On Touristification, Art Formulas, and “Zoom Call from Hell”
By Geraldine Rivera (but if you’re gonna cancel me, it’s Patricia Rodríguez)

There is a country in the world, placed
along the very path of the sun.
Born of the night. Placed within an implausible
archipelago of sugar and alcohol.
— Pedro Mir

Sugar and alcohol, says Pedro Mir. And sugar and alcohol are exactly what we’re intoxicated by, drunk on, poisoned with. This buzz is hard to shake off; it makes you behave in erratic, absurd, obscene ways. A total hypnosis; a collective delirium called “reality.” But honestly—or not—what even is the reality of the Dominican Republic? Sometimes I wonder, like the Caribbean version of Carrie from Sex and the City that I am: have we spent so much time performing for foreigners that performance is no longer an act, but a state of being? No irony. No joke.

Little beaches and rum, little fish and gold: the Dominican Republic has it all.

So when exactly did we lose the plot? :-O

I live inside a snow globe sitting in a tourist shop that, in this case, would be filled with sandcastles, coconuts, and women with BBLs grinding to dembow. Welcome to parasite paradise, AKA my home. I came out of a pair of Black legs that are always open for business, at a pretty affordable rate. Dominicanidad is the cross I carry every single day. For our foreign overlords, nothing is ever in the details of “being”: first and foremost, you are a label that fits perfectly into binary standards. Neither gringos nor Europeans care about my daily life as middle class, as an Arroyo Hondo princess, as a person, as someone with singular experiences. Outsiders (and insiders too) only care about two or three things: slavery (or anticolonialism, depending on the mood), plantains, and the sea. Feel free to swap those symbols for any other national signifier: the moka pot, coffee, palm trees, Presidente beer, La 42, the colmado, plastic chairs, dembow, peasantness, poverty porn, anything out of a history book, tits and ass.

In this shared dream/nightmare, even a palm tree has more opportunities than you do. 😃 In the DR there are formulas for how the art business works if you’re a young Dominican artist, and if you want to make a living from art—be internationalsh, babe. I’ll give you the 1,2,3. First: paint or die; if it can’t hang on a white wall—in any institution, any home—it’s not worth making. Second: pick any of the symbols already mentioned and add a bright color, a “Caribbean pop” color. Third: insert into your discourse any of the following phrases: “the anticolonial…,” “the racialized body…,” “territory as…,” “reimagining the memory of space,” and watch how, within a couple of years, you start winning biennials, getting invited to residencies, selling your work.

Again I ask: when did we lose the plot? We live reproducing the same images over and over in an endless loop. Happily becoming the curators possessed by our own downfall. Replaying, on repeat, the last good Brugal commercial from the eighties. We are so thoroughly defined by foreigners that stepping outside the boxes they’ve built for us means exile, means invisibility. There’s no room for individual experiences. We’ve become so accustomed to serving that vision to the final bosses of the art world that we struggle to show any interpretation of Dominican identity today.

What is Dominican identity? We are castaways. Our history was erased pretty early in our formation, and we’ve had to build and navigate who we are through fragments of what remains, all while sustaining a codependent relationship with our “saviors.” Insidious mouths of diasporic vultures constantly hunting our forms. They love devouring all the resources and leaving us empty. Living here sometimes feels like Alice in Wonderland, except with foreign monsters, perversion, heat, and the chaos surrounding everyday life.

The Gucci-Clad Rage of “Zoom Call from Hell”

Out of that rage came Zoom Call from Hell, a direct response to the helplessness I felt from not receiving any artist residencies, any international or local support, any response whatsoever to anything I made. Nothing. No matter how hard I worked, how much money I invested, how much time I devoted to my pieces—neither gringos, nor Europeans, nor Dominicans wanted anything to do with me. Not even Latin Americans, until recently, wanted to know me. Not being considered “serious art” because I love fashion, the internet, and memes hurt me in a way I can’t even describe. Did I need to carry God, Homeland, and Liberty on my tits for the Great Patriarch to finally notice me?

I’m not easy to define, or pleasantly digestible—I know that. But I was never interested in playing the role of the artist who makes what’s expected of them. And as vulgar as it may be to demystify the “artist” in the studio with their muse, drinking wine, smoking weed, being some misunderstood genius—whatever fairy tale people choose to swallow—I don’t make art for art’s sake. I make art because it’s the only thing I’m good at. Unfortunately, I’m not a plant yet, and I’m not dead enough to monetize what people refuse to give me while I’m alive. So if I want to eat and survive, I need $$$upport.

Zoom Call from Hell is my one-hit wonder. Who doesn’t love a self-aware piece that drags gringos and Europeans? It’s the piece where, whenever I’m at an event, someone almost inevitably comes up to me and says: “I love Zoom Call from Hell, it’s sooo funny…” And I’m ecstatic, because I love making people laugh. Humor has always been my most powerful tool. As Dominican as I am, humor is my shield. I can get out of tense situations with a good joke. That’s the inheritance my country left me; for better or worse, clowning is embedded in my national DNA.

It feels pretentious trying to define a country, but what can I tell you: the Dominican Republic exists inside the tourist imagination of the people keeping this country afloat. Try breaking the illusion and watch how quickly they drop you, as we say back home. Even I, just to be in this magazine, had to sell part of my vision for people to pay attention—do you get it? I played all the winning numbers, and I won. Shocking.

And you know what’s funniest of all? Years later, they ended up giving me the residency the video was about. Caribbean-ass Caribbean, babe. Ha.

Don’t cancel me—I’m already in exile.
(Maybe that’s exactly why you can.)