Joiri Minaya

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Artist statement

My work is a reassertion of Self, an exercise of unlearning, decolonizing and exorcizing imposed histories, cultures and ideas. It’s about reconciling the experience of having grown up in the Dominican Republic with living and navigating the U.S. / global North; using gaps, disconnections and misinterpretations as fertile ground for creativity. 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. Inter-disciplinarily, I explore the performativity of tropical identity as product: the performance of labor, decoration, beauty, leisure, service.

Artwork