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Oil paint and serigraphs on canvas, wood, medical tubing, sound equipment and CD (11 min. loop), dimensions variable.
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This installation utilized the event of the 1972 earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua as its point of departure. The experience of living through the earthquake is spliced with the transitory significance of Nicaragua in Precolombian times — as a site of transit, passage, of goods and culture. I attempt to utilize Nicaragua's significance and placement as a metaphor for a fissure — a grieta — not only signaling geographical collisions (the '72 earthquake killed 10,000+ people) with the San Andreas fault going right through the center of Managua, but also where the collisions of "first" world interests have been waged with the third world body as ammunition. The earthquake serves as a backdrop to also speak of my own subjectivity. Born in Tennessee to Salvadorian parents, and raised in Nicaragua, my alliances are in constant question as I traverse between languages and cultures. Mimicry and illusion as close allies in the construction of the hybrid self. Icons and identities are reconstituted ad infinitum. Sensing the self is a continuous process of regeneration/degeneration — like fissures — at once erasing and revealing.
"Reciprocidad/Reciprocity" is part of the artist's "Terremoto/Earthquake Series" of work, which was executed in photos/prints and a suite of three serigraphs, with "Reciprocidad/Reciprocity" as the one installation in this series. The work originally appeared on the artist's homepage, and appears here by permission of the artist.
Original Painting, "Reciprocidad/Reciprocity," © 2000 by Patricia Echeverría |