Afrofeminism and Caribbean ethnoracial identity in the creative work of La Flor del Tamarindo

Abstract

This article aims to problematize the connections of the world of art and contemporary design with the survival of an embodied ethnocentric cultural logic, based on the creative work of Elizabeth Montero, Afro-Dominican artist known as La Flor del Tamarindo. Her production is an afrofeminist, decolonial and anticolonial turning point. On the one hand, it denounces the assimilationist bias of a white and bleaching culture that, from Western artistic and aesthetic criteria, legitimizes a series of values and validates works of art, establishing a system of canonical values. And on the other hand, taking the role de “producer” in Benjamin terms (Benjamin, 2003, 39-40), she questions the neocolonial professionalizing discourse, which she does not hesitate to otherize and discredit other imaginaries, work methods and design languages, far from the narrative parameters typical of Western Assimilationism. Starting from these logics, it analyzes the artist’s production and Afro-descendant creation by other exponents residing in Barcelona.