Yapci Ramos
Monumenta, 2022

In Monumenta. Nine Guanche Embodiments, the aim is to give visibility to the forgotten Guanche women, who were part of the Aboriginal community of Tenerife. Ramos questions the forms of representation of the pre-colonial past from a contemporary perspective. After analysing many monuments, she undertakes a historical analysis to resolve the lack of awareness of subaltern identities’ past since they are under-represented.

Guanche women were active subjects in the pre-Hispanic communities of Tenerife. Since the Spanish conquest, Aboriginal societies came to be regulated by patriarchal premises that perpetuated some narratives by making others invisible, thus giving way to the oblivion of otherness. Through artistic, historical and social research, the artist developed nine identities inspired by the landscapes of each of the previous demarcations of the island, their ancestral culture and oral tradition.

She asked herself, what would they look like? What feelings might they experience? What life stories would they tell? The lack of representation relegates these answers to ourimagination. And this is liberating.

Monumenta could be you and me. Looking back, following our own footsteps we’ve made to reach that essence, that origin, where everything was more genuine. Through embodying them, I give them my voice and my body to express themselves, iniciating a path through their stories, territories and feelings. This is how I reencounter these forgotten subjects, I decide to inhabit them and honor them. I think that public space should be re-appropriated. Each person should be free to reconstruct their own past and formulate alternative narratives. In doing so, I offer a renewed gaze through a cartography of women who represent values that escape from normativity, while claiming for a greater presence of women and subaltern identities in public space.”

In this context, Monumenta appears as a possibility of subversion of power structures, while questioning the narratives of the past. It is necessary to reconstruct the void.

- Yapci Ramos


Yapci Ramos
Monumenta, 2022
Trailer

Yapci Ramos
Monumenta, 2022
Nine 3-D printed sculptures and sound installation, 28’09”
Installation view at MUNA – Museo de Naturaleza y Arqueología de Tenerife.
Photo by Benjamín E. Delgado Hernández

Yapci Ramos
Monumenta, 2022
Nine 3-D printed sculptures and sound installation, 28’09”
Installation view at MUNA – Museo de Naturaleza y Arqueología de Tenerife.
Photo by Benjamín E. Delgado Hernández

Yapci Ramos
Monumenta, 2022
Nine 3-D printed sculptures and sound installation, 28’09”
Installation view at MUNA – Museo de Naturaleza y Arqueología de Tenerife.
Photo by Benjamín E. Delgado Hernández

Yapci Ramos
Monumenta, 2022
Nine 3-D printed sculptures and sound installation, 28’09”
Installation view at MUNA – Museo de Naturaleza y Arqueología de Tenerife.
Photo by Benjamín E. Delgado Hernández

Yapci Ramos
Monumenta, 2022
Nine 3-D printed sculptures and sound installation, 28’09”
Installation view at MUNA – Museo de Naturaleza y Arqueología de Tenerife.
Photo by Tomás Rodríguez