In collaboration with the Massimadi Festival and African Rainbow

In a series of photographs, video performances, paintings and prints, Eduardo Velázquez’s #postcolonialbooty deals with personal narratives by using his own postcolonial body as a departure point to construct a gender with an autonomous form of queer sexuality and desire. In the exhibition, Velázquez’s work captures the body, and its many definitions, in domestic and diasporic environments going from the Caribbean to the Bronx in New York City. #postcolonialbooty is not only addressing the violence of gender formation in the Caribbean, but also presenting a visual map where these identities are traced to a real space: digital, geographic and historical. Each piece creates an archive of symbols and different fantasy strategies in which the female (or what is seen as female) body is displayed, consumed, dreamed, and even loved. This is Velázquez’s first exhibition in Montreal.

Born in the Dominican Republic, Eduardo Velázquez is a painter, performance artist and filmmaker whose work deconstructs established identities and gender roles through the mediums of paint, photography, body and video. He utilizes painting and performance as tools to investigate how desire becomes manifest in one’s body, identity, and personal postcolonial history. Influenced by camp imagery, Velázquez uses intentional homoeroticism to present an intimate portrait of gender performance. He contributes to different queer activist movements in New York City, and has spoken at Jacob Riis Foundation, El Museo del Barrio, China Central Academy of Fine Arts and McGill University. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Exhibitions  

Participating Artists: Eduardo Velázquez (New York)
Curator(s):
Credits: Image: Eduardo Velázquez, RRS-Sea Foam Girls, How-la-Fleur, video still.