Abstract
This article aims to examine the ways in which contemporary art from the Caribbean, and specifically from the Dominican Republic, is analyzing mobility and human trafficking within a transnational context. In this case I will critique the work of the photographer Fausto Ortiz (Santiago de los Caballeros, 1970), who has reflected recently on the consequences of migration and displacement for Dominican cultural politics. Rather than addressing the representation of marginalized sectors and marginal forms of economy in the particular case of the Dominican Republic, I argue that Ortiz’s photographic practice deepens and broadens the debates about race, citizenship and social inequality, forcing his audience to consider those issues as a central part of the everyday. While addressing those issues, this article tries to insert Ortiz’s photographic practice within international debates on mobility, border practices and displacement.
Highlights
This paper aims to explore how mobility and labor are portrayed in Caribbean visual practices
Around that date, when his work became internationally known, Ortiz consolidated a preoccupation for addressing the contradictions of mobility and migration within the context of the Dominican Republic.This concern is best expressed in Ciudad de sombras (City of Shadows) and Remainders, two photographic series produced in the late 2000s
Issues of difference and proximity/distancing have regulated in many cases the cultural debates around the links between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.The approximations to that predicament developed by Dominican artists share those issues
Summary
Around that date, when his work became internationally known, Ortiz consolidated a preoccupation for addressing the contradictions of mobility and migration within the context of the Dominican Republic.This concern is best expressed in Ciudad de sombras (City of Shadows) and Remainders, two photographic series produced in the late 2000s. Both are specially bounded to marginal and conflictive modes of displacement.They depict situations of precariousness and instability, forcing the spectator to challenge her expectations towards Caribbean bodies and landscapes, and dismantling the economic and racial discourses behind Dominican nationalism.. Ciudad de sombras (2007) depicts the urban landscape of Santiago de los Caballeros through the lack of visibility of part of its inhabitants. A group of shadows in movement are outlined over the walls, indicating a reality that cannot be perceived
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