Xandra Ibarra, “Ashes of Five Feminist of Color Texts,” installation (2020) and “This Bridge, Aflame,” photography (2020). Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California.
Mounted open book jackets storing the ashes of the most ubiquitously cited feminist of color texts and their corresponding library call numbers, bronze mausoleum vases, dry flowers, funerary carpet, cedar bench
I've burned the five most ubiquitously cited feminist of color texts not as an act of censorship, but as an aesthetic act to contend with the economy of over-citation as it is tied to the production of academic and public discourse. The theoretical frames afforded by these feminists of color texts are used to facilitate performances of “consciousness” that affirm “diversity” without accounting for power within the university and beyond, as a result the theorists and their works have become misinterpreted and vacuumed of their significance. These open book jackets have been installed to resemble a mausoleum and encourage the viewer to relate to the books as one does to a loved one who has passed, with all the complexities of mourning - an opportunity perhaps to move beyond the performance of care and towards a reckoning with the loss we've collectively created.
Cremated texts: Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins, This Bridge Called My Back Edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde, Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa
Xandra Ibarra in conversation with Andy Campbell about bibliocide in Artforum: https://www.artforum.com/interviews/xandra-ibarra-80626
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