7th Edition
Contemporary
Art Event
June 12 —
September 11
2022
2022
7th Edition
Contemporary
Art Event
June 12 —
September 11
2022
Joiri Minaya

Joiri
Minaya

Joiri Minaya, Container #4, photographie performative, 2020
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EXPRESSION, Centre d’exposition
Jardin Daniel A. Séguin

The Cloaking Series, 2017-2021
Inkjet print mounted on aluminum and wallpaper

Containers #1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 2015-2020
Installation: Inkjet print mounted on aluminum

I’ve learned there is a Gaze thrust upon me which others me. I turn it upon itself, mainly by seeming to fulfill its expectations, but instead sabotaging them, thus regaining power and agency.”*

For Containers, Joiri Minaya produced a series of photographs that feature her clothed in head-to-toe bodysuits printed with tropical plant designs; only her eyes, staring at the viewer, are visible. The re-appropriated fabrics in which she is enwrapped, like the landscapes with which they interact, were made to respond to the needs of an imperialist tourism industry. Her poses, retrieved from the web, were found with the search term “dominican women,” and are prescribed by the way these garments are sewn. These acts of reproduction, like the reproduced motifs on the fabric, trace a parallel with the repetition necessary for the integration of stereotypes. With The Cloaking Series, and to extend a self-reclamation of agency, Minaya wraps colonial monuments in fabric with patterns that she designed, offering evidence of her ethno-botanical research. The plants portrayed were selected for their symbolic power, drawn from narratives that exemplify their potential ability to resist the colonial system. This resistance is embodied particularly in the use of their toxic or medicinal properties requiring specific knowledge, which is transmitted within communities oppressed by that system.

* Joiri Minaya, artist’s statement, www.joiriminaya.com/Statement

Joiri Minaya
Photo credit: Lies Engelen

Joiri Minaya is a Dominican-American multidisciplinary artist who investigates the body within constructions of gender, identity, social space, and landscape, complicating hierarchies through hybridity, challenging otherness, and, most recently, thinking through opacity. Born in New York, U.S., Minaya grew up in the Dominican Republic. She graduated from the Escuela Nacional de Artes Visuales in Santo Domingo in 2009, the Altos de Chavón School of Design in 2011, and Parsons The New School for Design in 2013.

02 Joiri Minaya, Container #7, photographie performative, 2020
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The Cloaking series, photographie performative, 2017-2021
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Joiri Minaya, Container #4, performative photograph, 2020

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Joiri Minaya, Container #7performative photograph, 2020

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Joiri Minaya, The Cloaking seriesperformative photograph, 2017-2021