Spandex installations (2023) and other works

Overview

Joiri Minaya is a Dominican- American multidisciplinary artist whose work investigates the continuity of colonial power hierarchies, often exploring the performativity of tropical identity and its commodification. Minaya’s Spandex Installations (2023) encloses a space in Old Al Jubail Vegetable Market to challenge visitors’ freedom of movement. The film Labadee (2017) features a wall that divides a private port and Haitian beach resort from the surrounding village. A replica of the wall is installed in the central arcade of the vegetable market.
Her wallpaper works offer visitors a reconstructed vantage point from which to observe the colonial renderings of the Tropics. Obscuring and refusing colonial perspectives through pixelation, Redecode II: La Dorada (2018/2023) draws upon the 24-panel scenic wallpaper designed in 1848 by Zuber et Cie, the oldest continuously operating wallpaper company.