Biography
Yoshua Okón was born in Mexico City in 1970 where he currently lives. His work, like a series of near-sociological experiments executed for the camera, blends staged situations, documentation and improvisation and questions habitual perceptions of reality and truth, selfhood and morality. In 2002 he received an MFA from UCLA with a Fulbright scholarship. His solo shows exhibitions include: Yoshua Okón: In the Land of Ownership, Asakusa, Tokio; Salò Island, UC Irvine, Irvine; Piovra, Kaufmann Repetto, Milan; Poulpe, Mor Charpentier, Paris; Octopus, Cornerhouse, Manchester and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and SUBTITLE, Städtische Kunsthalle, Munich. His group exhibitions include: Manifesta 11, Zurich; Gwangju Biennale, Korea; Antes de la resaca, MUAC, Mexico City; Incongruous, Musèe Cantonal des Beux-Arts, Lausanne; The Mole´s Horizon, Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Mercosur Biennial, Porto Alegre; Amateurs, CCA Wattis; San Francisco; Laughing in a Foreign Language, Hayward Gallery, London; Adaptive Behavior, New Museum, NY and Mexico City: an exhibition about the exchange rates between bodies and values, PS1, MoMA, NY, and Kunstwerke, Berlin. His work is included in the collections of Tate Modern, Hammer Museum, LACMA, Colección Jumex and MUAC, among others.
Program
Oríllese a la Orilla (multi-channel video installation, 1999-2000)
Oríllese a la Orilla is a six-channel video installation in which Mexico City policemen are recorded in situations with variable modes and degrees of manipulation.
In Poli I, Okón arranges a confrontation with a policeman causing an absurd fight that starts with an argument of whether he is allowed to point the camera at the policeman and escalates into an array of violent, yet playful, insults that highlight many of the social conflicts common in the city.
For Poli II, Okón with the help of a walkie-talkie, intercepts a highly sexualized radio conversation between two policemen as they sat in their parked patrol cars and discussed their plan to invite some girls to have sex with them.
For Poli III, Okón joins a policeman in his private booth and engages in a bizarre conversation.
Poli IV features a policeman who was simply asked to give a demonstration of his baton for the camera. He puts on an impressive performance intertwining his weapon handling abilities with short, but intense, interludes of crotch rubbing.
In the case of Poli V, Okón pays a policeman to do a "square-dance".
In Poli VI, Okón hires a policeman to pose as if he is being mugged by three civilians. Neighbors call the police and Okón, keeping on his camera, is arrested by patrolmen whom he bribes to be released.
Bocanegra (multi-channel video installation, 2007)
Bocanegra is a room-filling multi-channel video installation divided into four sections. For it, Okón collaborates with a group of Third Reich fans, an odd amalgam of true fascists, World War II history buffs, fetishists, and weekend hobbyists. The title refers to a street in Mexico City where they hold weekly meetings that is coincidentally named after the Mexican National anthem’s author. Okón gained their trust, and they agreed to collaborate in a series of orchestrated situations, which were recorded on video.
Bocanegra: A Walk In the Park, consists of five flat-screens set up in the shape of a pentagon, surrounding the viewer with images of group members wearing their original antique uniforms, parading in goose-step around a local park, their march trapped in a never-ending loop, headed nowhere.
Bocanegra: The Salute, includes seven 10” monitors placed on the floor, where all the members of the group salute the camera Nazi style.
Bocanegra: The Movie, is written and directed by Manolo, a member of the group, and produced by Okón. The resulting short movie, played on a monitor and titled Masturbanfuhrer, is about a character (Ejaculhector) who is sexually aroused by the mere look of Hitler's portrait.
Bocanegra: The Gathering, is a large projection where the group celebrates their march with drinks at their weekly meeting. Besides performing bomb evacuations, allegiance ceremonies and songs in broken German, as they get drunker and drunker they forget their fictional roles and begin to discuss their ideas and beliefs only to find out they disagree on most points. The evening ends in fighting and crying.
Octopus, video installation, 2011
Inserted within the US tradition of civil war re-enactments, Octopus re-enacts the Guatemalan civil war. Except, civil war re-enactments traditionally take place in the actual fields where historical battles happened and are performed by people who did not actually fight in the war. Instead, for this occasion the site responds to a symbolic nature: the battlefield is relocated to US soil at a Home Depot parking lot in Los Angeles. And it is performed by the actual combatants who, during the 1990s fought in the war that is being re-enacted: a dozen members of the Los Angeles Mayan community, all recent undocumented immigrants who gather to look for work as day laborers at the same parking lot where the shoot takes place.
The title makes reference to the nickname used in Guatemala for The United Fruit Company, UFCO (now called Chiquita Banana), a US Company based in Guatemala and directly linked to the CIA-led coup and to the following civil war. At the time, UFCO was by far Guatemala’s largest land owner with tax exempt export privileges since 1901 and control of 10% of Guatemala’s economy through a monopoly of its ports and exclusive rights on the nations railroad and telegraph systems.
Oracle, (3 synchronized video channels, 12:36 min. loop, 2015)
In 2014, Oracle, Arizona was the arena for the largest-yet protest against the entrance of unaccompanied children from Central America into the U.S. Okón spoke to the leaders who orchestrated the protest, all members of a militia called the Arizona Border Protectors. They agreed to create staged scenes based on their extreme nationalist ideology as well as to create a live reenactment of the protest. Oracle also includes a video of a chorus where 9 of the immigrant children sing a modified version of the US Maine’s Hymn. The original hymn glorified US invasions around the world. For the new version, the children narrate the US invasion of Guatemala, placing special emphasis on the complicity of the government with transnational corporations. The title also refers to Oracle Corporation, a company known to have deep ties to the CIA and a perfect example of the current geopolitical paradigm in which state structures are increasingly at the service of private interests. Oracle question the adequacy and the relevance of nationalism in this transnational age.
The Indian Project (video installation, 15:26 loop, 2015) '
The Indian Project was shot in Skowhegan, a small town located in the state of Maine, USA. The original town's name was Milburn, but in the 19th century it was changed to what it was considered to be its former Abenaki, Native American name. New England, the region in which Skowhegan is located, was the site of some of the worse Native American genocides in the continent and the town has no remaining Native American population or cultural influence. During the 1960's, the town's Chamber of Commerce decided to erect an 80 feet tall Native American wooden sculpture, which they refer to as "The tallest Indian in the World". In the summer of 2014, the Chamber of Commerce was conducting a restoration of the sculpture. Taking advantage of this occasion, Okón invited the members of the committee in charge of the restoration to conduct a program/performance at their local TV station. The committee members were asked to talk about the history of the statute, about the town's adoption of a Native American identity, as well as to perform a "Native American Trance Ceremony" based on their own notions of what that constitutes.
Yoshua Okón’s visit is supported by an ICAP Grant and the President’s Office.