Maximilian Juliá
Diarios del Fango

  1. Asimilación
  2. Contrabando
  3. Los Paquetes
  4. La Finca
  5. El Estudio
  6. Marco Telúrico
  7. Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

Diarios Del Fango (2020) is a series of works spanning photography, earth paintings, sculptural objects, pigments, and the archiving of materials. I am documenting the work through a series of journal entries describing the physicality, process, and the stories embedded within the materials. 

© 2020

1. Assimilation 

There has been a strong conflict between ideologies throughout my upbringing. I felt lured into beliefs of historical and cultural shame. I would think that everything outside Puerto Rico was better. The aesthetics of European culture were much better; everything made in the United States was better. I considered the aesthetics of Puerto Rican art to be cheesy and lame, empty of information, and culturally weak. The history of Puerto Rico was taught to me from a lense of shame and disgrace where the American assimilation was better. Throughout my adulthood, I have felt exiled from my own culture without leaving the country.

Concerned about my low grades in Spanish and English, a high school principal asked what language do you speak. This question has been with me ever since. I learned to speak and think in both languages, enough to have an "Arroz con Culo" as my mother would say. We call this Spanglish.

My work is very much about self-discovery, an attempt to fill a void of disconnect, to overflow space in between nature and me, an unresolved longing effect. "Ni de aquí ni de allá"

I'm looking for ways to overturn these nostalgic references by exploring personal connections to family land, memories of childhood, and more profound questions that connect the soil as a material and the landscape as a basis for identity.