LONDON.- Following six months as the South London Gallery’s Graduate-in-Residence in the Outset Artists’ Flat, Alicia Reyes McNamara presents her first solo show in a public institution. Reyes McNamara’s work aims to challenge incomplete identities constructed by two-dimensional ideas of Latino culture. Her work translates the Mexican American or Chicana identity through her explorations of language as a territory and space to challenge ideas of authenticity within a diaspora.

Combining sculpture, painting and video work in the exhibition, Reyes McNamara investigates key texts by Mexican American theorist Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Dominican American writer Junot Díaz, and Cuban American poet Gustavo Pérez Firmat.

In her exhibition Reyes McNamara refers to concept of an ‘in-between’ space where identity is fluid and where two cultures and their languages intersect. A monumental text piece, created from three dimensional letters dipped in plaster, highlights the words of Gustavo Pérez Firmat from his collection of poems Bilingual Blues and expresses the notion of bilingual and bicultural existence, more commonly known within the Latino community as Mestizaje.

The multiplicity of language and radical code-switching plays a significant role in the exhibition. A text piece which appears to traverse through the gallery wall is written in Spanglish, a hybrid language of English and Spanish, and suggests the idea of an in-between space in which a language of resistance is encouraged.

In a video work Reyes McNamara also explores the rituals and customs practiced in Latin America, and the reclaiming of these traditions and beliefs. Accompanied by the romantic ballad Sin Ti by the Latin trio Los Panchos, it features a pair of hands burying burnt-out candles into the earth, a symbolic ritual to harness and ground good intentions. The nails are decorated with elaborate decals of the Virgin Mary, Virgin of Guadalupe, Aztec goddess of the moon; Coatlicue, goddess of earth and fertility; Tonantzin, and goddess of filth and purification; Tlazolteotl, female icons who are often honoured in Latin American culture.