ARTISTS TO KNOW: ALBANY ANDALUZ
ALBANY ANDALUZ
Albany Andaluz is a Caribbean and Mestizan multidisciplinary artist from the South Bronx. By integrating various mediums such as textiles, photography, paint, and sculpture, Albany’s art focuses on de-centering westernized perspectives and habits such as wastefulness for a more culturally responsive outlook. Albany’s work however is not concerned with labels or clinging to any particular identity but a reflection of the complexities of life and human nature.
My name is Albany Andaluz. I’m a multidisciplinary artist and what that means is that I make many things. I paint. I sculpt. I photograph. I make music. When I make these distinct objects, they relate to each other, they feed one another, and that’s why I consider myself to be a multidisciplinary artist. Declaring myself a multidisciplinary artist gives me the liberty to move between different realms of creation, never to be confined to being this nor that.
The practice of living life as an artist grants me the permission to take each day as it is, perpetually liberating myself through subtle everyday shifts in how I think, which impacts how I move in the world, which impacts how others move in the world. It’s quite difficult for me to identify myself as anything other than an artist, but when I do my identity takes various forms.
On most days, I alternate between the identity of a collaborator, a roommate, a friend, a lover, a daughter, a granddaughter, and a niece. Each of these identities grants me the capacity to behave in a different way, but also in ways that address different parts of myself, leaving no part of me unseen, unacknowledged.
When relating to others, I try not to confine myself to any singular life path that I’ve been given. Yes, I was born and raised in public housing projects in the South Bronx. Yes, I am a survivor of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. Yes, I grew up witnessing domestic violence in my home. Yes, I was born to two immigrant parents, one Dominican, one Ecuadorian. Yes, I am an American citizen. Yes, I’m queer. Yes. Yes. Yes, to it all. But also, no to it all, for these are not essential to where my identity begins and ends. Although I will surely be remembered for these aspects of my life’s story (not my identity), I resist permanently residing within these confinements. And it is that very fluidity that manifests as the materials utilized in my work. I take the discarded I breathe into it new life when I combine it with the classical mediums of oil paint and acrylic, remixing each medium to create something that hasn’t been experienced before.
“ Yes, I was born and raised in public housing projects in the South Bronx. Yes, I am a survivor of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. Yes, I grew up witnessing domestic violence in my home. Yes, I was born to two immigrant parents, one Dominican, one Ecuadorian. Yes, I am an American citizen. Yes, I’m queer. Yes. Yes. Yes, to it all. But also, no to it all, for these are not essential to where my identity begins and ends.”
To contextualize my artwork--more so, my visual artwork--I occupy the space of being between Caribbean and Mestizan identities, not because I literally walk around saying that I’m Caribbean and Mestizan all the time (sometimes I do simply for the thrill of being difficult and ambiguous), but because I think it represents a deviation from where art is usually produced in the world. I believe that in identifying as Caribbean and Mestizan in my work I invite more of the world to actively contribute in producing culture in a way that decenters America, European powers, and Western ways of being altogether. I could definitely be specific by identifying myself as Dominican-Ecuadorian-American, but I’d rather place focus on the overlapping of Dominican and Ecuadorian cultures in a broader global context. I believe that being Dominican speaks to the larger cultural and historical context of being Caribbean, as being Ecuadorian does to being Latin American (read: Mestizan). When I make my artwork, I want it to be known that the work corresponds to these backgrounds as much as it corresponds to just being human, because when we take a look at the histories of the Caribbean and Latin America--or any other geographic identity, for that matter--it doesn’t take long to understand that what we’re really exploring is the history of humans moving around, crossing and reconstructing borders of identity and land.
“ I believe that in identifying as Caribbean and Mestizan in my work I invite more of the world to actively contribute in producing culture in a way that decenters America, European powers, and Western ways of being altogether. I could definitely be specific by identifying myself as Dominican-Ecuadorian-American, but I’d rather place focus on the overlapping of Dominican and Ecuadorian cultures in a broader global context. I believe that being Dominican speaks to the larger cultural and historical context of being Caribbean, as being Ecuadorian does to being Latin American (read: Mestizan). ”
Back to the work, and the process of making my work, it definitely centers the practice of being conscious of what I consume. It’s not so much an Ecuadorian thing, a Dominican thing, nor an immigrant thing as it is a notably un-American thing to do--you know, to be conscious of my waste. The magic of being an American lies in treating traditions and ideas as disposable. Unfortunately, it is that very magic that gets spun around to treating culture, people, and the labor of people as equally disposable. It is that lack of reverence for labor and the sanctity of resources that I confront in the process of creating each work. In my home, I was taught to care for my things, to preserve what I had whether I had little or plenty, and as a result I think that I see the true value of objects in our lives and on our planet. That inherent value is what I seek to emphasize in my life and through my practice.
Understanding the inherent value of culture, people, and the labor of people is also what compels me to create worlds with my hands. Growing up that was how we would resuscitate the lives of our possessions, with our hands. Consequently, It was the main form of bonding with my paternal grandmother and my father. My abuelita Enma would teach me how to sew and crochet. At night, I would sit by the dinner table quietly observing as my father made silk screens for t-shirts that he would then sell after his night shift at Yankee Stadium. In hindsight, it was these shared activities that shattered the barriers between generations. It was a way that they could pass onto me what they’ve experienced, a way that I could listen and learn from them that was unmarred by the limitations of language, culture, gender, race, and age. Who knew that I would tether myself to these exchanges in my professional life? Who would have guessed that these moments would flower into my life’s work?
“The magic of being an American lies in treating traditions and ideas as disposable. Unfortunately, it is that very magic that gets spun around to treating culture, people, and the labor of people as equally disposable. It is that lack of reverence for labor and the sanctity of resources that I confront in the process of creating each work. ”
Just as I had no control over the sequence of events that led me here, I observe the lack of control I have in selecting the themes of my work. The themes call out to me as visions and whispers in the air, whispers of dreams waiting to be realized. It isn’t until they take physical form that I discover how deeply earthed those dreams were. It isn’t until they take physical form that I discover that they never belonged to me. I discover that they belong to a larger entity instead. An entity that you and I are a part of. An entity that speaks through us, each one of us, when we listen.
The themes often emerge as phrases used in my everyday, phrases that I witnessed in my childhood, then in my home in the Bronx or other parts of New York, phrases that I then heard or hear on the tongues of people all over the world, and vice-versa. To me, this is a form of liberation; to project myself onto the world, and to see the world projected through me--I feel like we’re losing that. I see that we’re constantly creating schisms between the world and ourselves, and between ourselves and each other. We’ve learned our history and found ways to internalize that history as being something that worked and works against us when it is for us to work with and through.
I view each work as a chance to work with and through the shadows of the past. To look at my past, and the pasts of my ancestors, carrying it all with me wherever I go whilst remembering that it is always a choice to carry. And as it is a choice to carry it with me it is also a choice to let myself rest, to observe the possibilities of what I could be if I set my past aside for a bit--even choose to permanently move without it? To me, liberation is something that cannot be handed to you, it is something you must take, something you must declare it yours to own.
At the very least, I’d like my work to have that impact on me and those around me, to constantly serve as a reminder that liberation is an omnipresent choice. The contrasting textures of textiles and materials in my works reference the abrasive discomfort of courting liberation as it presents itself to each one of us. As we keep evolving as a species, I fear how removed we will become from that liberating discomfort we once lived with and embraced. That liberating discomfort that our parents felt more than we will and their parents more than they. If anything, I want my work to remind us of the importance of discomfort, and the beauty that is unveiled when we accept it as a portal and as an irrevocable part of us that connects us to our power to create radical change; that is the lasting impact that I hope my art will have on the world.
“I view each work as a chance to work with and through the shadows of the past. To look at my past, and the pasts of my ancestors, carrying it all with me wherever I go whilst remembering that it is always a choice to carry. And as it is a choice to carry it with me it is also a choice to let myself rest, to observe the possibilities of what I could be if I set my past aside for a bit—even choose to permanently move without it? To me, liberation is something that cannot be handed to you, it is something you must take, something you must declare it yours to own. ”
Cyndi Hounouvi is a poet, musical artist, and model born and raised in Germany of Beninese/Togolese descent. She self-published her first collection of poems titled “17” and is the co-founder and organizer of community project SistaTalk, a response to the lack of resources and spaces for Black women in Hamburg, Germany.