Reimagining Aztlán: A Virtual Utopia,
A Virtual Playground
Saakred
The Projecto Gallery on view March 8 - April 14, 2024
Reimagining Aztlán: A Virtual Utopia, A Virtual Playground is the second phase of a comprehensive body of work challenging the peripheral influence of the 1969 conceptualization of Aztlán as written in the Plan de Espiritual Aztlán. Using the bicultural semiotics of the current region of South Texas, Northern Mexico and the borderlands, this work aims at redefining Chicanidad through a vibrant, visual inclusion of new narratives. Phase one is a series of lowrider car hoods that places new Latinx narratives at the forefront through the utilization of the same traditional aesthetics of high gloss, airbrushed scenes of Latina sensuality, Chicano masculinity and Aztec mythology. Challenging the hierarchy of art, the custom, lowrider car hoods hang in the white cube as a pristine and undisturbed work, with the juxtaposition of the “lowbrow” sensibility of car culture.
A Virtual Utopia, A Virtual Playground is the second phase of the artist’s conceptualization of Aztlán, a utopian landscape free of the burdens of late stage capitalism and welcoming to society’s most abused and forgotten. This exhibition previews geological, architectural, and relational components of Saakred’s world-building using new technologies such as volumetric photogrammetry, 3D modeling, texturing, character building and 3D printing. Pulling from a diversity of influences such as the architecturally significant world-building of Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica or the research-based NASA proposals of the late Argentinian artist Gyula Kosice, the artist pulls from a vast database of art historical figures/movements to create their own vision of utopia in a larger search for the semiotics of Aztlán. Using the aesthetics of Pixar and Disney the viewer is welcomed into an immersive space where the line between the digital and material blur into liminality. Like the existence of borderland walkers or what sociologist Gloria Anzaldúa names nepantla, Saakred persistently pushes the boundaries of what is deemed achievable.
Saakred is a musician and visual artist from South Texas that has been featured regionally and nationally including notable performances at the Empire Theater, The Blanton Museum of Art, The Contemporary, Navajo Nation Museum and more. Visual art exhibitions include the McNay Art Museum, the Mexican American Cultural Center, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center and the Visual Art Center in downtown Austin.
Saakred’s new visual work is a contemporary approach to art making through the utilization of new technologies such as game design, augmented reality, 3D printing and archival processes through the use volumetric photogrammetry. This practice exists on a continuum of larger goals as a world-builder in efforts of both deconstructing and reconstructing the complexities of the trans human experience and the immortal potential of our collective digital afterlife.
Expanding into the commercial space as Saakred Studios, Saakred employs a strategy of subversion, using the commercial language of corporate advertising and branding to disseminate progressive messages as a means of reaching a broader audience and introducing concepts around anti-colonialism, justice and peace.