I am a ‘diaspora’ Latinx. Hola. It means everyone back home thinks I am basic (2023) is a live performance employing a black piñata filled with institutional confetti. Every time the performer strikes the piñata, an interior mic processes the sound to resemble a grunt, creating the illusion that the object is suffering. For its first presentation, Ramírez filled the piñata with shredded copies of the anthology book A Short Ride in a Fast Machine: Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces: 1985 - 2005, shredded by Gertrude's staff. This gesture is a pun on the title of the book, for the piñata was a rapid vessel for its torn pages, that existed for only a short period of time. Since confetti is a celebratory material but requires the shredding of paper for its making, it invites complex interpretations.
Ramírez went on to curate his own anthology of Gertrude called Bureaucracy of Feelings, surveying 2015-2025 as part of their retrospective series Past Is Prologue.
Piñata fabricated by Zamara Zamara and sound by Bonnie Cummings. Funded by Multicultural Arts Victoria through their Diaspora Commissions and City of Melbourne.
