At the Arsenale, Ana Segovia’s video reinterprets fragments of old Mexican films, creating a dialogue between cinema and fluorescent painting, which is her main artistic trait.
Mexican artist Ana Segovia’s video sets out to revolutionize our understanding of gender by slapping feminine, neon colours on machos. Her short video of 2021 Pos se acabó este cantar is screened at the center of a pink-painted room turned into a burlesque-themed cabaret club. In Segovia’s video, two charros – Mexican macho cowboys, one of which is played by the artist herself – show their typical clothing curiously adorned with pink and blue embroidery. We never get to see their faces, and their gender is deliberately left ambiguous. The two dress each other, buckle their belts, slap each other’s hands and faces, and shake each other in a vaguely homoerotic crescendo of violence. Ana Segovia highlights ambiguity in their actions as well as the fact that the stereotypes of love, identity, and tradition have been imposed on us by a patriarchal culture that needs undoing.
