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<h2 style="text-align: center;">February 12 to April 2, 2016</h2>
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<em>Unpacking Hispañola</em> re-envisions the processes that construct historical narratives, racial subjectivity, and gender roles through the work of Dominican American visual artists Scherezade Garcia and Firelei Báez. Both artists create images that complicate the traditional distinctions between myths and historical ‘facts’, questioning the very nature of historical narratives. Channeling their own racialized experiences in the United States, the artists explore both Dominican and U.S. African-derived culture and history, and challenge constructed racial hierarchies and inequalities in both countries.
Anthropologist Michel Rolph-Trouillot has explained that dominant historical narratives are constructed according to a Western viewpoint, which assigns power through the emphasis of specific moments and subsequently the creation of ‘silences’, or omissions. Emphasizing the importance of the creation of and access to archives, as well as the contemporary interpretation of history, Trouillot shows that historical narratives are manipulated to reflect the political or financial proclivities of those in power. Through the lens of race and gender, in Unpacking Hispañola Garcia and Báez expose the flaws within the construction of the historical narrative in the Dominican Republic and the United States. They subsequently parody these flaws through the elaboration of mythological creatures and folklore, which can be considered ‘silences’ in their iteration of the historical narrative. Garcia and Báez blur the boundaries of accepted historical facts and myths, re-creating a narrative that defies racial stereotypes and traditional gender roles.
Unpacking Hispañola is curated by Abigail Lapin Dardashti.