MestiSXS
MestiSXS suggests a union between the popular vernacular of street art and sowing awareness for Indigenous rights and memory. As a Mestiza, Graquandra identifies plurality in their heritage, as Gloria E. Anzaldúa would say. What little is rescued from Indigenous heritage is a motivating intergenerational fertilizer to defend that ancestral knowledge and the defense of nature rights.
Thus, MestiSXS considers the vital role street culture takes in preserving and popularizing ancestral knowledge. Being born in (Latin) metropolitan cities, Graquandra urges the need to recognize that we were born on lands that were already inhabited by Native People. Therefore we must defend that aboriginal identity, with the industrialized materiality of our time, that of the MestiSXS as Graquandra has hypothesised.
Titled MestiSXS, this project attempts to weave that dialogue between street art and the perseverance of Indigenous knowledge.
Recycled clay (unfired), white clay mixed with colored pigments (unfired), paste, paste with recycled coffee grounds, bamboo sticks, and chicken wire displayed on top of two used skateboards.
Paper mache, coffee, nylon string, dehydrated banana peal, 45 x 45 x 60 cm, 2023