C&AL: What are the topics you want to address in your art?
Naomi Rincón Gallardo: I consider myself a feminist, decolonial and anti-racist artist. I am interested in what I call the creation of counter-worlds or alternative worlds in the Global South, specifically in Mexico; a creation which nonetheless reverberates with other environments and is interconnected with the Global North. In my work, I have addressed the demands and advocacy of racialized women for self-determination of their bodies, their territories and their body-territories. I have also worked on processes of extractivism, body domination or body control.
I am interested in the different ways of telling stories that are animated by desire. Moreover, everything is viewed through a queer lense, thus giving space to fantasy, to dreams, to affection. I collaborate with a lot of people and I consider it an investigative process where I organize and articulate different methods and inquiries, which I then craft together and in which certain interests and theoretical influences materialize.
C&AL: What does decolonial and anti-racist feminism mean to you?
NRG: When I speak of an anti-racist and decolonial feminism, I am referring to a feminism that is not only concerned with gender issues, but also seeks to dismantle the asymmetrical ways in which these issues are historically established. With “decolonial” I am referring to a series of practices and theories generated in the Global South. I attempt to understand the decolonial as an embodied practice and theory; something you can smell or dance and which emanates from specific physical bodies.
I understand decolonial feminism as a type of feminism that tries to listen, is informed and willing to learn, and which tries to create a different kind of politics; supportive politics that provide resistance and alternatives to the epistemic practices and ways of life guided by the Global North. By anti-racist and decolonial feminism I mean a feminism that tries to unravel Eurocentrism and the self-imposed image of the superiority of European whiteness and the geopolitical north.