De Lo Mío

Curated with an eye toward the uniquely shifting relationships to their homeland, the group exhibition “De Lo Mío,” on view at Jenkins Johnson Projects, expands conceptions of Dominican identity, foregoing the simplification of universalizing narratives to revel in the tensions and complexities of each artist’s relation to their heritage. Conceptualized as a constellation in which individual perspectives comprise a vibrant whole, the show develops a dialogue between artists.

Common threads—such as questions of how to depict Dominican culture without reifying it, and how to maintain intergenerational connections to one’s homeland—run throughout the presentation as points of intersection. Each artist approaches these from their distinct positionality, resulting in a multiplicity of aesthetic frameworks.

Veronica Fernandez makes use of both tangible and intangible artifacts from personal experience, memories serving as her subjects. Fernandez’s painting Growing With Risks (three) (2020) depicts a man and a child against a colorful textured backdrop, the fragmented space behind the two indicating the ways in which they are acted upon by their environment. Fragment motifs also appear in Joiri Minaya’s collages as she physically deconstructs stereotypes of Dominican womanhood by superimposing images yielded from the search term “Dominican Woman.”Her 2020 print Continuum[pictured] combines ethnographic photography with digital images, drawing a parallel between the treatment of Dominican bodies under an exoticizing colonial archive and tourist industry. “De Lo Mío” offers an intervention into aesthetics, history, and identity: a space where multiple perspectives and narratives can flourish.