Vox Populi Gallery. 319 North 11th Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107

Roxana Perez-Mendez

As a multi-media/performance artist who works closely on the fragility of contemporary identity, I present high/low technology pieces that refer to an immigrant experience—the continual struggle for certainty and hope while being torn between the desire to return to one’s homeland and the need to continue on. These installations feature several multi-media works made from humble and ephemeral processes--Pepper’s Ghost holograms, simple projections, and ready-mades that poetically suggest a narrative with an uncertain end. Mi y Mi Gente, in particular, is a Pepper’s Ghost hologram—the real diorama of a model semi truck in the ``desert, a two way-mirror and a video performance projected of myself in multiple emerging from the back of a truck beyond. As an act of immigration and in juxtaposing the real object and the projected image, a new state of being is created, conquered and ultimately, lost. I also create and insert fictions about Puerto Rican achievements and monuments into the World’s meta-narrative. I use a wide range of tropes and models of modernization and globalization—i.e. embarking in a Space program, building the tallest hotel in the world and marketing the state owned PRAIR airlines, to juxtapose, reflect, deconstruct and isolate the strains of difference associated with Puerto Rican culture, class and geopolitical position, the strains that define one as the Other. re-title.com contact artist www.roxanaperez-mendez.com

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