Cristina Velásquez is a visual artist working mainly with photography and paper weavings. Her work investigates representation and translation in the context of transcultural relationships —both as mechanisms for oppression and silencing, as well as powerful tools for connection and resistance. She is interested in the way one culture translates another, and how inevitably, a dominant culture sanitizes and reduces the other in a subtle, and not so subtle, continuity of colonialism. Similarly, Velásquez explores the ways social constructions of value, such as, race, class, and labor distribution, are shaped by images and language, echoing a larger system of power and exchange that goes beyond borders and nationality. Velásquez asks how photography and weaving might be called upon to further the understanding of social politics, history, and narrative, particularly in relation to Latin American studies.
