Performance Appraisal is an ongoing series that revises Ramírez's body of work prior 2024, through administrative language, instruments or processes instigated in conscientious gallery management. The framework of a 'performance appraisal' implies that Ramírez' ouvre is being measured, reviewed and valorised.
Performance Appraisal 2 addresses The Perfect Ever (or how oil discovered humans) 2021-2024, a work that Ramírez first presented in 2021 and continued to show in various iterations as a video, most notably at NGV's Melbourne Now in 2023.
The original project was a single channel that carefully re-edited scenes from the Mexican film ‘Las Rosas del Milagro’ (‘The Miracle Roses’, 1960) to hijack the image of the Virgin Guadalupe with an eerie and viscous entity. The original film — acquired by the artist from a Catholic shop — tells the story of how Saint Diego encountered Mary.
For This Hideous Replica curated by Joel Stern and Sean Dockray, Ramírez created a second channel by replicating this process with a later film called La Virgen de Guadalupe (1976), which shares the structure of the apparitions in Las Rosas Del Milagro (1960). The similarity between these films allowed Ramírez to make the same work twice, with two different films, using the same process.
Ramírez then presented these videos in sync on CRT monitors on a plinth with dripping bitumen, creating the illusion that the orbs were dripping out of the screen. Finally, he enveloped the works within his Performance Appraisal series by commissioning a Cultural Safety and Environmental Audit of the work to Eliki Reade, presented on site.
"The implication here is the subversive tongue-in-cheek nature of the work, which employs a harmful form of ‘knowledge privilege’. The context richness of the work is lost on those who aren’t able to personally discern the subversiveness of the work are excluded, and therefore reinforces capitalism’s power over individuals and systems. In this instance, I would suggest including supplementary texts from scholars who might provide alternative thought to that of capitalism’s champions, such as The Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engekls & Karl Marx, as a token of consciousness raising for the general public."
-Eliki Reade
