text by Rodrigo Carazas Portal More at www.masonexhibitions.org. This project is urgent because these “other” cultures must not be lost or homogenized. This project focuses on drug and other illegal phenomena as an exemplification of how western intervention and steered globalization affects the cultures it seeks to absorb and reproduce in its own image. There is a constant cycle of cultural appropriation, reinvention and mass production which generates a vacuous collective identity that threatens true expression. As outsiders, the selected artists have deconstructed the panorama projected over them by globalization—and commanded by western media—to nurture their own expressive impulses. Each artist feeds off the different limbs of a western Leviathan, demonstrating new tactics which others in similar landscapes can learn, copy and/or steal from.
Mason Exhibitions at George Mason University is a multi-venue forum dedicated to displays of visual art that advance research, dialogue and learning around global social issues and a platform for University-wide collaborations in science, philosophy, communications, conflict resolution, and sustainability, among others.
with all aspects of Peruvian society, generating death and corruption. This desecration of what otherwise is considered an ancient holy leaf divides the inhabitants of Peru.
CONTRABAND featuring
Rodrigo Carazas Portal Jimena Chávez Delion chukwumaa Aaron López C. Emilio Vargas Vera Levester Williams
, 2018 March 19 – April 21 rsity School of Art ve ni U on as M e rg Geo
Curated by Rodrigo Carazas Portal
CONTRABAND How are marginalized cultures dealing from the shadow of the western world? Reflecting on mainstream media, commerce, and its cultural impact; Contraband is a project dealing with the influence “developed” countries have on the rest of the world. Introducing artists born outside those privileged geographies, this show proposes an examination—if not a response, to predominant world culture. As the current systems of control and supervision asphyxiate any cultural manifestations that do not obey their rules and standards, the chosen artists propose creativity as a medium to subvert these overbearing protocols. Either by borrowing, copying or stealing, their work gravitates to the ingenuity shown by their own communities in using the means at hand to prevail and fight the western miasma. Colonized societies have become marginalized as their religions, literature, and arts are absorbed by hierarchies in which they, the colonized, are devalued. This practice undermines a culture and encapsulates their existence as objects of abuse, or in the more trivialized case, characters of entertainment. As these cultures (the colonized) assimilate restrictions, they begin to use imposed symbols as referents to create their own valued objects. These bootleg versions of what dominant
cultures idolize respond to an alienation from such—an outside influencer. The marginalized response to oppression is creation. Whether it be a regurgitated reaction to forced adaptation, a bootleg artifact becomes an oxygen tank for the oppressed to keep their own culture alive in a hostile climate.
This project emerges as a response to accelerated globalization and its ability to desensitize media consumers to a western agenda. In a world where the western ideal of immediate gratification and mass commodification has become a global standard, what is being internalized becomes obscured. Our primary necessities are regulated by western currencies, and our leisure time influenced by their propaganda. Specifically, the cocaine/drug trade is exacerbated by western consumption culture. Drugs are sensualized by US/European produced TV shows, and the assimilation to capitalism creates Kingpins, cartels, and ensuing violence. Cocaine is the flagship product of South America’s cartels, and Peru is one of the main manufacturers. Its roots intertwine