Performance Appraisal is an ongoing series that revises Ramírez's body of work prior 2024, through administrative language, instruments or processes instigated in conscientious gallery management. The framework of a 'performance appraisal' implies that Ramírez' ouvre is being measured, reviewed and valorised.
In Performance Appraisal 2, Ramírez presented an older (2023) and a newer video (2024) in This Hideous Replica curated by Joel Stern and Sean Dockray. Then commissioned producer and storyteller Eliki Reade to write a Cultural Safety and Environmental Audit of the works presented on site. The idea was to envelop Ramírez's artwork with the managerial inscription of a cultural safety audit. Reade's text was intensely critical of Ramírez' videos, chipping away at their value.
"The implication here is the subversive tongue-in-cheek nature of the work, which employs a harmful form of ‘knowledge privilege’. The context richness of the work is lost on those who aren’t able to personally discern the subversiveness of the work are excluded, and therefore reinforces capitalism’s power over individuals and systems. In this instance, I would suggest including supplementary texts from scholars who might provide alternative thought to that of capitalism’s champions, such as The Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engekls & Karl Marx, as a token of consciousness raising for the general public."
-Eliki Reade
