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My work's ultimate objective is to awaken doubts in the viewer with respect to his/her accepted system of values and to the naturalized interpretation of certain historical events. Commonly held beliefs can be analyzed according to different, yet logical, parameters to yield varied, often contradictory, conclusions. Brunner utilizes the metaphor of the shattered mirror. This mirror casts infinite images, i.e. conflicting cultural, mass media, and historical cues, which do not create an overarching unity.1 Amongst a myriad viewpoints, I assert my own. Through my subverting agency I seek to uncover extant power relations, particularly those involving accumulation and consumption that affect an object's exchange value. A material's worth varies in accordance to cues provided by the setting and its availability, even though the material itself remains constant. As Foucault writes: "the interpretations which result (from the analyses of power relations) will not consist of the same elements of meaning or the same links or the same types of intelligibility, although they refer to the same historical fabric..."2 Works such as The Trade-Oro por Baratijas explore the issue of conflicting value systems that arise by the encounter of cultures that live according to incompatible paradigms, as exemplified by the colonization of America. In "The Trade" the gilded treasure chest is filled with corn. By placing the corn inside the chest I seek to question the role these elements play in our society. In the market economy, gold, which is not inherently valuable, is revered. Conversely, corn, dismissed by modern western societies, is life-giving and a central component of many cultural narratives. Corn has an intrinsic value, a very basic value: nourishment. The search for gold has led to the disappearance of cultures (and species of fauna and flora) - once we come to this realization the treasure chest becomes a coffin. The voices coming from within the trunk remind us of what has been lost. They speak to us from the earth (tierra). Or perhaps it is the corn speaking to us, telling us its own story of belonging and loss of the land…. My work is informed by a paradigm represented by the shattered mirror and by coexisting realities. I have found this model useful in order to validate Difference, but I am aware that it cannot serve to fully conceptualize the past(s) and the present(s). As Terry Eagleton warns us: "It would be far better if the postmodernist were right, and there was nothing constant or continuous about the chronicle at all. But the price of believing this is a betrayal of the dead, along with a majority of the living. 3 1See J. J. Brunner, América Latina: Cultura y Modernidad (México, D.F.: Grijalbo, 1992), p. 16. |