Vicious Vitamins recently discovered the work of Sofia Cordova, a San Francisco-based artist borned in Puerto-Rico in 1985 who recently graduated in MFA from the California College of the Arts program in San Francisco. We strongly recommend to visit her web page and listen to her music.
Her work seeks to give body and testament to Caribbean identity, as compromised by Caribbean Diaspora, through the creation of a concept album and installation space. The album, which exists currently in two EP forms (Lamento Borincano & Baby, Remember Your Name), is performed through and by the group ChuCha Santamaría Y Usted (myspace: www.myspace.com/chuchasantamaria) and details simultaneously occurring narratives borrowed from family photographs and Caribbean histories (primarily pivotal points in Caribbean colonialism; resistance of and assimilation with) through the lens of dance music.
"I approach dance music both as it existed for me as a kid: a beacon of glamour and mutable identities as well as in the way that it exists for Caribbean immigrants and their similarly marginalized Gay and Black contingencies upon arriving in the States. These same photographs also serve as the source for photo-paintings designed to inform the domestic chronology of ChuCha. The installation Baby, Remember My Name, is a space which serves as the receptacle for the 'remixed' photographs, music videos, costumes and promotional materials which constitute the mythology of ChuCha. The space acts as a facsimile of a teenager's/superfan's room and a dressing room, potentially belonging to ChuCha herself. In this fabricated liminal zone, I hope to describe the space of dance songs recorded off the radio late night; songs which to me were laden with the lure, possibility and sorrow of leaving home to study/work/'be better off' in the US."
Sofia Cordova web site: www.sofiacordova.com
ChuCha Santamaria y usted: www.myspace.com/chuchasantamaria
The MySpace page features the first 3 songs released in the first EP "Lamento Borincano".
