Tourist Series is a decolonial project that looks at hegemony critically. Having grown up in the global south, I express my point of view of the world through this project. I am a traveler, an inverse colonizer, but I’m playing the role of a tourist. As a “tourist” I find stores that are full of objects: postcards, T-shirts, caps, wristbands, cups, and piggy banks. These objects are targeted to the many visitors, who want to take with them a piece of the place they visited. Filling their bags with souvenirs, tourists find in them a justification of the long waiting hours, and the big sums of money they invested to acquire them. The accumulation of these objects follows the idea of the cabinets of curiosity, very popular in the 16th Century, where exotic artifacts from distant cultures are displayed. Today however, the objects sold in souvenir stores look alike everywhere. Only the name of the place printed on the objects is different.  In a world that is interconnected and homogenized, are we travelers searching in vain for the uniqueness of the places we visit?

 As a traveler, I have something to say about the places I visited, I have something to add to the picture presented to me. Centuries ago world explorers, as for example Alexander von Humboldt exploring the Americas, showed a world that was being discovered through their eyes, their experiences, their curiosity and their intrigues. Now, why shouldn’t we question the image that is put in front of us, if we can all be world explorers? How do we explore a hegemonic world today? To communicate these questions I chose two products: the T-shirt and the postcard. The T-shirt, which became very popular after WWII, is now a commonplace. T-shirts are used as part of clothing, but also as a support for self-expression and advertising. In souvenir stores they become an expression of the place they are intended to represent. Moreover, the T-shirt is a product of cheap labor; it is a silent accomplice of low wages. Postcards, on the other hand, are around since the end of the 19th Century and many times show images of places. They are intended to be send by mail at a lower cost than a letter.  They have been used to send short messages and greetings, but also have been used as collectors’ items.

I have based this project in the practice of Performance Art and the tradition of the Self-Portrait. By traveling to different places this work has developed into “urban practices[i]”. Inspired by the places I visit, they express my resistance towards my condition as part of a minority. These comments are sometimes based on quotes, where I have changed one or more words, and their context, using irony, ambiguity and multiple readings. Whenever I travel, I try to find what it means to be in the place where I am and to produce artwork that expresses that meaning. More than just traveling, what I intend is to react and respond to my changing environment.  Many times I am attracted to the “joys of identity-loss, and the pleasure of role-playing[ii]” in these new locations. As a sculptor who works with her hands, I embroider my responses on the T-shirt[iii] – hand embroidery is another expression of cheap labor and exploitation.

[i] Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

[ii] Marc Augé, Non-places

[iii] Embroidery is an ancient art form which probably originated in East Asia thousands of years ago. It was later spread out through Europe and through colonialism it came from Spain to the Americas, where it has been adopted by various groups as part of their traditional clothing.