Description:
Visual description: This mixed-media large square collage is a self-portrait of the artist. In the center, a large red circle surrounds a collection of the same childhood photograph of a birthday celebration in a family circle, layered on one another in a sort of T pattern. At the top of the artwork, three colored rectangular sections include an American flag, a Puerto Rican flag, and another solid-colored flag with blocks of red, black, and green, from top to bottom, with a cowrie shell against the black. Other squares of color appear at each corner and at the bottom directly opposite the flags. Most of the background is a mixture of muted grays, browns, blacks, and whites.
Label Text:
Sánchez often creates dense collages that feature portraits of global figures, activists, and family members, among other symbolic elements, many of which refer to his Puerto Rican heritage. The integration of a self-portrait in this artwork underscores the artist’s exploration of his origins and identity and highlights his activism. The photographs—multiples of the same image—show Sánchez as a young boy at a birthday party. The replication of the image mirrors the repetition of two photographs in the background—a fragmented grid. These photographs—of a woman and a man with the Puerto Rican flag draped over their heads—were modeled after a poster Sánchez created in 1979 supporting Puerto Rican independence and the release of political prisoners. The poster was adopted by the Black Liberation movement, among other organizations.
The fragmented grid of photographs is an element Sánchez first used in the 2011 video Unknown Boricua Streaming: A Nuyorican State of Mind. Unknown Boricua, like Self-Portrait, explores Sánchez’s ethnic, racial and national identities.
Lisa Crossman (2020)
Tags:
collages; photographs; self-portraits; identity Subjects:
photographs; Collage; Self-portraits Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2021.10 |
