenburg that holds space for people navigating migration, refuge, and asylum, the project used collective making as its core methodology. Discarded cardboard was transformed into furniture pieces, revealing a tangible process of material exploration. This shared making facilitated encounters not only between people and material but also among participants navigating queerness and migration. Through vulnerability, recognition, and collaboration, space for friendship emerged, allowing what is often pushed aside to take a central place.