Gioconda, a single channel video work, uses the so called immigration crisis as an entry point to explore the plight of recent immigrants who work long hours doing menial jobs long after emigration. Blurring the lines between the documentary and the fictional, the video charts Gioconda’s every movement as she ardently cleans a hotel room. The soundtrack mixes cleaning sounds with sampled tracks from Hollywood border films evoking Gioconda’s own crossing from Mexico into the US-a memory that remains part of her sub-conscious even as she successfully emigrates to the United States. Gioconda elevates the banal tasks of cleaning, exploring the larger philosophical questions often posed by existential literature—how is life ascribed meaning and what if anything is left behind while exploring how a global economy of haves and have nots creates lingering trauma in individual lives.
Projects > Gioconda, 2007
All images © Karina Aguilera Skvirsky 2012 |
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