Joiri Minaya

Joiri Minaya’s work investigates and transcends the blurred and ever-shifting borders of national, racial, gender, and cultural identities. In Desgrato II, Minaya uses the domestic, decorative material of wallpaper to confront and tear through assumptions of binaries—whether they are home/work spaces, gender, class, or racially-based—to illustrate the layered truths and illusions that individual and communal identities form and are formed by. An amalgamation of different works from her Pattern series, one element includes her black and white toile wallpaper El Papaupa de la Matica. This layer of the installation references the popular phrase from Dominican culture that describes a patriarchal man who thinks of himself as an all-deserving leader or authority figure.

In Sábila / Leche, Minaya performs the actions of transforming straight hair into an Afro with milk and a fan, while simultaneously straightening curly hair by applying sap from aloe leaves. Aloe and milk references the remedies used by feminine figures of power and knowledge, like that of the archetypal healer or mother, echoing the rituals of care and beauty passed down through generations. Sábila / Leche creates inverse reflections of identity and visualizes the “chameleonic qualities of appearance” to disguise or to accentuate characteristics linked to race and culture.