Diego Ramírez





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I am a ‘diaspora’ Latinx. Hola. It means everyone back home thinks I am basic

IN DEVELOPMENT
Performance/Installation, 2022


"I am a ‘diaspora’ Latinx. Hola. It means everyone back home thinks I am basic" is a live performance about fallenness, featuring a devil breaking a black piñata, installed within the premises of a Mexican restaurant. Every time the devil hits the piñata, it responds with a noise that resembles a grunt, to make it seem like the object is suffering. The devil is dressed to resemble a very culturally inclusive folk from Northcote, Fitzroy or Brunswick, and parody the creative left's virtue hoarding. Indeed, Ramírez corrupts his childhood memories breaking piñatas to resemble a sadistic scene, amplifying the darker connotations of this festive ritual while mocking what we superficially applaud today. It represents a fall of faith in cultural diversity as a concept. 
This performance began as a subtle image of pandemic (from the god Pan) that reflects on the nexus between North-South relationships, disease, and capitalism. However, Ramirez’ re-shifted this focus over time as a satire of diaspora art in alignment with his wider push and pull with identity politics, as evidenced in his writing.  It also draws from his prior research on the evolving iconography of the devil in art history. The work is made in collaboration with Zamara Zamara on fabrication and Bonnie Cummings on sound.

This project is funded by Multicultural Arts Victoria, as part of their Represent Commisions, scheduled for a 2022 exhibition in Diasporas Festival. 

Vampires of the Earth 

IN PRE DEVELOPMENT
Various mediums, 2023


Vampires of The Earth is an exhibition inspired by Pemex’s oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico in 2021. It reimagines the eye of fire that characterised this disaster as a gateway to hell, freeing the symbols of market apocalypse that now haunt the gallery walls. The works in the show make reference to the undead to articulate the voracious extraction of natural resources that doom the present. It employs mediums such as neon, which mimic the vampire’s cycle of awakeness and slumber, by requiring electricity same as this creature necessitates blood. It also incorporates black reflective surfaces that allude to the vampire’s inability to gaze at its own reflection, mirroring the unreflective exploitation of oil.

 

We are all bad people 

IN PRE DEVELOPMENT
Animation, 202X


We are all bad people (5min) is an animation that satirises the art world’s moral antics that flag ‘change’ and ‘transformation’ in the context of identity politics. In this satirical cartoon, a Social-Change-Curator kills an Identity-Politics-Artist, during a zombie outbreak, and summons cartoon characters from a 70s Saturday morning cartoon to feign a mystery murder in social media and stage an outrage to advance his career, but the cartoons are morally appalled.
Ramirez acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the Land where he lives and works, the Wurundjeri people. He pays his respects to Elders past, present and emerging of the Kulin Nation.