Black Head

C&AL: What have been your primary interests since deciding to create art?

Carmenza Banguera: People see me as a kind of black, feminist activist, although I don’t identify with this characterization. So I started asking myself where this perception came from, especially in relation to how I present my work. In my work, I don’t talk about representing the Afro as such in an ethnic way; rather, my work tries to raise some of my concerns about what it means to be Afro, about what others think it means, and about the things I do not agree with. Obviously, being critical of this is quite exhausting since the subject is very delicate. I have always had an opinion on this which is that I am simply an artist who, due to biographical facts, has these interests. And so the questions about identity, racism, etc., are not gratuitous topics; this is my reality, I am a black woman and my questions arise from this, from my lived experience as such.

C&AL: I love this idea of lived experiences, because I think we should try to think about representations less from an academic approach and more from the question of how we see ourselves and how we are seen by others…

CB: Culturally, in Cali, my hometown, many are proud of its Afro population, but only as a necessary or useful resource. For example, any promotional video of the city will include women selling chontaduro or mango biche in the streets, but there are no laws to protect the welfare of these people! Those images should not be a free commodity; these are working women, often single providers, heads of households, many of whom often do not have access to the health care system, do you know what I mean? If you are enriching yourself in one way or another with those images, you should also concern yourself with other aspects of their lives. If this is important to you, take care of it!

C&AL: Precisely this kind of reflections inspire your piece Ethnimercantilism No. 1 How did you come up with this machine?

CB: When people visit Cali or Cartagena, the often buy souvenirs in the form of a miniature palenquera (a black woman dressed in traditional clothes from the region) or a black woman, just as they would buy a chivita (souvenir in the form of a colorfully painted bus) with “Colombia” written on the side. The piece Etnimercantilismo No. 1 revolves around three thematic axes: First, there is a concern for what other generations have raised from their work with sugar in the Valle del Cauca region [a region of Colombia where sugar cane plantations abound]: this head produces its own hair, but this hair is cotton candy. When the machine is working, with its motors rotating, people come up with a stick, and deliberately start turning it round and round to eat the cotton candy.

Second, there is a commentary on afro hair. This has been a very strong element of reaffirmation, but I feel that we should avoid falling into reductionism as this only leads to a kind of cannibalism on these cultural representations, turning them into consumable products.

The third element is the figure of the women who are in charge of selling fruit on platters on their heads, which is visually very impressive. It was important to me that this piece be the head that produces the hair and at the same time a kind of platter, that’s why I gave it this color and shape.

I modeled the piece in clay with the teacher and artist Mercedes Angola in 2015. Then, large molds were made in plaster with a metal core, and finally the piece was produced in resin and fiberglass, to later give it a kind of chrome plating.

C&AL: What are the implications of the fact that this work is set in motion with the participation of the public? Certainly, there is a big difference between raising certain concerns theoretically and seeing the work in action.

CB: The imagery of this piece is very strong. In the exhibition Manglaria , after being exposed to so many different pieces, you arrived at this one, where you were invited to interact. The significance of the piece could only be complete if someone was engaged in the performance and collecting the “hair”. Therein lies the cannibal element. I was very impressed, because what I wanted to express in the piece was this massive consumption of the people. The metaphor was fulfilled; people were devouring an afro! It was like when you let a piece of cheese fall to the ground and the little bugs come and eat it. There was a head, and the head was being plundered; up to ten people happily eating its hair. I think the more you immerse yourself in this image, the more the cartoon recedes and there is a revelation.

C&AL: Speaking of cartoons, another work of yours is entitled Stories of cretinous fathers to explain the world: Chocolate Men. Where did this idea come from?

CB: All my pieces are responses to anecdotes. In this case, on my way to the Tertulia Museum in Cali, at a certain point along the route, a little blonde girl would come out and stare at me, at first very frightened, then with a certain fascination. One day, the little girl shouted: “Mom, mom, here comes the chocolate girl”. Those words stayed with me. One could say that it is just an association, but I knew that there was an explanation, and that surely that girl’s mother had some part in the imagery of the girl. What I did was to take that imagery, give it shape and say: Look, if this were real, this is the level of stupidity of what you are talking about! Why is it necessary to exoticize something in order to accept differences?

For me, that question led to many other questions. That’s when I began to think about the macro project “Guilt cannot change the past nor can exoticism solve the future”. The first chapter was called “The cocoa people” and that’s where I presented this piece, which is a triptych of ice cream cones that melt and in that process let you see a kind of skull. During this exhibition, in addition to this piece, there was an audiovisual archive that I have been nurturing over time with advertising that uses blackness to talk about chocolate, to inferiorize and ridicule.

C&AL: Your work reveals a compulsive desire to observe the black body as someone who devours a corpse; it reveals an anthropophagic reaction to the representation of the black body. How is your work received in a racist society like the Colombian?

CB: There is always a rejection of the sudden rupture isn’t there? Of protagonist representations of blackness, not just stories where blackness is “part of” other stories. I have always been asked, for example, how I think my works produce change, and whether or not they reinforce certain kinds of imageries. The answer is simple: what I do is signaling. To say that I intend to bring about radical change through my art would be illusory.

Nonetheless, by pointing them out, I do push certain things which, in the future, can help generate other types of awareness. People always think of art production as an act of genius, of something that pleases everyone. Well no, my pieces have big Afro detractors. In my works there is an element of intrigue, of raising questions, and at the end of the day, this is what interests me the most.

Carmenza Banguera (1991) is a visual artist from Santiago de Cali, Colombia, graduated from the Instituto Departamental de Bellas Artes in Cali. Her research is distinguished by a critical look at race, racism and clichés in the representation of Afro-Colombian communities. In her work, she questions how Afro culture and aesthetics have been commodified to the point of blurring their cultural contributions. Her production, mainly installations, investigates the exotic representation of black people and how ethno-social identity transgresses the cultural barrier to disrupt mercantilist, economic and political aspects. She has exhibited in the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Ecuador and Colombia, and has participated in the 45th National Artists’ Salon in Colombia as well as in the exhibition Manglaria: Raíces y sujeciones at the Tertulia Museum in Cali (2019).

Nicolás Vizcaíno Sánchez (1991) is an artist, writer and researcher working from the Colombian mountainside.

Translation from Spanish by Zarifa Mohamad Petersen