Bandada: Nicaragua

Stills from Live Intervention at the Huembes Folkloric Market in Managua, Nicaragua

Bandada: Nicaragua was a live intervention/performance that took place in the Huembes folkloric market of Managua, Nicaragua in July of 2008.  This work was conceived as a means of exploring the relationship between the influence of the foreign consumer and the presentation of one’s own culture to the world.  In this work, I wore an outfit purchased from the market that vendors had marketed as typical Nicaraguan attire.  I had purchased these items over a period of many years as a tourist and then as a foreigner living in Nicaragua, but there was an element to every piece of  “traditional Nicaraguan clothing” that remained timeless—real Nicaraguan people never wore them.  Wearing “traditional Nicaraguan garments,” I went into the market and sold a creation of my own—hot pink coconut sweets that I had purchased in the market the day before, molded into the shape of the little wooden birds that were popular Nicaraguan souvenirs sold and made exclusively for tourists. I marketed my Americanized version of things “Nica” (Nicaraguan) to the market vendors and during the course of an afternoon used my very North American Spanish to sell my goods.