PANAMA HAT
Installation; 601 cm x 285 cm (2005)
Pirelli rubber flooring and digital print on adhesive vinyl
For quite a long time, I had been itching to use the non-slip material that covers most of the floor in Panama’s Museum of Contemporary Art to make a piece. It’s made of plastic, it’s black and it inspires in me a sort of sado-masochistic pleasure which I’d rather not get into. Normally used in industrial kitchens, factories and airports, one could say that it’s out of place in a museum because of its reflective quality. But I find the mirror effect it produces quite beautiful, and it always manages to distract me while I’m there looking at art or socializing between glasses of wine.
As an object, this material has more strength and presence than many of the things I’ve seen exhibited in that museum. It’s no secret that one of the most commonplace mechanisms used by contemporary artists is repetition, a feature incorporated into the non-slip material by design. Its numerous rows of perfectly aligned base relief circles just scream out for someone to come and do something with them; a pointillist work, for example. Since the dots are there, why not? Not only do I utilize material that is very characteristic of that particular museum to create work, I inevitably say something about the museum itself as a space and as an institution. Very site-specific.
The image I finally decided to use to make my pointillist work is the Panama hat. Of all hats, I chose the Panama hat because, although it is made in Ecuador, it’s called Panama, like me. This hat also alludes to all the psycho-sexual issues that other hats stand for, with the additional implications of Anglo-European imperialism. We’re talking about the hat worn by the French and the Gringos during the Canal’s construction. It protects you from the sun, it’s attractive and of very fine quality. Just imagine: it takes some very able and patient Native Americans in Ecuador two months to make one.