Transcript

My name is Daniela Ortiz, I am a Peruvian artist living in Spain. My work is mostly about the migratory controversy stem, its relationship with colonialism, coloniality and institutional racism. I have been doing all this work from a migrant perspective as a migrant person living, a Peruvian migrant person living in the context of Spain and my whole experience mostly with immigration office, the papers, and all this process. From there is that I started making research on this situation. When I first moved to Spain I never thought about work in regard to these issues.

Another tool, let’s say, used by colonialism nowadays is the maintenance of colonial monuments such as Columbus monuments. In this piece, I focus on that. I have been doing research for many years about different colonial monuments in different context. How these colonial monuments are not there because they left them there or because they are part of history or something like that, but they are there because they need to have those monuments empire in order to have a migrant people being deported, the African American community being incarcerated because those monuments symbolize the power of white supremacy, the power of euro-centrism, the power of colonialism. Those monuments are being cleaned, maintained and defended every day. Actually in the American context there has been many struggles to take them out. In Europe also I have seen the struggles to take them out. And in the different context of Latin America also there actually has been success. Stories of taking out those monuments but there is an active defense from white supremacy in order to keep those monuments because they symbolize the fact that colonialism is still in shape.

In this project what I propose is different prototypes for replacing the actual Columbus monuments in context such as New York, Lima, Barcelona, and Madrid. For example, for replacing the Columbus monument in Madrid my proposal will be to replace it for a monument to a migrant woman with her son, is stepping over the immigrant detention center in Falucha (sp?), and with a phrase [Spanish] and with many colonizers heads after being beheaded. Then another proposal would be to replace the Columbus circle moment here in New York for a monument called Burn el hielo, burn ICE, burn immigration and customs enforcement agency. And then another one would be for replacing the Columbus monument in the city of Lima to replace it for a monument for the people who are being murdered for struggling against structivism (?) in the context of Latin America which is now a raise being the strongest struggle against the colonial system.