Chapter 6: Casta Paintings

I am also interested in the aspect of reacquiring knowledge by doing research into themes like the 18th century genre of Casta Paintings, which recorded the racial mixing or miscegenation that occurred during the Spanish Colonies. I have created a chapter in reference to this, which re-contextualizes this historic practice of taxonomic recording, into a contemporary body of work that speaks of racial profiling and the legacy of colonialism through time. In my version of Casta Paintings I invited different Latina women to lie down on a piece of paper and pose as if they were crossing a T.S.A. machine in an airport. I traced each woman and created with ink an abstract, ghostly map. The figures were traced various times, and in the process, I considered skin color, racial mixing, and overlapped the same figure over and over.  After each drawing was placed on the wall, I found a mask that resembled or referenced race, and placed over it a Spanish Peineta.