Adál Maldonado

The photographer Adál Maldonado (better known as ADÁL) is a Nuyorican (Puerto Rican in New York) who explores the relationship between conceptual art and migrant identity in humorous images where the real and the surreal go hand in hand. A member of the Nuyorican poetry movement, ADÁL explores the relationship between language and image, often creating plays on words in English, Spanish and Spanglish. In this self-portrait, the artist depicts himself as an elegant gentleman in formal dress but unable to hide his Latino identity given that he is shown with a huge Daliesque moustache in the form of a banana. By revealing his banana moustache, this jibaro peasant with his bourgeois clothes shatters the Eurocentric view of self-portraiture while reflecting its critical relationship with Eurocentrism. As a decolonial proposal, the Conceptual Jíbaro Art frees Latin American art from copying European rules and uses the banana to focus on the Latino identity that has been reinvented in New York.