Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
In a context of everyday life, I explore ways in which stereotypes and the media have defined my perception of blackness and national identity. My reality was sketched out from otherness while being denied by my country’s history. No actual expression exists of the history and culture of the people of African descent in Costa Rica. The institutional content has never come close to defining my blackness beyond the celebration of “Black Day.”
Satire and symbolism are used in an exaggerated enactment of self-deprecation and irony with the goal of reconfiguring hierarchical power, colonial conceptions and Eurocentric ideologies, aiming to subvert systems of social belief present in the Costa Rican national psyche. In this sense I challenge history and the media regarding the formation of a collective imagination based on Costa Rican blackness.
I seek to break the prevailing notion that “the other” is a strange entity/identity. I find it useful to frame my work within the conceptual and visual theory I call Tecnologías Deculoniales, an ongoing investigation that aims to broaden the analysis of the institutional policies and systemic practices of representation, and technological globalization. I explore means of producing art and sharing knowledge with other similar artistic practices, with a critical eye on Eurocentric and institutionalized notions of aesthetics, place and race.
Also, an exploration of the geopolitical displacement of human bodies—both contemporary and historical—where the newcomer is confronted with an ideological normalization by his new host that regards “the other” as alien/stranger. I am drawn by the constructed perceptions of a new “home.” The displaced person forms a sense of belonging and identity. Using both modern and historical popular culture images and objects, my work explores the critical role that cultural signifiers can play in forming a national identity, specifically, the self-identity of historically displaced Afro-Latino.
The images used in the installation No le Digas a Mi Mano Derecha lo que Hace la Izquierda are presented as multiples layers—offering multiple perspectives—of social configurations: the first, the idea of how Costa Rica omitted from their history and national identity the notion of blackness through books and music. Following the examination of race and class, the second layer addresses the interaction of images related to theories and poetry. Irony is somewhat present to approach such subjects. I am interested in the investigation of concepts such as the idea of the mask as a means of mockery in the form of shaming, connected to postcolonial aspects of race and nationality. Here, the (im)material application of masks and/or masking of the body recalls historical problematics including, but not limited to, social rituals of public shaming, ethnological practices and assimilation.
My work provides a counter-historical narrative exploring the subjective experience of colonialism and domination in relation to the mask between colonies. The work emphasizes my own body, the black body, as a platform for representation and dialogue.