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About the Illustrations
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FRONTISPIECE De fico a fico (Beak to Beak), 1993, Bibiana Suarez pastel drawing, 74" x 84" Bibiana Suarez's work focuses on the social, political, and cultural impact of Puerto Rico's status as a colony of the United States, with aU the conditions of marginalization and assimilation that status confers. It speaks metaphorically about the dualistic tensions in her transnational existence. In a recent series titled De pica a pica (Beall to Beak), Suarez uses cockfighting as a metaphor for her resistance to cultural assimilation. In De pica a pica (1993), the skeleton of the rooster on the left symbolizes tlle core and foundation of tlle Puerto Rican culture within her. On the right is a fighting cock, groomed and prepared to fight as a symbol of the assimilated self. In this linage, the core confronts the assimilated self, and the assimilated self confronts the core. The fighting cock's opponent is himself-always vanquished, always triumphant, engaged in an unceasing struggle to maintain and evolve his cultural identity. PART I Una cuestitfn de honor (A Matter ofHonor), 1993, Bibiana Suarez pastel drawing, 75" x 84V2" Una cuesti6n de honor (A Matter ofHonor) (1993) was the conclusion to Suarez'a De pica a pica series. A Matter ofHonor is how thegalleros, or trainers, refer to the cockfight. Like the issue of cultural identity, the fighting cock occupies a limitless and timeless space, a kind of cultural limbo, in different states of victory and defeat. PART II Green Card, 1992, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle laminated Iris color print, 2" x 3" The work of Iiiigo Manglano-OvaUe, an artist who was born to a Colombian mother and Spanish father and raised in both countries as well as the United States, speaks about immigration and border issues by asking, "Whose entrance into whose nation" Green Card (1992) was done to mark the quincentennial of Copyrighted Material 277 278 About the illustrations ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi the discovery of dle Americas. It is part of a series of works on immigration mat examine dl~ contrast between dle way identity is constructed by bureaucratic institutions and legislation and me way it is constructed mrough individual selfperception . PART III Portrait ofGuillermo G011'U!z-Pena in peiformance Guillermo Gomez-Pena specializes in the transgression of boundaries, whether mey are national, cultural, racial, linguistic, or disciplinary. He is an essayist, a poet, and an installation and performance artist whose work is a dizzying interdisciplinary polyglot mix, reminiscent of dle movie Bladem111lt:r and inspired by me collision of two cultures along La Frontera. PARTrv Detail from Triptych «The South/Missing/' panel 3 of3, 1993, Silvia Malagrino blaclt and n>lJite .\ilFcrprints, 60" .\: 40" each The dissolution and elimination of identity dlroUgh political terrorism and oppression is dle subject of Silvia Malagrino's work. Malagrino is an Argentinian who left her cou.ntry during the so-called Dirty War (1971-83). In this series of works called Imcriptions in tbe War Zone, she explored the visual and political iconography oflos desaparecidos, over 9,000 people illegally detained and executed in acts of state-sponsored terrorism. The images in me series use teJ.."!, photos of me disappeared ones mat were carried by Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, as well as forensic photos and diagrams. Malagrino's work references the specific events of that period in Argentina's history, but it also has parallels to a larger history of oppression, terrorism, and genocide around me globe. The killing fields of Cambodia, Nazi concentration camps, and eth.nic cleansing in the tormer state of Yugoslavia are part of me expanded narrative of violence dut Malagrino evokes through her examination of the representation of mese tragic events in our visual culture. Copyrighted Material ...