Miss Distrito Capital
"Miss Distrito Capital" is an ongoing project with multiple bodies of work through which I explore the beauty pageant culture in my home country. Venezuela has the largest number of international crowns (23) from major pageants: seven Miss Universe titles, six Miss World, eight Miss International, and two Miss Earth. Because of this, pageants have become part Venezuelan culture and identity over the last forty years. Through these works I aim to explore the implicit and explicit violence of this beauty queen devotion and of the idealization of specific types of bodies and beauty standards, reflecting upon my own experience growing up as a woman in Venezuela.
Miss Distrito Capital
Mixed media installation: wearable sculptures and a three-channel video performance. 2018.
Published in Boston University's feminist journal Hoochie Reader, issue 3 (2019), pages 54-59.
Through heavy wearable sculptures and the use of my own body in a performance for the camera, this work points to the explicit and implicit violence of the beauty pageant culture in Venezuela. Three steel crowns and sashes are worn in a video-performance, during which I stand in a small podium trying to balance the heavy and sharp objects.
Tan sabrosa y tan bien hecha (So savoury and well done)
Artist book: found images, inkjet prints, collage on newsprint. 2018
This book explores the (mis)representation of women in Venezuelan advertising and massively disseminated media by constructing collages using imagery from alcohol ads, projects like Polar's yearly calendar, and images from the Miss Venezuela and Miss Universe pageant. The book also makes use of religious symbols that weave togeter two of the country's biggest devotions: Christianity and beauty queens.
Excerpts:
