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Natural Instincts
Ximena Cuevas
This video uses material from Mexican television to fashion a horror musical, encapsulating the racism deeply entrenched in national culture. Inserted into a billboard, the images of a screaming mother—horrified at the sight of her newborn’s dark skin—become a mirror.
The piece is part of the series Dormimundo, in which Cuevas employs humor and parody to address the lies we tell ourselves as a society. In this case, the work explores the “whitening” fantasies that accompanied the aspirational cultural of neoliberalism in the late twentieth century.
XIMENA CUEVAS (1963)
Natural Instincts, 1999
From the series Dormimundo
DVD video
3’ 6”
Acquisition with funds from the Presupuesto de Egresos de la Federación, 2013
