Caroline Garcia works across live performance and video through a hybridised aesthetic of cross-cultural dance, ritual practice, new media, and the sampling of popular culture and colonial imagery.

This work explores the history of ‘whitewashing’ in mainstream cinema, archiving instances of white actors taking on the role of non-white characters, who are often transformed into familiar stereotypical characters through make-up, costume, and tightly choreographed gestures and manoeuvres. Garcia edits herself into scenes, appearing to move across time zones, places and cultures with the intention of reauthoring and dismantling dominant Western narratives.

By putting herself in the picture and rewriting history, Garcia illustrates the ongoing erasure of non-white peoples and at the same time asks us to reconsider how we engage with non-inclusive colonialist cinematic representations that disempower, homogenise and fetishise cultures outside of Hollywood and the film industry.

Caroline Garcia