Joiri Minaya at MOLAA

After touring the MOLAA Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago exhibit, I came across this piece that caught my eye. Redecode: A Tropical Theme is a Great Way to Create a Fresh, Peaceful, Relaxing Atmosphere by the Dominican artist Joiri Minaya is a wallpaper installation that spans an entire wall section in the museum. It incorporates a pixelated plant texture mixed into naturalistic, painting-like plant images. The image was almost confusing to see in person, as there is not much a focal point to draw one in, but the overwhelming large scale paired with the sharp and unique texture draws one's full attention to the piece as a whole. This was my favorite piece of the exhibit as it felt very contemporary when relating to computer aesthetics, and very natural and old-fashioned when observing the "tropical theme."

Joiri Minaya currently lives in Manhattan, NY, and has an established artistic presence in the Dominican Republic. Her cultural ties from America and the Dominican Republic influence her art through her life experiences as a multicultural woman. Her themes come from these experiences which translate into representation, identity, gender, migration, and nature in her art. She describes her work as a "reassertion of Self, an exercise of unlearning, decolonizing and exorcizing imposed histories, cultures and ideas." She channels her life experience with the difficulties of identity and alienation into creativity and art. In specifically Redecode: A Tropical Theme is a Great Way to Create a Fresh, Peaceful, Relaxing Atmosphere, the clashing themes of computerization and the tropic, familiarity and unclarity, can be one way of interpretation after understanding her cultural context.