The Bi-Cultural Artist Subject

 In his essay "Hybridity and Ambivalence: Places and Flow in Contemporary Art and Culture", Nikos Papastergiadis says that "the concept of hybridity was used to redefine the presence of diasporic or indigineous artists. They were no longer defines in terms of an exotic alternative or as a belated supplement whose incorporation could serve to both expand or reaffirm the parameters of mainstream. The story of indigenous survival and migrant diasporas, Jaukkuri argues, has become a crucial perspective in the critique of globalization and the re-writing of the history of modernims. The concept of hybridity was also understood as offering a critical perspective on the cultural practices or symbolic meanings that were generated by artists (...) Hybridity serves as a conuterpoint to the idealist categories that confined creativity to either closed forms of tradition or universal forms of abstraction. Unlike essentialist theories that claim that cultural identity is rooted in a particular landscape and locked into atavistic values, the concept of hybridity was used to shift attention towards the acknowledgement of the process of mixture and the effects of moblity on contemporary culture" (Papastergiadis 4).

Keywords: Mixture. Mobility.Globalization. Diasporas. Migrant.

In this paper I will try to start a discussion and/or propose directions for the identification of Bi-Cultural  artist subjects. I'm going to do so in a negative way, by exclusion.

The Bi-cultural subject is the one whose first crucial years of education and formation are spent in the country of origin. In the particular case of Cuba, he is a subject that has lived the Cuban revolution thoroughly and that cannot expel it from the inside.

The Bi-Cultural artist is not a subject born in the U.S. or brought into the U.S. at such an early age that his/her main psychological feature is the re-discovering of his/her original identity; an identity that escapes him/her because he/she has never experienced the life, education and indoctrination in the country of origin; whose only prymary cultural background comes from his parents ( I'm talking about are 2nd and 3rd generation individuals).

The Bi-Cultural artist is a 1st generation subject that struggles to assimilate in the new environment. Who has gone to great lengths to learn the codes of his/her new culture and who to that end has put him/herself into colleges and universities, acquiring undergrad and graduate degrees that have enabled him/her to interiorize the customs, behaviors and ways of thinking of his/her new society.

Conflict defines these subjects in everything that they do. The opposite poles of "original culture" and "new culture" collide at every level. Whether in a social situation; at work; while making art or during thinking processes.

In the work of art conflict is expressed as the juxtaposition of heterogeneous symbols and forms. Mickey Mouse and Cyburaska holding hands while in a Committee of Defense of the Revolution (C.D.R.) vigilante round.

The end of the ideological and cultural clashes of the Cold War gave birth to world views that are nor  so clear cut but swampy and foggy. Except for the exclusion of terrorists and terrorism.

It is in the school that the new world view is given form. The subject moves between the coordinates of the legal-juridical, the psychological and the cultural. Only years of schooling can provide an understanding of the workings of the new political system; the basis of the economics; the history of the new country; its social issues and the prevalent theories of art and aesthetics. And the intricacies of the spoken and written language.

It is in this context that the new subject is born. With a newly acquired world view that will clash and ultimately cohabitate in the same person. He/she has a broader, bi-polar concept of things. He/she sees the world from two different angles at the same time.

Work Cited:

Papastergiadis, Nikos. "Hybridity and Ambivalence: Places and Flow in Contemporary Art and Culture". Theory, Culture and Society, 2005.(SAGE, London, Touthand Oaks and New Delhi).


For more on the subject of Bi-Culturalism read:

Naffici, Hamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmaking. Princeton U.P.

Nilep. Chad. "Code Switching: in Sociolcultural Linguistics. University if Colorado Boulder.

Marks, Laura U. The Skin of the Film. Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses. Duke U.P

http://renemarin.blogspot.com/2010/08/hispanic-hybrids-in-us-and-advertising.html