I am fascinated with the experience of Las Americas and the crossing of the Atlantic. My work intends to unveil the many ongoing cultural encounters that continuously shape and reshape how we view, perceive, and color America. My work is centered on the politics of inclusion. History plays a central role in my artistic practice of decoding and deconstructing visual narratives of power. I engage history and historical ethnography to pay close attention to traditions, methods, and dominant societal points of view to visually bring forth other voices. Through the deconstruction, the juxtaposition of symbols of constructed Americaness, nationhood and freedom embedded in slavery and oppression, I aim to present the most outrages signs of resistance through the mixing of race, through a fierce optimism.

Race, the politics of color (formally and conceptually) is essential to me.
The cinnamon figure is a constant in my work since 1996. Mixing all the colors in a palette is an inclusive action, the outcome of such activity is cinnamon color. The new race, represented by my ever-present cinnamon figure states the creation of a new aesthetic This unique aesthetic with new rules originated by the lush landscape, the transplantation, appropriation, and transformation of traditions. Also, the catholic iconography with my mixed- race warrior/angels is my way of colonizing the colonizers…by appropriating, transforming creating new icons. The Atlantic, this blue liquid road and profound obstacle provokes my imagination. The blue sea represents the way out and the frontier. It maps stories about freedom, slavery, and survival, it carries our DNA, and it’s an endless source of stories, evolving continuously, reminding us the fluidity of our identity, our collective memory. Resistance through beauty and joy.
Las Americas transformed our world, created new values, a new race, redefined Christianity, and geography. In my neo-baroque tradition, with its inclusivity of spirit, I navigate between tragedy, beauty, carnaval, and traces of divinity.

Scherezade Garcia, NY, 2019