In her work, Dominican-American multidisciplinary artist Joiri Minaya examines complexities around the Caribbean region\u2019s dark history of colonialism and enslavement, and how these histories continue through different facets of tourism. She examines tropical stereotypes and exotification, which are tied to tourism, and the construction of \u201cparadise.\u201d In her series Containers <\/em>(2015\u200a\u201320), she documents herself wearing tropical-pattern bodysuits that fully cover her body, leaving just her eyes uncovered; she gazes directly at spectators, reclaiming her agency. Based on research that Minaya conducted exploring the exotification of women in the Caribbean in previous work, she expands upon how tourism and other forms of colonial practices in the Caribbean exotify and create a one-dimensional image of the Tropics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a similar vein, Divergences<\/em> (2020\u2013\u200a22) are digital collages<\/em> that document women removing their tropical-pattern bodysuits, seen as an exercise in agency\u200a\u2014\u200ain shifting the gaze away from themselves and controlling their own narratives. Aware of their role within a tourism economy, as they end their shifts the figures take off the stereotypes used to camouflage their identities. Effluvia<\/em> (2022) is wallpaper that reuses the botanical drawings used for the tropical print motifs, but subdues their bright colour palette to different tonalities of black, thus subverting the exotifying trope intimately tied to the Western-centric view of the Caribbean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuum II <\/em>(2021) revisits the 1786 oil painting by Canadian artist Fran\u00e7ois Beaucourt originally titled Portrait of a Negro Slave<\/em>\u200a\u2014\u200alater changed to Portrait of a Haitian Woman<\/em>\u200a\u2014\u200aand juxtaposes it with a section of an image that also presents a Black woman, from a contemporary tourism brochure for B\u00e1varo, Dominican Republic. Both images present racialized women holding exotic fruits, flashing an inviting smile. By placing these images in conversation, Minaya shows that despite the passage of time, a historical through line exists between slavery and tourism in the Caribbean region and highlights the vulnerability that racialized women have faced for hundreds of years, from these practices, in the archipelago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Puerto Rican curator, art historian, and researcher Bettina P\u00e9rez Mart\u00ednez <\/strong>is based in Tiohti\u00e1:ke\/Montr\u00e9al, Canada. Her research interests focus on Puerto Rico, Caribbean identity and its diaspora, decolonial studies, tourism and the construction of Paradise, and the politics of ecology and climate change in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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