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IÑIGO MANGLANO-OVALLE |
Composed of three vertical panels, this artwork is from a project called "The Garden of Delights," commissioned in 1998 for the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston Salem, North Carolina. The project consisted of digital photographs of the DNA "fingerprints" of forty-eight people. The artist selected sixteen individuals who in-turn selected two others, either family or friends, to be included with them in a triptych. Manglano-Ovalle collaborated with scientists at a genetics laboratory to create digital images of the DNA sequences of each of his subjects, which he then used to make large Cibachrome prints. Here the participants are artist Doug Ischar who chose to be shown with his partner Joe and fellow artist and friend, Genevieve Cadieux.
This work is layered with wide-ranging issues and ideas drawn from the history of art, the ethical dilemmas of modern genetic science, and our ever-evolving definitions of race and community. The title of the work alludes to a triptych by Dutch artist Hieronymous Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, ca. 1501-1510, which is generally interpreted as a morality tale of original sin. But a less obvious reference is to Spanish casta paintings of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Casta paintings were commissioned by Spanish colonial officials in the New World to illustrate the intermingling of races to show and name the various lines of racial mixing between Spaniards, indigenous peoples, and Africans. Each casta comprises sixteen scenes; the same number of people Manglano-Ovalle selected for his project. Here, however, the sixteen people are not related through bloodlines and genetics but instead through personal choice. With abstract form and color, Manglano-Ovalle presents a view of our contemporary world where definitions of race, ethnicity, and community are complicated by science but liberated through individual free will.
- Jennifer Bayles, Educator for Special Projects