AUTO-GALÁCTICA
..."Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez’s photographic combine displays a subject bifurcated by time and also psychology. Juxtaposing two photographs from the artist’s personal archive (the top an image of the artist as a child posing in front of a tropical poster, the bottom an image of a beach in Puerto Rico captured from the perspective of a plane) RETROPICAL (2002) mimics the apparatus of the mind, which amalgamates disparate moments into a singular narrative that excises subtlety, nuance, and even truth. The mind mimicked by Vázquez Rodríguez is located outside of the self—a collective mind that fetishizes women identified as ‘exotic’ or ‘tropical’ due to their race and/or ethnic group."
Women, subverting the script, in HARD: Subversive Representation
By Mallory A. Ruymann on March 7, 2018