Radial China Supay Queen (collage)

Radial Supay Collage
Mixed media collage

This work began by reworking my earlier oil painting of a China Supay mask on wood. I printed, cut, and arranged it into a radial design, creating a fractured, almost monstrous repetition. Beneath it lies a baroque portrait of a Spanish queen. A nod to colonial arrogance and dismissals like, “Bolivia doesn’t even exist on the map.”

What interests me here is how Bolivians themselves have long reimagined the Supay: giving the devil light skin and pale eyes as a form of critique, a way of casting Spaniards as demons. In this collage, those histories collide. Colonial portraiture fractured under the weight of our own mythmaking.

The radial cut was inspired by the work of collage artist Lorna Simpson, who created a striking piece. Her technique gave me a structure to both destroy and rebuild an image, letting fragments reveal new meaning.