Mima Cortez, born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, is a multidisciplinary artist, illustrator and designer. Currently, she militates as an artivist within the anti-racist and decolonial movement in her country and the Caribbean, through cyberactivism and other digital networks of feminism in Latin America.
Mima is queer, feminist, and defender of the human rights of women and LGBTIQ+ people. She uses diverse media and audiovisual techniques to bring a direct message and from radical tenderness to decolonize the thinking of Venezuelan society. Currently, she is a content curator and illustrator for the feminist artivist collective: Todxs podemos Ser, an organization of which she is also a founder. The work she develops as a visual communicator is characterized by appealing to emotionality and reflection to address complex issues. Her technique is inspired by the words of bell hooks and the contemporary images of Jean- Michel Basquiat. Photography and writing are combined to conceptualize from campaigns with a social focus to the creation of characters and art pieces related to his personal search for identity.
Instagram: @Mima Cortez
Twitter: @wiwaqueilustra
Website: www.mimacortez.com
Technical sheet of the work:
Name: Mal de ojo, March 2023, Acrylic and crayon on canvas.
Description: The outsider’s gaze is able to delineate the narrow space we Black women occupy in society. This piece is composed of two perspectives from which we can experience the dynamics of power and discrimination over racialized bodies. The biases built around race constitute one of the main reasons for women and Black, Indigenous, and people of color to develop low self-esteem, depersonification, detachment from our memories and history, endoracism and diverse emotional and mental affectations that are born from representing the otherness that wants to be erased and belittled in almost all the narratives that constitute the modern world.