Con Ganas (2021)

Performance, sound, color, duration, loop.  

Traveling into Cuba in November of 2018, my copy of Antes que Anochezca (1992) by Reinaldo Arenas was confiscated at the Santa Clara airpot, concealed in a saco with a barcoded zip tie closure.

Con Ganas, 2021, is a durational performance of introjected desires. With my hands and a stone covered in dirt, blood, salt, eggshell, and rain water, I hammer 18 nails into a muslin sack with La Vida Entera (1969) by Virgillio Piñera Llera inside onto a wall.

This video documents the installation of Decomiso (2021) and is an investigation of shame, syncretism, and state censorship. I treat this sculpture not only as container for guilt and the concealment of a queer lexicon, but also as a nkisi nkondi(power figure) object of Cuban Santeria, Palo Mayombe. An object in which you invest your hopes, wishes, and desires. nkisi nkondi objects often have human-like characteristics but can also be something simple like a pouch.

Each clavo nailed into the sack is a visible introjection of ganas (desires) into the object; crossing borders, a return home, freedom dreaming, liberation, remembrance. One nail for each box of unedited manuscripts found after Piñera’s death. I ask each spectator to introject their own hopes and desires with me into the sculpture.

Virgilio Piñera Llera was a Cuban writer. After passing, 18 boxes of his unedited manuscripts were found Antón Arruifat. Piñera’s literary perspectives critical concerns on national identity, and especially due to his homosexuality, led him to be censured by the Cuban revolution.