ALICIA IN 3 PARTS
As part of my residency at El Museo del Barrio for "Back in Five Minutes", a project by Nicolás Dumit Estévez, my work culminated in an installation titled Alicia in 3 Parts. This installation combined photography and video to explore themes of identity, race, and contemporary events.
In one of the video installations, I addressed the racialized nomenclature commonly used in the West to describe physical appearance, employing both Spanish and English terms such as prieta, india, black, white, and others. The work was inspired by the ancient Greek game Ostrakinda, popular during Plato's time, in which two players used a shell painted black on one side (symbolizing night) and white on the other (symbolizing day). Players took turns flipping the shell and calling a side, with each flip carrying the potential for a "win."
In this piece, I reimagined the game as a metaphor for the struggle for identity. I addressed myself repeatedly, flipping between terms in an endless back-and-forth, evoking the tension of waiting for resolution, recognition, or a definitive sense of self. This continuous loop embodied the performative and cyclical nature of identity formation and the external impositions of labels.
The installation questioned not only the terms themselves but also the societal frameworks that impose these identifiers, challenging viewers to consider the fluidity and arbitrariness of racial constructs.