This Land is my Land

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With this conceptual art piece, I wanted to focus on the idea of how the idea of the Cowboy was stolen from both Spanish/Latin American culture with Vaquero’s and Gaucho’s and the land that was once theirs. I wanted to illustrate this through having a person down on the ground, implying that they are dead with their materials being stolen from them. These items are primarily a Sombrero, a guitar, and a maraca. I felt as if these objects capture the basic physical understanding of Latin American Culture. When one sees the objects, they instantly know that they come from that culture.
The person who comes around to take the objects is supposed to represent the European, whether that be Spanish or American can be up to discussion, but I feel as if it is both of them since they both have had active part in colonializing the area. The whip on his neck is supposed to represent the power that the Europeans had and how that power might come back to hurt them with how the whip gets tighter around their neck. The use of Vicente Fernandez’s “Aca Entre Notre” (Here between us) is used to help illustrate the betrayal that colonialism had done to the world. Steely Dan’s “Gaucho” is used to point out the attitude of the Cowboy towards the Latin American with the song becoming more distorted to indulge the rage of the Latin American. The quote, “This Land is my Land” is a lyric from the popular folk song taken out of context to show that the land is stolen. I went with a vertical view to help illustrate the close but distant connection that is created through this betrayal. I was inspired by the work of Aaron Higgns in making the decision with his work “American Bison”.

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