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.
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