No. 1674, Sección Administrativa, Version 1 & 2. Embroidered Bed Cover, Document from the National Archive of Costa Rica, 2007. Bienarte, Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, San José, Costa Rica, 2007. Bienal de Artes Visuales (BAVIC) 2008, Museo para la Identidad Nacional, Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Retrato Familiar en Helvetica, Teor/éTica, 2014. Más Allá el Mar Canta, Times Art Center, Berlin, 2021.
This piece uses a document found through a research about Chinese immigration in Costa Rica. The document is a letter written in 1907 by Chinese immigrants who were requesting the government a permit to bring their wives and children to the country. The piece consists of this text embroidered on a Chinese silk cloth, often used to make bed sheets for newlyweds. The color of the bed sheet is red, which represents happiness and is used traditionally in weddings; the thread used to embroider is golden, the color of luxury. In this work the symbolic weight is in the medium used to represent the piece, both its usual purpose as well as the color code that it represents charges the text with an explicit discourse about values and rights that are demanded in the text.
This piece makes important reference to my prior works, especially to two pieces. The first one, “Vagon Rojo (Red Wagon)” (FIA04, Fe al P) in which a railroad wagon was painted red, then red flags where hung with the image of a Chinese immigrant who came to build the railroad intertwined with self-portraits. It is with this project that I started the process of investigation about the documents in the National Archive of Costa Rica which lead to the creation of the piece for the Bienarte (Costa Rican Biennial). There is also a relation to be made with “Retrato/Autorretrato ontogénico” (2003) where the piece makes a search of self-representation and tries to solve the identity dilemma in the historical heritage.
