“Moskito Men in Moskito land” 2021
The contraposition of two views; an external gaze (tourist, emigrant, artist), and
the other look belonging to the landscape as an entity (nation/government). Both
gazes are followed when they wander a territory that endures from speculation and
preoccupations of the environment.
The videos discuss a relationship that moves in both directions and can refer to migratory
dynamics and extraction policies. Both the geography and the inhabitants of a place
and its tourists (Immigrants) are participants. The geopolitical displacement of
human bodies—both current and historical—where the newcomer is confronted with an
ideological normalization by his new host that regards ‘the other’ as alien/stranger.
I am concerned with observation processes in which the social and psychological aspects
of the interaction between art and the artist, the public, and the environment play
an essential role.
The relationship between the politicized black body and the Caribbean landscape is
essential in this context, as thinking about art and how it operates has a central
place in the critical role that cultural signifiers can play in forming a national
identity, specifically, historically displaced Afro-Latinos' self-identity.
For the video production, the images and audios are intentionally factually exaggerated and inconsistently staged by recording in a digital format with a 360 camera, which allows the spectator to interact with the video. Approaching the viewer in the game of gazing, controlling the gaze, and/or observing the tourist (emigrant). The camera captures footage that mimics the Caribbean rainforest and the security cameras used for border surveillance and policing bodies combined with still images of Costa Rica Caribbean Coast; around the area where they recently discovered remains of a sunk shipped that transported black enslaved bodies. It also demands a temporality and attention that goes against the immediacy with which moving image recordings are produced and consumed today.
Moskito is a play on the term ‘Miskito’ a reference to an ethnic group in Honduras and Nicaragua, also Mosquito Coast, a territory that it is believed extended during Spanish Colonial period from Honduras to Panama. 2 Gloria, Anzaldúa. “Now let us shift the path of conocimiento inner work, public acts.” In This bridge we call home: Radical visions for transformation, edited by G. Anzaldúa & A.Keating (pp. 540–578). New York, NY: Routledge, 2002.
Artist's Bio -
Robinson’s art, which is informed mainly by African-American traditions, challenges
the conventional representations of black identities in art history, mainstream culture,
and the official national narratives, especially those of Costa Rica. With an often
ironic and rhetorical take on the constructs of racism, this practice endeavors to
confront the hierarchies and conceptions inherited from colonialism in order to subvert
the mindsets and prejudices ingrained in our social experience.
Robinson has participated in exhibitions in spaces such as as: The Getty Center, Los
Angeles, California; Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, Costa Rica; Vincent Price
Art Museum, California; Fundación Ars TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica; Museo de Arte Costarricense,
Costa Rica; University of California, Los Angeles New Wight Gallery,California; Eastside
International, California; X Bienal Centroamericana, Costa Rica; Pacific Standard
Time LA/LA, CA; Aidekman Arts Center,Boston; Le Palais de Tokyo, France; Bergen Kjøtt,
Bergen, Norway; Centro de la Imagen, México; ARTBO, Bogotá, Colombia; Mandeville Gallery,
New York; Gallery GVCC, Casablanca, Morocco; Museo Amparo, México; 21st Biennial Contemporary
Art Sesc Videobrasil, Brazil; Trienal Internacional de Performance Deformes, Santiago
de Chile.
To view more work by Marton, please click HERE.
