CUBAN WOMAN DRESSED

Series of 25 photographs, 35mm color, variable sizes, 2021.

 

The socio-political situation in Cuba and the lack of a manufacturing industry have caused more and more Cuban citizens, especially women, to turn to small merchandise trafficking as a way to earn a living. The so-called "mules" travel to nearby countries such as the United States, Panama, Guatemala or Guyana, among others, to buy everyday objects (clothes, footwear, beauty products, cleaning, etc.) and bring them into the island playing with the limits of customs laws. Later they resell these products in an unregulated manner. This is how the object on which this project revolves comes into circulation: t-shirts that stamp imported faces on their wearers.

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A trivial gesture like wearing a T-shirt is used to highlight the complexity of contemporary societies and raise issues that have to do, once again, with the objectification of women, the hegemony of white beauty, and the resulting social hierarchy. Or what is the same, to problematize the existing links between gender, race and class.