Traditions

Paño Drawings

Personally this was one of the most exciting pieces I saw at the encyclopedic palace, an amazing collection of drawings made by Mexican- american prisioners in their paños/ Tissues. This designs are only made by the ones in charge at the prission, the ones with the artistic vein, they also work as a trading good.

 Drawings here, work as a way of communication with the loved ones outside, they are filled with images deriving from chicano culture, catholic symbols, pornography and lowrider magazines.

 I find the aesthetic mixture very interesting, they have a relation with mural painting, and tattooing by the way characters and other elements are settled. Making sure they can use all of the space possible to translate their message, the paños end up giving that feeling of anxiety that horror vaciu brings.

 Phyllis Galambo, (1952, New York, USA)

Galambo has been interested in rituals, traditions and customes from different cultures from Caribbean countries like Haiti, Cuba or Jamaica.

To make this large scale photographs, she combines this colorful and saturated costumes with more occidentalized indumentary, like plastic halloween masks, other times she uses the original indigenous masks. This series is all about The Winneba Fancy Dress festival in Ghana.

This festival was originated in the late 1920's. but during the years it has transformed contstantly and new elements of outside cultures as well as parodies of local people and professions, in the 50's the festival became huge and it gained recognition from the Ghana government.

 This amazing garnments are a mixture combining three continents, thousands of miles, transformations, from africa to The Caribbean and Europe, and viceversa. which at the end creates a fascinating aesthetic feel to it. A moment where humans become creatures and when everyone is wearing a mask the world goes mad, its time for carnival!