Saturday, November 03 - 3:20PM to 3:40PM
CFA 2018
My work is deeply influenced by a repressive, heteronormative system in Latin America; I explore and create visual narratives using people and precious objects to disrupt the meaning of religion through queer culture. Using photography, painting, and sculpture, I test my cultural background, gender, and political resistance. I utilize and manipulate materials such as glitter, liquid foam, make up, paint, condoms, and concrete blocks to construct, and interrupt, my own narratives. I use and mis-use these materials loosely, much as I do Christian symbolism, to reshape a patriarchal, heteronormative system. Coming from a Latin Catholic family, I was taught that being queer or different is a sin. I was taught that queer people fail to reproduce an ideal, and that they must adjust to standards that are already in place. I began to realize that religion gets everywhere—'contaminating' everything from family and relationships to institutions and politics. I began to think of glitter the same way. I use my personal experience, influenced by pain and pleasure alike, to reshape my understanding of my queer skin. I like to test the boundaries that the Catholic religion has imposed on queer people within most Latin societies as a way of protecting the norm. I challenge and fight intolerance and fear by reshaping the heterosexual ideal of what a queer body should be, and I look to create political resistance by not following or recreating, a heteronormative culture.
rn
Become an SPE Partner
The SPE Partners program offers three packages which provide flexible opportunities for schools, businesses, and nonprofit organizations to subsidize faculty, staff, students, and broader community participation in SPE.
Have a great assignment or resource to share? Submit it to our Teaching Tools!
Dialogue and critique are important to the SPE mission.
Please join the conversation.