2022 Image Equity Fellow: Giancarlo Montes Santangelo

Giancarlo Montes Santangelo is one of 20 Fellows who were awarded the inaugural Image Equity Fellowship. Learn more here.

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.

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.

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.

Explore the other 2022 Image Equity Fellows’ final projects and learn more about the Fellowship here.