2022 Image Equity Fellow: Giancarlo Montes Santangelo
Explore this body of work by the New York-based artist
FREE THE WORK
Photograph by Giancarlo Montes Santangelo
Giancarlo Montes Santangelo is one of 20 Fellows who were awarded the inaugural Image Equity Fellowship. Learn more here.
regifting an exchange made in fire / this place wasn't built for living (2022) by Giancarlo Montes SantangeloFREE THE WORK
A white man offers a woman a coconut, both are dressed in European clothing, other figures sit lay and stand around them. Two vessels collect water on the ground in front of them.
When Giancarlo Montes Santangelo searched the Library of Congress for photographs of Puerto Rico, he discovered an excess of images that appeared to frame the island’s history through a nationalist perspective. He began to wonder about the impact of these images, many from the early twentieth century, on larger cultural stories, “and how these stories settle into the present.” Montes Santangelo’s mother was born in Argentina and his father was born in Puerto Rico; they met in Washington, DC.
home’s gift was un amasijo hecho de cuerdas y tendones (2022) by Giancarlo Montes SantangeloFREE THE WORK
Amanda cuts the roots of a plant while another hand holds them.
The artist’s dual heritage has, in part, prompted an ongoing inquiry into archives, both public and personal, that might fill in missing chapters of history about the Caribbean and Latin America. But he’s also drawn to photographs that resist interpretation. In his work, multiple, often competing narratives are drawn together in layers. For some pieces, he collects and collages photographs, enlarges the collages to create studio backdrops, then sets up his studio to make yet one more image.
te recuerdo, asi incompleto (2022) by Giancarlo Montes SantangeloFREE THE WORK
A flower, knife, necklace and chunks of a plantain rest on a collage of Puerto Rican farm workers and farm owners.
For others, he poses himself or friends in performative actions that recall the strategies of artists Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Whitney Hubbs. There’s a “spectrum of experience” Montes Santangelo notes about his intricate collages, which consider ritual, pain, masculinity, and spirituality. “My own body is affected by those images and can affect those images,” he says. “I’m trying to create a space where I can open up those histories but also contribute to them.”
Editorial statement by Aperture.
offerings for those not remembered (2023) by Giancarlo Montes SantangeloFREE THE WORK
A hand offers flowers into the ocean at night.
for as long as it burns (2022) by Giancarlo Montes SantangeloFREE THE WORK
A candle burns on a holder that is covered in wax.
all of the rocks fell out of me and I felt light again (2022) by Giancarlo Montes SantangeloFREE THE WORK
Daizha spins in circles at night.
entra a su alrededor (2023) by Giancarlo Montes SantangeloFREE THE WORK
The silhouette of a person in a studio is imposed on a photograph of a chicken fight.
juntos, making a way (2022) by Giancarlo Montes SantangeloFREE THE WORK
One figure lays on the ground with the roots of a plant. Another stands with one foot raised and a hand gestured towards a bird in flight.
juntos, tracing (2023) by Giancarlo Montes SantangeloFREE THE WORK
Mani's back is written on, a hand holding a cigarette presses into a drawing on his back.
not remembering, dreaming (2022) by Giancarlo Montes SantangeloFREE THE WORK
Carlos rests on a white leather couch with his eyes closed. Plates fill the wall behind him. Birds fly and rest around him.
Giancarlo Montes Santangelo
Click below to see more work from this New York-based image maker:
Web: giancarlomontes.com
IG: @uitre
Explore the other 2022 Image Equity Fellows’ final projects and learn more about the Fellowship here.
