"Octopus" is a video in which fiction and history are assembled to create a scenario in which irony reigns. A group of men, identified in two sides according to the color of their T-shirts (black or white), confront each other in the parking lot of the Home Depot in Cypress Park, Los Angeles, using their arms as fictitious weapons, the supermarket carts as artillery and the parked cars as trenches.
Amidst the daily movement of the supermarket, what appears to be a children's game played by adults who crawl, run, hide and aim, is in reality the recreation of the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996), which subjected the Central American country to live in warlike conflict and under a dictatorship that was ed and manipulated to a great extent by the United States and various commercial companies.
The combatants in the video are men of Mayan origin who during the 1990s participated—on one side or the other—in the Guatemalan war and were later forced to migrate to the country that sustained the long dispute over their territory. All of them are undocumented migrants who, at the time of the video's production, met daily at the Home Depot that served as a location to look for work as day laborers.
As in much of his video work, Okón resorted to the recreation of real conflicts or phenomena as a device in which the narrative takes place under the absurdity and irony embodied by combatants seeking better living conditions in a country that was and continues to be their enemy. This absurd humor is reflected, in turn, in the source of inspiration for the video: the traditional American reenactments in which the historical battles of the North American country are praised and which, unlike "Octopus", are performed with people who were not part of the conflicts being depicted.
The title of the work refers to the nickname used in Guatemala for the United Fruit Company (UFCO, now Chiquita Banana), founded in 1899 to grow bananas and market them mainly in the United States. What was initially celebrated under the promise of progress that would directly benefit Guatemalan society, soon turned into a system of exploitation that took advantage of local labor for expansionist purposes. UFCO, then known as "the octopus", began to expand its power not only to other Central American countries such as Ecuador, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic or Panama—becoming the strongest multinational in the region and outside the United States—but also for the role it played in the coup d'état led by the CIA (1954) and the subsequent Civil War in Guatemala.
"Octopus" was made as part of the artist residency program at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, ed by the Nimoy Foundation and the James Irvine Foundation. In addition to the video, the project was rolled out as a piece in a series of photographs, a typographic logo and the paintings Octopus I, Octopus II, Octopus III, Octupus IV and Octopus V.
AC, May 2020.
Bibliography
Raúl Hernández Valdés, “Las extensiones del sentido” (Extensions of meaning) in Okon Studio (ed.) Pulpo / Octopus. Mexico City: Metropolitan Autonomous University, 2012
John C. Welchman, “La guerra y la paz (War and peace) (Volume II) in Okon Studio (ed.) Pulpo / Octopus. Mexico City: Metropolitan Autonomous University, 2012
_________________, “Yoshua Okón.” Brochure of the Yoshua Okón exhibition at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles., 2011
Sarah-Neel Smith, “Yoshua Okón.” Frieze, no. 143, p. 124 November-December, 2011
"Octopus" is a video in which fiction and history are assembled to create a scenario in which irony reigns. A group of men, identified in two sides according to the color of their T-shirts (black or white), confront each other in the parking lot of the Home Depot in Cypress Park, Los Angeles, using their arms as fictitious weapons, the supermarket carts as artillery and the parked cars as trenches.
Amidst the daily movement of the supermarket, what appears to be a children's game played by adults who crawl, run, hide and aim, is in reality the recreation of the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996), which subjected the Central American country to live in warlike conflict and under a dictatorship that was ed and manipulated to a great extent by the United States and various commercial companies.
The combatants in the video are men of Mayan origin who during the 1990s participated—on one side or the other—in the Guatemalan war and were later forced to migrate to the country that sustained the long dispute over their territory. All of them are undocumented migrants who, at the time of the video's production, met daily at the Home Depot that served as a location to look for work as day laborers.
As in much of his video work, Okón resorted to the recreation of real conflicts or phenomena as a device in which the narrative takes place under the absurdity and irony embodied by combatants seeking better living conditions in a country that was and continues to be their enemy. This absurd humor is reflected, in turn, in the source of inspiration for the video: the traditional American reenactments in which the historical battles of the North American country are praised and which, unlike "Octopus", are performed with people who were not part of the conflicts being depicted.
The title of the work refers to the nickname used in Guatemala for the United Fruit Company (UFCO, now Chiquita Banana), founded in 1899 to grow bananas and market them mainly in the United States. What was initially celebrated under the promise of progress that would directly benefit Guatemalan society, soon turned into a system of exploitation that took advantage of local labor for expansionist purposes. UFCO, then known as "the octopus", began to expand its power not only to other Central American countries such as Ecuador, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic or Panama—becoming the strongest multinational in the region and outside the United States—but also for the role it played in the coup d'état led by the CIA (1954) and the subsequent Civil War in Guatemala.
"Octopus" was made as part of the artist residency program at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, ed by the Nimoy Foundation and the James Irvine Foundation. In addition to the video, the project was rolled out as a piece in a series of photographs, a typographic logo and the paintings Octopus I, Octopus II, Octopus III, Octupus IV and Octopus V.
AC, May 2020.
