Joiri Minaya: Redecode II: La Dorada

Exhibition Website

Aug 20 2018 - Jun 28 2019

Wallach Art Gallery

New York City, NY

Joiri Minaya’s work focuses on the construction of the female subject in relation to nature and landscape in a “tropical” context, shaped by a foreign gaze that demands leisure and pleasure. Like nature, the feminine has been imagined throughout history as tamed, idealized, and exoticized. Minaya revises existing objects that engage in this form of representation, thus provoking questions.

The Dominican-American artist transforms the lobby of Miller Theatre with a new installation from her series, Tropical Surfaces, in which she specifically deconstructs and re-imagines tropical design, pointing to it as an invention of the Global North's imaginary.

For Miller Theatre’s Redecode II: La Dorada, Minaya departs from a monumental work held by the Cooper Hewitt, El Dorado, a twenty-four panel scenic wallpaper designed in 1848 for the oldest continuously-operating wallpaper company, Zuber et Cie (est. 1787, France). El Dorado depicts the idealized natural and manmade riches of the four continents from a European, and colonial perspective. 

The transformation of this vision into such an elaborate wallpaper was necessarily for the delectation of those who could afford it; its production required the hand-printing of 1,554 distinct woodblocks in 210 various colors over the entire 42-foot-long span.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.          

  • Installation
  • American
  • Contemporary
  • Joiri Minaya

Exhibition Venues & Dates