Rebel Irreverence
Tamara Santibañez
October 25 - November 22, 2020
Opening reception: Sunday, October 25, 1-6pm
Tamara Santibañez
That rainbow that is also a bridge, 2020
Oil on canvas
Selenas Mountain is pleased to present Rebel Irreverence, a solo exhibition by New York based artist Tamara Santibañez. Due to the unique circumstances of the pandemic, Selenas Mountain invited the artist to utilize the gallery as their studio for two months leading up to the exhibition. This is the gallery’s first physical exhibition since temporarily shutting our doors in the Spring. Known for their abstract leather landscape oil paintings, Santibañez’s studio practice has blossomed into a multi-media oeuvre employing their own unique language and symbolism. For this exhibition the artist has created a body of work spanning painting, drawing, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, and leather work.
In the book “Subculture: the Meaning of Style,” author Dick Hebdige presents a semiotic analysis of punk which describes the function of subculture as being a metaphorical resistance to hegemony. With a similar anti-authoritarian and semiotic lens, Tamara Santibañez creates bold artwork that carries a unique visual vocabulary. The artist juxtaposes subcultural signifiers with traditional fine arts and craft techniques. In each work is a subtle or hidden metaphor for rebellion. *The title for the exhibition “Rebel Irreverence” is a reference to a powerful line in a Zapatista communique which sheds a hopeful light on the act of revolution.
Recalling the work of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, Santibañez explores the art-historical depiction of the Calla Lilly, often seen in Rivera’s murals carried by faceless female figures crushed by large bundles of this flower. The artist’s representation of the flower describes class oppression and a whisper of revolution, a subtle call to arms. Depicted in both their painting and ceramics, Santibañez explores the symbolism of the Calla Lilly in contemplation of the labor of revolution—the practical work that must be done for revolutionary change—and who bears the burden of that labor.
Santibañez further explores the symbiosis between labor and revolution in their replications of traditional talavera Mexican pottery. The artist pairs traditional techniques and motifs with a more modern contemporary punk, fetish style. The result is a collection of objects that are charmingly defiant and anachronistic. The works speak to the value of the labor of the crafts-person and the championing of personal liberty while also exploring a quest for queer utopias and queer futurism.
Working more overtly with metal and punk imagery, the leatherwork pieces by Santibañez have a relic-like quality to them. They carry both gracefulness and hardness. The visual language of metal band t-shirts and back patches is engraved in monochromatic tooled leather. The primal aura of these works references both the collective in ancient cultures and the pack mentality of contemporary subcultural alliances.
*“The international of hope. Not the bureaucracy of hope, not the opposite image and, thus, the same as that which annihilates us. Not the power with a new sign or new clothing. A breath like this, the breath of dignity. A flower yes, the flower of hope. A song yes, the song of life.
Dignity is that nation without nationality, that rainbow that is also a bridge, that murmur of the heart no matter what blood lives it, that rebel irreverence that mocks borders, customs and wars.
Hope is that rejection of conformity and defeat.” —EZLN, First Declaration of La Realidad for Humanity and against Neoliberalism, 1996