As part of the "Octopus" video, which features a recreation of the Guatemalan Civil War with ex-combatants of Mayan origin who were part of the conflict in the 1990s, Yoshua Okón documented some of the signs used in the parking lot of the Home Depot in Los Angeles where the filming took place and where the protagonists of the piece, undocumented immigrants, usually wait looking for work.
At first glance, the two lightjet prints show the partitions used at floor level to mark out the space in which cars can be parked with sufficient distance between them. However, what in everyday life functions simply as a system of road organization, in "Octopus" the marks are redefined by the protagonists as trenches and their respective limits that allow them to protect themselves from their opponent on the battlefield that the parking lot of the convenience store becomes both in the video and in real life.
The images allude, on the one hand, to the Guatemalan towns that became the scenes of war; specifically in reference to the municipality of Quiché, which was occupied by the Guatemalan Army in the 1980s to prevent the advance of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor, an opponent of the Civil War and later part of the peace negotiations. On the other hand, the allegory represented by the marks is part of what art historian John C. Welchman called the "deterritorialization of the piece." The ordinariness of "Octopus'" setting reinforces its total difference from the indigenous peoples who experienced the most violence and destruction during the war.
If the discrepancy between the two territories is totally radical, immigration laws and the economic precariousness they impose on undocumented immigrants—who were once forced to leave their country by the devastation caused by a war ed by the United States—once again turn the parking lot into a real conflict zone in which people struggle every day to obtain the only jobs that are possible: day laborer, gardener, bricklayer or kitchen helper. Thus, the space for the recreation of "Octopus" takes on critical symbolism regarding the interests of a nation whose actions and interests are the source of a double combat.
AC, May 2022
Bibliography
Robert Nickelsberg, “Galería: Un testimonia de la dignidad en medio de la guerra civil de Guatemala” (Gallery: A testament to dignity in the midst of Guatemala's civil war) in The New York Times, December 4, 2017. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/es/2017/12/04/espanol/america-latina/galeria-un-testimonio-de-la-dignidad-en-medio-de-la-guerra-civil-de-guatemala.html
Héctor Antonio Sánchez, “La transmutación de la memoria: Pulpo / Octopus de Yoshua Okón” (The transmutation of memory: Pulpo / Octopus by Yoshua Okón) in Casa del Tiempo (Time House) No. 62-63, pp. 66-69. December 2012- January 2013
Pulpo / Octopus. Mexico City: Metropolitan Autonomous University, 2012
John C. Welchman, “Yoshua Okón.” Brochure of the Yoshua Okón exhibition at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles., 2011
As part of the "Octopus" video, which features a recreation of the Guatemalan Civil War with ex-combatants of Mayan origin who were part of the conflict in the 1990s, Yoshua Okón documented some of the signs used in the parking lot of the Home Depot in Los Angeles where the filming took place and where the protagonists of the piece, undocumented immigrants, usually wait looking for work.
At first glance, the two lightjet prints show the partitions used at floor level to mark out the space in which cars can be parked with sufficient distance between them. However, what in everyday life functions simply as a system of road organization, in "Octopus" the marks are redefined by the protagonists as trenches and their respective limits that allow them to protect themselves from their opponent on the battlefield that the parking lot of the convenience store becomes both in the video and in real life.
The images allude, on the one hand, to the Guatemalan towns that became the scenes of war; specifically in reference to the municipality of Quiché, which was occupied by the Guatemalan Army in the 1980s to prevent the advance of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor, an opponent of the Civil War and later part of the peace negotiations. On the other hand, the allegory represented by the marks is part of what art historian John C. Welchman called the "deterritorialization of the piece." The ordinariness of "Octopus'" setting reinforces its total difference from the indigenous peoples who experienced the most violence and destruction during the war.
If the discrepancy between the two territories is totally radical, immigration laws and the economic precariousness they impose on undocumented immigrants—who were once forced to leave their country by the devastation caused by a war ed by the United States—once again turn the parking lot into a real conflict zone in which people struggle every day to obtain the only jobs that are possible: day laborer, gardener, bricklayer or kitchen helper. Thus, the space for the recreation of "Octopus" takes on critical symbolism regarding the interests of a nation whose actions and interests are the source of a double combat.
