Through the Repurposed Black-Endless (Negro Reutilizado-Sin Fin) installation, I utilize
donated VHS tapes to create oversize elongated shawls. I juxtapose video tapes to address waste in the environment with the rebozos (shawls) to represent older Mexican women in a state of departure.
At play are the connections of repurposed VHS tapes and women’s labor as two objects thought of as obsolete in contemporary western society. Through reassigning values to these two elements this artwork engages with ecofeminism, a political movement that addresses ecological and feminist concerns as a radical strategy to deconstruct the patriarchy.
By knitting the shinny black film into textiles, the piece becomes an extension of women’s handwork. The elongated veils fill the white empty space of the gallery, cascading and morphing through its shinny surface. The shadows represent the ghosts of the images contained in the tapes never to be seen again. The act of knitting brings together the unseen memories, with the tangible present.
Although the raw material’s intended purpose is to be projected, this piece invokes ghosts people often ask about the images that will no longer be available. Memories recorded yet forgotten on VHS film for later retrieval will no longer be visible through the TV screen.
Similarly, older women live in the middle ground of life and death, as their existence nears their departure. The black shawl produced from the knitted tapes is a reminder of mourning, for the lives and for the memories that are no longer attached to the physical body or object. Oversized shawls transport the viewers to the land of old women whose daily rituals of rosary praying send them back to centuries of devotion to a higher being.
The VHS tape has now been treated as a long unending filament to be gathered with the careful motion of knitting needles. The infinitely black material it is transformed into textured compositions. Women’s labor in their home and communities, is represented by the endless hours dedicated to the expansion of this black ribbon that houses texture of visual culture. As discarded matter the videos will yield no more satisfaction of viewing movies—women too carry that same burden in older age as their service deteriorates with passing time.