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CATEGORIES OF IDENTITY AND THE TRANSFIXED FACE OF ART
by Elizam Escobar
I will try to offer you, through my limited conditions, a view or perspective
on how I approach the problematics of identity in relation to my art work.
In one of my Heuristica series there is an aphorism that goes like this: "Ser
cosmico es tener todas las tribus adentro." In English, it means: "To
be cosmic is to have all the tribes inside".
The term "raza cosmica" (cosmic race), which I believe was coined
by Vasconcelos, the Mexican writer who died in 1959, refers to race not as a
biological category but as a cultural one.
It seems to me that it was meant to create the consciousness that the Americas
was this new place, this intercession where all different kinds of peoples,
ethnic groups, cultures and civilizations will finally meet, interact or mix,
flourishing and transforming themselves into a more universal, sensitive, illustrated
and richer human kind.
This may seem or sound similar to a certain interpretation of the Nietzschean
concept of the overman, or to the U.S. illusion of the melting pot, but the
way I would like to envision the cosmic race concept is not as a vision of exclusion
or an elitist or populist dream. It is a vision of inclusion and the dynamic
relationship between difference and sameness, the possibility to value the specific
and particular aspects of an individual group as well as the general and common
links of a new hemispherical culture.
My first three Heuristicas were originally conceived as a tryptic around the
theme of the 500 years since the formation of what we call today the Americas,
a history of colonialism, slavery and liberation struggles that have not ended
yet.
The aphorism I use in Heuristica Tres is a sort of response to Vasconcelos'
vision but in reference to the utopia of the individual, and more in particular,
how I, as a person, approach the question of identity -- or moments of my own
trajectory and present situation -- through allegorical images.
I try to reveal the fact that the individual, the self, is already the place
and intercession of many cultures and formations, a microcosmos where we can
discover or invent a macrocosmos, and present many sides of the complex and
conflictive movement of individual and collective identity.
This, of course, is presented through the specific language/discourse of art,
a process that brings together the conceptual and sensual aspects of our lives
through symbolic form, which I consider a form of knowledge, ironic and paradoxical,
that pierces through the immaculate boundaries established between truth and
falsity, being and non-being and all other clean cut, dogmatic dualisms.
In some of these Heuristica series, I work the human face as if it were a canvas.
To me, the face is a map and the single part of the human body that contains
an image of the whole, something similar to the title of a work of art or to
the unique mark of finger prints.
It is also a mask, and a mask is always an extension of the human face, that
could, sometimes, better reveal what the face hides. A mask that struggles to
find out a true face or a face that finds its truth in a multiplicity of masks.
In terms of the formal elements of the images, in the Heuristicas, the face
as mask, or the mask as a new, alternative face, is a structural/sensual territory
made up of paint, gel medium, gesso, water, marks with a razor blade or other
pointed objects over a photographic or photocopied image.
The thematic elements refer to all other aspects that are already within the
individual, the self.
These manifestations are a play with the categories of identity which are both
real and metaphysical, or better said, they are a complex imbrication of reality
and fiction, arbitrarily imposed classifications, ideological prejudices, and
necessary mechanisms for control.
The face becomes, then, the main depository for the categories of identity and
for the purposes of classification and identification.
These categories, such as social class, nationality, race, ethnicity, gender,
generation, etc., make up the individual and subordinate the individual to them.
Categories of identity are always a form of alienation because, rephrasing what
Marx said
about social class, they cancel the particularity of an individual life into
collective anonymity, but on the other hand, in order to undo this alienation
the individual has to first assume those categories or that part of the individual
identity that calls for his/her affirmation.
Let me put it in more concrete terms. In order for me to be "fully human"
or to aspire to liberate myself from all imposed or straitjacketing categories,
I first have to assume my nationality, my puertorriquneidad, because not only
has my nationality been put into question, but in order for me, as an individual,
to be a free human being, I first have to resolve the collective aspect of my
own self-determination, my own freedom to decide what I want to be, understanding,
of course, that we are all limited by our conditions of existence.
Obviously, that's why I am here [in prison] today, because I became an active
part of that
collective decision, that categorical imperative, if you will.
But there is a danger in this affirmation of nationality, as in my case; in
yours it could be ethnicity, race, gender, your belonging to a specific social
group or generation, etc.
The danger is that an aspect of my life -- it doesn't matter how significant
or fundamental this aspect might be -- could become the only aspect, or worse,
the finality or purpose of an individual life.
We must understand, then, that the process of identity is a process of negations
and affirmations. Only then can we sustain a certain continuity without stopping
or falling into stagnation, splintering into fragments, or embracing an easy
one-sided solution.
The other danger is that we should not confuse the process and praxis of art,
which has its own "identity" and specificity, with other social or
academic processes or practices like sociology or the political-direct activity,
even though they are all interrelated, overdetermined and constituted by their
mutual influences and intercessions.
In the process of art, art as liberation and praxis of liberty, the movement
from negation to affirmation is completed with one stroke of the imagination.
That stroke can be called transfixion: art fixes or makes something to achieve
a certain permanency, through an image; but at the same time, it pierces through
all ideological reductions of reality or categories as, for example, the mechanical
separation between fiction and the real.
So the face or the mask that we present through art is a transfixed face, open
to the invasion of opposite thoughts and feelings, to those invisible mechanisms
or structures that are behind what seems to be natural, harmonious, and fully
completed.
Through those metamorphoses, we have the possibility of ironically questioning
imposed identities as well as making them mirrors of provocation or repressed
desires, or simply, a vital space where the utopia of the individual can manifest
freely and with power.
Also, through art, what is important is not only subject matter but the way
you assume the subject matter, how you create intensity or passion, how you
are willing to take your own medicine.
Art, in general, can be conceived as the continuation of life through other
means, a space where all contradictions explode; and in terms of categories
of identity, a place to subvert them and to anticipate a less alienated individual
as well as collective life.
Elizam Escobar
February 3, 1995
Oklahoma
[This is the transcript of a video presented April 19, 1995, at a panel discussion
titled "Chicago Latino Art: An Expression of Transnational Identities"
at DePaul University in Chicago as part of an exhibit, "Transnational Identities:
Cultura en proceso" at the DePaul Art Gallery, April 3-May 20, 1995.]
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