An Exquisite Conversation with Scherezade Garcia
Photo credit: William Vazquez
Scherezade Garcia is an internationally renowned Dominican painter, printmaker, and installation artist whose work often explores allegories of history, migration, collective and ancestral memory, and cultural colonization and politics. She is based in New York and Austin. She is an assistant professor at the University of Texas Austin. and she is also an assistant professor at Parsons School of Design. Her writing has been published and her art has received press in various publications such as Latina Style, Latina, The New York Times. and many more. Her art has been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries and art spaces such as the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, the Memorial Acte Museum, The Crossroads Gallery at Norte Dame, and elsewhere. Her art is held in collections such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Palace of the Dominican Republic, the Art Museum of the Americas, The Housatonic Museum of Art, and more. She is represented by Praxis Art Gallery and sits on the Board of Directors of the College Art Association. I had the immense honor of getting to ask Scerezade about whether being an artist is something you learn, the role of an artist, and how she helps artists find their voice through the arts.
UZOMAH: How important is it for you to use your art to examine quasi-mythical portraits of migration and cultural colonization?
SCEREZADE: It is essential for my discourse and is informed by my history. I come from the island of La Hispaniola, wherein 1492 Spaniards founded the first European city in the New World. Here on La Hispaniola, a priest performed the New World’s first baptisms, a significant step in the agenda to Christianize the New World, and the New World’s first Catholic cathedral was built. The island also received the first cargoes of enslaved people from Africa. We experienced the first genocide of the natives, Los Tainos. We experienced the first protest in opposition to the treatment of the Tainos by the Spanish Crown. The new city of Santo Domingo was a victim many times of attacks by English pirates, notoriously led by Francis Drake. The French occupied the west side of the island, which today is the Republic of Haiti. As I experience and study the results of the mix and match of different people, united by historical events, many scenarios play in my imagination. I am constantly navigating between beauty and tragedy. I have an ancestral urgency to rewrite history, to give voices to the silenced, and to create and honor new icons. To provide a platform for new myths. To create pieces that communicate this vision, I play with a variety of conceptual and formal strategies. I appropriate cultural forms and products, thereby transforming their historical and geographical references. I enjoy the duality of things, the different angles to any story or situation that create poignancy. This enjoyment has led me to incorporate contradictory elements in my pieces, for example, celebration and struggle, decoration, and desolation. I want these contradictions to create a tension that will fire up the imagination and take the viewer into my universe. The new Baroque, as I perceive our America; an inclusive brew that combines the beautiful, the strange, the sacred, the cursed…all mixed to create a new and over-the-top conception of harmony.
“Stories of Wonder”, from the series “Early Encounters”, 2019. Acrylic, pigment, charcoal, and spray on canvas. 72 x 48 inches. Photo William Vazquez
U: Who are some of your favorite artists from the Dominican and other Latin American countries?
That’s a tricky question!!! As a professor of Art, I have so many, and I keep collecting new favorites every semester!! I am a supporter of the upcoming generation! But, many people come to mind, Celeste Wossy Gil, Ada Balcacer, Rosa Tavares, Raul Recio, the Mexican Muralists(all), Lilliana Porter, Doris Salcedo…
“Blame it on the Bean: the power of Coffee” (2019). Acrylic, charcoal, pigment on linen. 54 x 135 inches. Commissioned by The People's Forum
U: How can art be an outlet for other young Latino artists and Caribean artists to help bring awareness of the conditions that they face and have been facing that leave them at a disadvantage?
It is a platform to self-assessment through self-expression. Through Art, we communicate more than we even are conscious of. Art is the most political of the tools. It conveys education, activism. We have to rewrite the textbooks and take charge of our history.
Theories of Freedom solo exhibition , 2011 @ The City College of New York art gallery. Photo William Vazquez
U: What were the most complicated challenges you had to face during the pandemic?
S: The pressure to overproduce. As I am grateful for the fact that my immediate family stayed healthy, but the loss of life, the tragedy of the lack of leadership, the social injustices were extremely hard to navigate during the prime time of Pandemia.
View of In transit/Liquid Highway, 2015. Mural commission, Miller Theater of Columbia University, in collaboration with Miriam and Ira D Wallach Art Gallery. Acrylic, Silkscreen, plexiglass cut-outs on wall. Photo by William Vazquez
U: How would you help lead young artists to find their voice through the arts?
As artists, we are the voice of our times, so we have an existential duty of being authentic, trustful, and constantly searching for our truth even when all seems to play against it!! The personal search of truth translates to the collective to the fact that we live in society.
What type of emotions do you wish to create when painting portraits?
I have an urgency to share and to be inclusive. When I paint portraits, I do not approach the subject as an individual but rather as a result of a community. As a Caribbean, my skin holds many colors. I am plural, so I aim to always dance to the tune. That is why I often explain my Art in terms of a politics of inclusion--to include all histories, especially, those that have been erased or silenced. Color, to me, represents that inclusion. The cinnamon figure is a constant in my work since 1996. Mixing all the colors in a palette is an inclusive action; the outcome of such activity is cinnamon color. The new race, represented by my ever-present cinnamon figure, states the creation of a new aesthetic This unique aesthetic with new rules originated by the lush landscape, the transplantation, appropriation, and transformation of traditions. Also, the catholic iconography with my mixed-race warrior/angels is my way of colonizing the colonizers...by appropriating, transforming creating new icons. The Atlantic, this blue liquid road and profound obstacle, provokes my imagination. The blue sea represents the way out and the frontier. It maps stories about freedom, slavery, and survival. It carries our DNA, and it’s an endless source of stories, evolving continuously, reminding us of the fluidity of our identity, our collective memory. Resistance through beauty and joy.
U: How can representation be better from galleries and museums where more Latino artists and artists from the Caribbean are featured and displayed?
S: I think that the system of galleries and museums needs to change and be more in tune with what is happening to the arts and the needs of the artists in such changing times. In my opinion, those changes are linked to the need to diversify art history so that we can become more democratic and inclusive. When I refer to history and art history as essential elements for change in what is or isn't displayed in those spaces, we ignore n enormous part of the art community. We have to confront the market and the many excuses or fear of talking about the value or undervalue and why such orchestrated invisibility of people of color in the art market. Also, with that comes tokenism; by showing two male Latinos or five African Americans, these institutions need to understand that the mission of unerasing is not done. We need curators, art historians, art dealers, alternatives exhibition platforms informed and engaged in the need to change the landscape of the art world. Therefore, create a market where works for all participants.
U: What is the most crucial part art plays in being a medium in addressing political and cultural issues?
S: Art has the power of engaging viewers in insightful conversations. That conversation might provoke, transform and inspire. That provocation, transformation, and inspiration take us to question the world and be agents of change on the issues that affect us all.
“Sacred Mickey”, from the series “Super Tropics”, 2018. 72 x 48 inches, Acrylic, pigment, charcoal, ink on canvas. Photo William Vazquez
U: Do you think art is something one can learn, or does it come naturally?
S: In the same way that we are social animals, we also need to express ourselves. Art is expression. We all have an artist inside, but to be an artist and follow that path, an individual needs to have a particular set of talent, drive, determination, discipline. I would love to sing like Whitney Houston, but I don’t have her vocal tools!
Cathedral-View of exhibition 2011
U: Are there any artists you are fond of currently in the art world today?
S: More than artists, I am fond of the direction some cultural institutions are taking.
For Example, Bric in Brooklyn just closed a fantastic exhibition title LatinX Abstract. The exhibition was phenomenal in many ways, but I would like to note that it was also intergenerational, and I hope it provokes more like that! Bric has a history of going off the grid and is just on target with the times.
El Museo del Barrio, despite so much turmoil in past years, I have witnessed exhibitions that map the history of LatinX the arts in New York, finally!
I want to note that cleverly, it has displayed in historically significant shows the art about El Taller Boricua, The Young Lords. These kinds of exhibitions give a solid foundation and platform to younger generations of artists and the public to see who were the artists who fought and still fight the fight and opened up the road for the upcoming generation of artists.
In the current biennial at El Museo, the exhibition is energetic, innovative, brave, and curatorial, a combination of art historians and artists!
My hat off to them! It takes a village indeed.
“Tignon II”, from the series, “It’s So Sunny that it’s Dark”, 2017. Acrylic, charcoal, ink on linen. 66 x 55 inches. Photo by William Vazquez
U: What is an artist's responsibility to society?
S: We are the pulse of our times; art can document, shape our world. So, we have the be truthful and authentic. That is harder than we might think. We have to battle the constant pressure to follow trends to belong to “tribes” controlled by markets.
Untitled, from the series Granada- Memories Afloat, 2016. Acrylic, charcoal, pastel on paper. 22 x 30 inches. Photo by William Vazquez
