Primitive Nostalgia
2014
Digital video, colour, sound
5:29 mins
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Primitive Nostalgia is a voyage through Hollywood cinema, featuring some of the most memorable dance numbers ever to be captured on film. Through the assemblage of cinematic samples, a record of explicit portrayals of cultural identity - performed by various dancing troupes is called to attention, and a concern for the Western construction of race emerges. Through a green screened intervention and a mimetic performance of choreography, an unmasking of the inherent lateral violence that often occurs in the making of these films is exposed. Garcia enacts a complicity in this racial transgression, as an apparatus of further betrayal through appropriation.
Toured nationally with Museums & Galleries NSW as part of Moving Histories // Future Projections exhibition: Rhodes Digital Gallery, Toowoomba Regional Gallery, Cairns Regional Gallery, Mosman Art Gallery, Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, Bega Valley Regional Gallery, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Broken Hill Regional Gallery, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery (above image), Grafton Regional Gallery (2017-19)
Exhibition History: Theatre Tri-bühne, Tai Kwun Center for Heritage Arts, The Post Office Gallery (all 2019); Concordia Gallery, Heide Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (all 2018); Golden Age Cinema, Federation Square, BLINDSIDE, CTRL+SHIFT, Central Saint Martins (all 2017); The Centre for Contemporary Photography, Sydney Film Festival (all 2016); Sydney Contemporary Art Fair, Australian Centre for the Moving Image (all 2015); UTS ART Gallery (2014)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Wagga Wagga Art Gallery + Museums & Galleries NSW