Alexa Horochowski - Zorzal Criollo en Minneapolis

ARTSOURCING: A Consortium of International Outsourcing Artists

This exhibit attempts to confront issues of globalization and capitalism as they pertain to Latin America and the United States. Products that are made by hired workers all over the world inevitably have influence on the work artists produce. The term appropriation pertains to the overt borrowing of imagery and is used to describe certain types of conceptual art. Instead of appropriating imagery, this exhibit will seek to form direct collaboration with the workers who produce such products, demonstrating the permeability of cultures locally and internationally. Like many U.S. corporations, we, as artist managers of the project, will outsource the labor required for our individual projects. This outsourcing will take place within the United States and South of the Border, somewhere between West Saint Paul, Lake Street, and Argentina.

For years U.S. corporations have been setting up factories, known as maquiladoras, in Mexico. These enterprises have been criticized for taking jobs away from American citizens, as well as exploiting a vulnerable work force, willing to work for sub-standard wages in Mexico. Though the practice of outsourcing is now a global phenomenon, our exhibit will both explore and exploit the social, political and cultural consequences of this system within Latin America and the United States. By placing our artistic practice within the fabric of the system we acknowledge our participation in the very system we are critiquing.

El Zorzal Criollo (The Native Robin)
http://www.soapfactory.org/

Alexa Horochowski appropriates the Chicano/Mexican cultural phenomenon of the lowrider to create an art object that is both lowrider and bed. Fabricated out of steel and painted with auto body paint and pinstriping, the bed/lowrider is equipped with a stereo system and airbag suspension run by external switches controlled by the viewer/rider.

The original lowrider, often sporting airbrushed paintings of naked, hyper-sexualized women and/or the Virgen de Guadalupe, exemplifies macho, Chicano, culture. The hydraulics allow the car to rise and fall, mimicking the motion of the erect phallus. However, without wheels “El Zorzal Criollo” is distinctly a bed or piece of furniture. Robbed of its car status, this lowrider can only be contained within the gallery or home. Within the gallery its function becomes that of a rather noisy and colorful minimalist sculpture.  Within the bedroom, its function is sex. That this bed/lowrider is contained within the home is relevant in that the object is transplanted from the garage and street to distinctly feminine territory. The artist appropriates the stereotype of male tinkering in the garage and brings it into the bedroom.

All lowriders reflect the personalities and cultural makeup of their owners. The nickname “El Zorzal Criollo”, stenciled on the back of the sculpture, is of the iconic Argentinean tango singer Carlos Gardel whose International fame helped put Argentina on the map in the 1930s, and whose exile in Paris marked the political turmoil of his time. In this case the bed/lowrider also functions as coffin or mausoleum holding the spirit of Gardel.

A cultural hybrid that explores the meeting points between men and women, Chicano and Argentinean, between low and high art, “El Zorzal Criollo” is designed to appeal to car enthusiasts, as well as art cognoscenti.

This sculpture was realized with the help of various technicians. Rollin Marquette (of Marquette Fabrication) built the structure out of steel. The team at Chopshop Creations did the body work, paint and airbag hydraulics. Scott Berosik, of Pro Art Design, did the freehand pinstriping. Rick Díaz, of Díaz Auto and Body Shop, airbrushed the title of the bed/lowrider. Carlos Gutierrez, of Calcamonías Azteca, printed the stencils. Stephen Rife worked on the video and stereo component of the work.