Santísima Macarena
Senior Capstone Exhibit

The original conceptual motivation for creating the "Santísima Macarena” piece was an exploration of the cyclical contradictions in Spanish culture and history. Spain, but certainly Andaluçía, is a deeply Catholic land with an often hidden Muslim — whether hegemony or at least 1,000 years of simply living in the Iberian Peninsula — and Jewish presence. The Catholic kingdoms of Spain first developed their methods for cleansing lands of their inhabitants or forcing their assimilation and extracting the maximum possible as they conquered land from Islamic rulers. But as these processes were exported to indigenous America after the conquest of the final Islamic kingdom in Spain, the Nasrid Emirate of Granada, in 1492… it was people from Andaluçía who formed the bulk of settler populations, including people from former Muslim and Jewish communities (and likely some still of faith). Finally, Andaluçía is the region with the most mass graves, owed to decades of brutal repression from fascist factions during the Civil War and subsequent Franco dictatorship.

In particular, the home of La Macarena, the key subject of the work — La Basilica de Macarena — was built with significant support from fascist general Queipo de Llano. When I visited the Basilica in July 2022, I did not yet know that Queipo was buried there, despite being responsible for at least 40,000 disappearances and murders. He was buried there from 1951 until being exhumed in autumn of 2022 after decades of protests.