(birds chirping)
(water flowing)
- Place is important in my work.
Coming from a place that is
determined in other people's imagination.
I'm interested in the idea of opacity.
(street traffic rumbling softly)
A right to remain opaque,
even to yourself,
even things that you may not understand about yourself,
and being at peace with that
and not having to explain yourself to others.
I think the way it manifests in my work
is through all these layers that I'm playing with.
Particularly as it relates to the idea of camouflage,
'cause I think it's some type of opacity in a visual way.
(waves lapping)
Camouflage is this survival strategy in the natural world.
As we navigate society, this idea of blending in or
being visible,
and having control of that,
I think is a tool for liberation, in a way.
(sirens wailing)
(upbeat Reggaeton music)
My name is Joiri Minaya.
I'm a multidisciplinary visual artist
based in New York from the Dominican Republic.
What else do I say?
My pronouns are she/her.
I've been interested in patterns as a metaphor for society.
How people repeat and embody these patterns.
Siboney is about labor
and unpacking the laboriousness
behind the facade of tropical packaging,
and thinking of women's role in this packaging.
♪ ♪ ♪
There's an interesting process
that happens when you see an image
that you don't necessarily have language for immediately.
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I'm interested in how an image
has the power to transmit a lot in a very short time,
but then how you can spend a longer time with that image
and unpack all of these other things.
The Container series developed from the collages
that I did initially for
the Dominican Women Google Search series.
I started saving the images
that I found on the Google search
and classifying them
by the way they were posing,
'cause I thought there were some patterns.
Or maybe I'm just fixated on patterns.
But I thought there were some patterns
in the way that women pose for the cameras.
Like there was a lot of like arms akimbo
and like a lot of like obelisk-esque poses
of women lying on the beach.
And I started recognizing
how some of those are things that I did myself.
(people chatting)
Well, I started sewing body suits
that forced me to embody these poses,
as an exploration for myself
but also to question this type of performativity,
because you initially recognize it very quickly
but then there's the weirdness
of this person being fully encased.
(upbeat drumming)
(car horns honking)
I grew up in the city of Santo Domingo
which is full of concrete
and notoriously lacking public parks.
I really appreciate nature when I can access it.
At the same time, I'm aware of my possible
probable romanticization of nature.
When I go back to the region where my family's from
I'm really excited about this nature.
But then my mom is like,
well, growing up we were really concerned about parasites
and like the heat is really awful,
and you can be raped in the dark.
So, like there's all of this fears and dangers of nature
which are very real.
(waves lapping)
(ground crunching under feet)
Site specificity and the history that a place has
has been important,
specifically with the works where I'm making new patterns
in response to the patterns that I have been appropriating.
I've been designing patterns that look tropical
and are playing with the visual language
of botanical illustration.
But, looking at plants that were used
by people who resisted colonial processes
through the use of these plants.
So, some plants have been used to make weapons,
sometimes have been used to make poisons,
sometimes these plants are used to speak to your ancestors.
So, I'm interested in all of these different systems
of resistance through these plants.
The main way that I've showcased this
is printing them on fabric
that is then used to cover colonizer statues.
I'm thinking of a way to re-signify that public space
that is used to commemorate colonial history,
and instead trying to commemorate the people
who resisted colonialism who don't have a statue.
Just thinking of public space
as this space that's supposed to be democratic,
but then, of course,
there's like forces that determine what is more significant
and what is left out.
I'm trying to tell the stories that remain untold.
(upbeat percussive music)