Background as Battleground

Arnaldo Roche-Rabell - We Have to Eat, 1986
oil on canvas

A racially indeterminate face (with traits denoting an African descent, while the light-blue eyes send to North American Caucasians) surrounded by a tangled web of some kind of Carribean foliage: it is in such details that the social message is wrapped in. It is about bicultural conflicting identities (the artist is born in Puerto-Rico and lives in Chicago). For Arnaldo Roche-Rabell background equals battleground.

Wangechi Mutu (born in Kenya in 1972, living in New York since early nineties) is also preoccupied by multiple distant identities, leading to strong internal interactions between what are essentially globalism and tribalism. She creates collages that combine fragments of photographs, spots of blood, hair, African fetiches, along with mechanical parts: the resulting hybrids speak about female identities as confused, layered, mutable; her works can be seen as poetic embodiments of modern-day transformative forces, but also as aenigmas - monsters formed by conjoining nameable parts taken from nameable creatures (Mark W. Scala) - after all, with all advances in bio-technology and all that stuff, are we still humans?

Wangechi Mutu - Squiggly Wiggly Demon Hair, 2004
paint, ink, collage, mixed media on Mylar

Here are some close-ups:




(Paint Made Flesh)