Bites Will Not Trust Like Tough Love

Peruvian Kukuli Velarde makes work indebted to folk tradition and traditional ornamentation, exploring the new politics of identity, estrangements of context and acts of “forgetfulness” that occur as art is displaced from its origin. ‘Bites. Will Not Trust. Like Tough Love’ reveals itself as awakened in its situation, the mythic figure of half-bull, half-man caught uncertain, pulled from privacy, in its beautifully lifelike visage. The artist projects her own image onto the creature with the use of a head cast to reclaim the objects identity, and inherits and absorbs the (racially motivated) belittling title that reflects ongoing derogatory behaviour towards Latin America and its women.