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POMERANZ COLLECTION

IGNACIO GONZALEZ-LANG

Kueens
2009
White and blue cotton thread on red cotton robe, iridium lens and body form
183 x 122 cm
Unique
Inv. Nr. 75

Born in 1975 in San Juan, Puerto Rico
Lives and works in New York City, New York, USA

A graduate from Columbia University in 2003, Ignacio Gonzalez-Lang is interested in the various aspects of the cultural identity of America that he explores in a humorous and even cynical approach. Kueens is an “Exalted Cyclops” robe, which is the costume of a powerful local rank in the Ku Klux Klan organization. The artist ordered the making of this gown to a seamstress, who has the particularity of being the descendant of five generations of the famous American hate group. The superb embroidery, which completes the dress and covers the entire surface of the fabric, was made by a Mexican immigrant based in New York, who learnt from her grandmother how to embroider native patterns. This artwork brings together, in the same object, two more or less shameful cultural American traditions, at the border between the United States and South America. The artist uses the process called “melting pot” or “salad bowl”, a more recent notion, which is characteristic of the United States’ history of assimilating different cultures, to superimpose two realities that cannot be absorbed by one another.