APPROPRIATIONS

Cultural appropriation occurs when a majority culture takes elements from a minority culture, whereby that culture has been chased and oppressed. In the consumerist society driven by marketing, it is increasingly common to find cases of appropriation due to a tendency to use traditional cultural expressions by publicists or content creators, who, ignoring or misinterpreting the original meaning, end up falling into banalization.

The series «Appropriations» refers to face painting as an element of cultural appropriation. Specifically, the cover of David Bowie’s «Aladdin Sane» (RCA, 1973), recognized worldwide for representing an icon of pop music, is placed in parallel; on the other side, we can find several indigenous representatives of distinct populations. Both types of images constitute a dynamic that entails a reflection on the symbolism in a consumerist society and in an ancestral culture—considering that the latter has used face painting since ancient times as an essential part of their spiritual development and as a sign of social hierarchy, among many others.

This series has even made the artist contemplate, as a creator and as a person, what other types of cultural appropriations we usually commit, often due to ignorance and others because of the strong influence of the market that, as mentioned before, trivializes the meanings of millenary practices. Nevertheless,  it also became necessary to note that the boundaries between appropriation and inspiration are often bemused and that with the era of image banalization, it is more common to fall into this practice.