I got in touch with Cuban professor Lino García Morales , who is currently working at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain. He works in various departments regarding Arts & Culture as well as Mixed Media, and he is also a musical producer and the author of several books and novels such as Retrato de un País de Mierda (Portrait of a Shitty Country).
We had an extensive conversation in which he gave me feedback on the various layers to my project, and overall I found it quite enlightening and helpful. I firstly talked to him about my research question which was: “‘How can the artistic exploration of class, gender, sexuality and race help reclaim subjectivity within Latam diaspora and immigrant youths?” ; to what he told me that he found it a bit long / distracting and that, although the themes are very interesting, such concepts are quite vague and mostly socially constructed, therefor it would be quite a long and arduous area to venture into if my aim is to reach any precise conclusions. That aside, he was delighted with the research I have already done and my reading list, and even recommended me some more readings from Boris Groys, Humberto Eco and Pierre Bourdieu that I think can give me some insight in regards to art and the construction of identity.
During this conversation I came to the conclusion that what I am truly interested about is the questioning of identity as a young Latam diaspora artist. Why the questioning and not just identity ? I am still very interested in dissolving binaries and solid systems, and I see identity as something fluid and multi-layered. In my previous post In Defense of Mestizo Art I denounced that in the way Western culture and society has come to be there has been little space for contrasting ideas to come together, finding ourselves compelled to choose between one or the other, even to the point of sacrificing parts of ourselves in order to fit into a category or binary. However, our current globalized society has opened the door to a wide range of debates and possibilities, and as a result we have been forced to break out of our comfort zone and put into question long assimilated convictions.
Lino remarked that ‘youth is identity under construction’, specially when it comes to diaspora youth groups. In that line, the collective that I am interested about is precisely that of those whose identity is under construction and have gone through processes of questioning and assimilation. He helped me see that my audience is precisely that which he called “liquid generation” who is still questioning, and is more critical than ever. That would correspond to the Gen Z, which according to Beresford Research are those who are currently between 10 and 25 years of age.
He also went through some of my more artistic work and found a clear link with my research base. He believed that it has a lot of potential when it comes to exploration of class, gender, sexuality and race (which are all ways of asserting Identity) and that I am good at disrupting normative ideas as well as making it accessible and approachable. Aesthetically, he sees a Surrealist (borderline Kirsch) element to my work which he encouraged me to continue exploring since he believes that the questioning of identity inspires a sort of ‘surrealist madness’ that goes perfectly well with our Cuban culture (which is already quite layered and syncretized).
In this regard, he told me that going through my work, he does not find my essence in my MA question , and that I should integrate my signature into it, that it allows for it to be slightly more poetic.
His final advice to me was to create a book or zine that collects parts of both my academic and artistic work, and that could definitely be a very creative and profiting project in terms of its encompassing and design. This is an idea that I have been considering for a while, an after this conversation I think I will focus on creating a hybrid book , that will probably be in Spanglish and that will mix different art mediums.
As to my MA question, will probably look something like this :
Between To Be and Not To Be : How can Latam[1] Identities be questioned from the artistic diaspora?
[1] Abbreviation to Latin-American