YOSHUA OKÓN

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COYOTERÍA, 2003

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Video Installation.
Flat screen and relics from the performance (police baton, tv-guides, dog food dish, suit, construction gloves, costume jewelry, syntetic blanket, shoes, trumpet and straw).

The piece is a re-configuration of Joseph Beuys' 1974 I Like America and America Likes Me. As Beuys used the coyote to symbolize pre-Colonial spirituality on the American Continent, the term "coyote" was originally used by the Aztecs to refer to colonial, wealth-hungry Europeans and later evolved to refer to a man who is hired to "get things done" at a price (i.e. facilitate official paperwork and bureaucratic procedures, take immigrants across borders, etc). Where Beuys lived with a coyote for a week, Okón casts a human "coyote" to play the canine role. Okón stands in for Beuys, and replaces the felt, the shamanic staff and the Wall Street Journal with a synthetic comforter, a police baton and TV Guides.

COYOTERÍA
books, articles & interviews

Regards porteurs au Quai-Branly
Regards porteurs au Quai-Branly

Clémentine Mercier, Libération - July, 2020

Okon Yoshua, Passages Dans le Temps, interview published in the catalogue of the exhibition ''Who is gazing?''
Okon Yoshua, Passages Dans le Temps, interview published in the catalogue of the exhibition ''Who is gazing?''

Christine Barthe - June, 2020

Art Basel Miami 2003

Charmaine Picard, Art Nexus - 2004