La sangre llama

Abstract

This research project primarily focuses on how to confront architectural and colonial symbols of the state’s power through Afro-Indigenous spiritual markers and performance. This essay begins with questions about my own reality in the Diaspora and the existential, cultural crisis that arises in myself due to structural racism and misogyny. Moving forward, an effort in understanding how this crisis comes to fruition, I contextualize race from a primarily Latin American and Hispano-Caribbean perspective, then to an understanding of the controlling images that affect the material reality of Black women’s lives in the present day. Subsequently, I reference Black women’s artistic practice across material and form from varying geographical locations in the diaspora in order to understand how to develop my own practice within these themes. Their works are analyzed through a hermeneutic circle that centers intesectionality in order to be precise about race, gender and ethnicity and how these factors affect the readings and histories behind the works. Lastly, my own practice and questions are documented, all which lead to my own performance work in direct response to a monument building with a direct history to Puerto Rico’s colonial history.