Desplumado (2018)

One-channel, sound, color, loop, duration. 

desplumar:

1. quitar las plumas a un ave o otra cosa

2. quitar con engaño, arte, o violencia el dinero o los bienes a alguien

Desplumado, 2018, is a durational performance re-staging forced labor. Nude with white chicken feathers scattered on the ground and on my body, I use a worn out rusted machete to cut through thorn bushes in an isolated field in Güines, Cuba near my fathers home. I attempt to clear the area only to be continuously pricked by the thorns and my sense of place disoriented by ambient sounds. Performing an arbitrary task where I accomplish no form of visible change to the landscape. 

After the Cuban revolution, queer people, amongst other groups marked as “social deviants” by the state, were sent to agriculture concentration camps (UMAP). The camps subjected Cubans, who could not serve in the military due to being conscientious objectors or enemies of the communist revolution, to forced labor. Recogidas (round ups) happened in June and November of 1965, and “internees” were divided by category; camps for queers and camps for everyone else. Internees worked for free in state farms from sunrise to sunset, enduring treatment similar to that of political prisoners. The Cuban government camouflaged the camps true project by maintaining that UMAP was not a labor camp but part of recruitment efforts for military service. This piece investigates strategies structures of power use as social engineering tailored for political and social control.