DENISSE GRISELDA REYES
Artist Statement
Straddling the lines of assimilation, refuge, and self-preservation, my current work interrogates the boundaries of representation by engaging with memory. I use nostalgic materials like family photographs, texts from my grandmother, found footage, and Hi8 tapes, as the basis of my research and archival practice. I collage these materials to recreate a personal mythology and historical assemblage of my Salvadoran history. The drama of these collected narratives unfolds in videos, films, poems, paintings, and performances as my alter-ego.
My work focuses on the limits of retelling history and the space between myth and reality. Suspended between tragedy and pleasure, I use humor and hyperbole as performative strategies to process the grief and absurdity of recreating transhistorical material. Beyond the personal, my work interrogates the relationship between consumption and visibility for queer Latinx. Who has the responsibility to know who they are? To construct or destroy their identity? I am dedicated to creating an archive surrounding oral and visual Latinx stories to bring light to the histories manufactured as (in)visible, that lend themselves to representation and mystification.