Valentina Soto-Ruiz
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La maleza 03
2020
Artist book
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La maleza 06
2020
Artist book
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La maleza 07
2020
Artist book
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La maleza 11
2020
Artist book
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La maleza 13
2020
Artist book
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La maleza 16
2020
Artist book
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La maleza 17
2020
Artist book
Statement
La maleza started as an exploration of 'origin' and the essence of environmental, geographical, and psychological notions of home. But along the way, I conceived a tale of remembrance, acknowledgment, and healing.
Through La maleza, I continue to examine and deconstruct concepts of place and coloniality of power in response to a 'Colombianness,' aided by neoliberalism and colonization, which seeks to unify under one national identity while upholding white supremacy and continuously disenfranchising Black and Indigenous communities.
One of two daughters from a middle-class family in Colombia, I was brought up in Medellín, an extremely homogeneous city established over the ancestral lands of the Aburrae and all Emberá Peoples, where 9 out of 10 people are white or mestizo. In Colombia, lived experiences denote ethnicity, unlike the United States, which is based on family ancestry. The embodiment of Western hegemony and globalization in Colombia are the building blocks of my contextualized existence as a white Latinx immigrant in the United States. I aim to offer a recollection, the pieces of my life and presence in the neo-colonized Colombian society.
La maleza exists in the interim of the cultural imaginary and the fabric of ‘re-semioticised’ memories. As a transplant from Medellín living in Maryland, the Piscataway and Algonquian Peoples' ancestral lands, I'm exploring my transmuted realities of culture and identity through the restoration of my relationship with the land I was born into and its destructive colonial legacy.
Photography (BFA) Students
Gabe Valladares - not exhibiting
Joe Guastafeste - not exhibiting
Lyds Wildes - not exhibiting
Torrance Hall - not exhibiting