MARISOL DIAZ

Zemis and Totems

In this collection of work, Zemis and Totems, my inquiry continues to be around the objectification, consumption and colonization of the female form, land and the disembodiment of knowledge. Zemi’s are containers – objects, human or animal- for supernatural and spiritual deities that were once worshipped by the Taino culture which has since been nearly eradicated. I am deeply interested in all I do with fusing spirit into matter.

When I sculpt, I am heavily invested in polarizing materials such as driftwood and concrete. Concrete in particular being a material that flanks all of the green that is resplendent on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico and obliterates the green on the isle of Manhattan NYC. Puerto Rico is one of the last colonies still existent in the world and we Boricuas still combat a colonized mind. Living disconnected from home, language and becoming a living hybridity calls me into developing art that speaks to unpacking indigenous ideologies.

For my drawings, the unostentatious pencil, allows me to investigate tonalities of ‘mono- chromania’ as I call it, prevalent in power structures and in the US. Mono-chromania is pertaining to the polarization and lack of intersectionality, fluidity and hybridity in our world view. As a Puerto Rican Latinx, the absence of color within the flesh, addresses grey matter within this socio-chromatic black and white bias. I see the pencil portraits as totems of the feminine divine. I am interested in portraits of iconic stature for an absent image, or rather a palimpsest of erasure; a woman of color as a leader with mission, vision and longing for a place in time that no longer exists; images I would have liked to have had in my own youth on my island as I unlearn the false colonized paradigms of the patriarchy and mourn for my archipelago. Unfortunately, this tendency towards absolutes and binaries is prevalent even in our art world view- hierarchies that serve only power, status and false classifications. I am not just a painter, an illustrator or a sculptor. We are not either/or, we are both/and.

—Marisol Diaz