OVERVIEW

Daniela Ortiz

Liste Year

Year of Birth

Country of Birth

Presented by

2021

1985

Italy

Laveronica

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Daniela Ortiz(Perù, 1985)

Daniela Ortiz aims to generate visual narratives in which the concepts of nationality, racialization, social class and genre are explored so as to critically understand structures of colonial, patriarchal and capitalist power. Her recent projects and research deal with the European migratory control system, its links to colonialism and the legal structure created by European institutions in order to inflict violence on racialized and migrant communities. She has also developed projects about the Peruvian upper class and its exploitative relationship with domestic workers. Recently, her artistic practice has reverted to visual and manual work, developing artworks in ceramic, collage and formats such as children’s books in order to shift away from the aesthetics of Eurocentric conceptual art.
Apart from her artistic practice, she is the mother of a three-year-old, she gives talks, holds workshops, carries out investigations and participates in discussions on Europe’s migratory control system and its ties to coloniality in various contexts.

The paintings of the series “The rebellion of the roots” depict a series of situation in which tropical plants kidnapped in botanical gardens and greenhouses of Europe are protected and nurture by the spirits of racialized people who died in the hands of European racism. These plants find their own way to confront and make justice in regard to those politicians and authorities responsible of institucional and structural racism.

Botanical gardens and greenhouses in the European context are the buildings where plants brought from the global south, and mostly from tropical areas, are currently kept in captivity. Most of this colonial devices were built during the 19th Century in Universal and International exhibitions where the narrative of an industrial, developed and civilised Europe was built through diapositives such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, when at the same time so called “human zoos”, botanical gardens, greenhouses and zoos were set up in order to sustain racist narratives in regard to global south territories, plan ...