Dennis Delgado

Contact

My work examines the ideologies of colonialism and their historical presence in the current moment. Whether working with artificial intelligence, video games, drone images, or looking at historical sites (like the Bronx Zoo), my practice reflects on the Eurocentric perspectives present in popular institutions and in American visual culture. Most recently, I am examining how digital technologies shape the way we think about people of color. Through facial detection, scripting, and photo-editing I have assembled a group of portraits that composite all of the recognized faces found in films about blackness and policing blackness. The resulting portraits raise questions about how facial recognition systems disregard or perceive different ethnicities. How do these artificial ‘ways of seeing’ influence us as consumers of images, and as every day citizens.? What implications do they have for people of color? Through digital compositing (and other techniques) I try to disrupt and subvert the constructs of the colonial gaze and its notions of centrality, superiority and entitlement. While doing this my work often reflects my identity and social perspective. How do these contemporary technologies of seeing establish power relations, and exert control over who or what we look at, and who or what we ignore? And how do these practices exist today, and finally why do they persist? These are some of the questions I confront in my work.

-

Dennis Delgado was born in the South Bronx, and received a BA in Film Studies from the University of Rochester as well as an MFA in Sculpture from the City College of New York (CUNY). His work examines the forms through which ideologies of colonialism persist and re-inscribe themselves, revealing a historical presence in the current moment. He is interested in how technologies of vision reproduce the scopic regimes of expansionism and neo-liberal governance. His work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, UC Irvine, UT Austin, Palo Alto Center for the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, and at the Cooper Union.