Fátima Rodrigo Gonzales

In Rodrigo Gonzales’ re-working of the set, she draws attention to its flashy characteristic of fun-fare, dancing and entertainment, whilst behind the scenes this industry has a crude and entrapped legacy.

Using different kinds of media, Fátima Rodrigo Gonzalez explores the representation of modernism and gender identity through different devices such as architecture, modern art and pop culture. Her work problematises the structures of power that, in a post-colonial context, continue to organise the world, veiling the fluid relations between coloniser and colonised that compose what we understand as ‘modern’.

"Sabado Gigante (Gigantic Saturday) is part of a series resulting from research through which I reproduce and re-contextualise a series of TV sets used by Latin American romantic ballad singers between the '60s and '90s. The aesthetic of these spaces show clear references to various modernist trends, which were appropriated in pop culture with the aspiration of symbolising progress – a stance that contradicts the music’s conservative and especially sexist discourse...

... Moreover, at the time, pop culture worked as the media through which massive audiences became consumers of avant-garde art, which in previous decades had been reserved for the intellectual elites."

- Fatima Rodrigo Gonzales