Marton Robinson
Costa Rica/Los Angeles
October 2 - 31 , 2020
Sponsored by The Shepard Broad Foundation, this month’s residency welcomes U.S.-based foreign-born artists.
BIO
Costa Rican artist Marton Robinson has an interdisciplinary background informed by his studies in both Physical Education and Art and Visual Communication. He completed an MFA at the University of Southern California. Robinson’s art, which is informed mainly by African- American traditions, challenges the conventional representations of black identities in art history, mainstream culture, and the official national narratives, especially those of Costa Rica. With an often ironic and rhetorical take on the constructs of racism, this practice endeavors to confront the hierarchies and conceptions inherited from colonialism in order to subvert the mindsets and prejudices ingrained in our social experience. Robinson’s work exposes the nuances present in the Afro-Latino experience, enriching the critical discourse of contemporary works of the African Diaspora.
Robinson has participated in exhibitions in spaces such as: The Getty Center, California; Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, Costa Rica; Vincent Price Art Museum, California; Fundación Ars TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica; Museo de Arte Costarricense, Costa Rica; New Wight Gallery, California; X Bienal Centroamericana, Costa Rica; Pacific Standard Time LA/LA; Aidekman Arts Center, Boston; Le Palais de Tokyo, France; Bergen Kjøtt, Bergen, Norway; Centro de la Imagen, México; ARTBO, Colombia; Prizm Art Fair; Mandeville Gallery, New York; Gallery GVCC, Casablanca; Museo Amparo, México; 21st Biennial Contemporary Art Sesc Videobrasil, Brazil.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I understand my practice within a global context where the production of my work is influenced by where my artistic opportunities are located. After moving to Los Angeles, California to attend USC Roski School of Art and Design, I find myself in a new conflict of national identity and in turn, in conflict with my own personal identity. These statements by which I articulate my belonging, “I am not American,” “I am not African-American,” “I am not Latino,” have pushed me to investigate systems and diasporic mechanisms of representation in the construction of my ever-evolving hybrid identity. With this research, I have been working on a multi-media, multi-meaning project called Tecnologías Deculoniales.
This theory is derived in some ironic form to the concept of decolonialism as often applied in North American pedagogy, methodology, and contexts disregarding other alternative narratives, which exist in Latin America. I have altered the term decolonization to “deculonization”. Here deCULO- or "irse de culo" is a Costarican expression that could be translated as “to drop on your ass". In addition, the rest of the term, Zacion means "action", and refers to the American expression "to give a fuck" or/and to "do it your own way". The body (anus) is recalled as a geopolitical tool located in the south. Although the term “deculoniales” or “decolonization” may seem like a mockery, it becomes a tool in understanding South America or the Southern countries to North America as places of political resistance for black and queer bodies. Queerness complicates the notion of black identities, as queer bodies are othered and excluded within certain black contexts, the act of “deculonizing” become an important political tool to create an opposition to Eurocentric norms and bring alternatives within alternatives.
Tecnologías Deculoniales is a strategy that engages in the anthropophagy of content, cultures, and medium in order to better understand the nuance in culture and identity. This methodology also allows for an exploration of a more informed and complex understanding of colonialism and post-colonialism without making simplistic assumptions while straddling a cultural mediation between Latin America and North America.
ARTIST LINKS
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marton.robinson.art
Instagram: @marton_robinson