The bombing of Baghdad–deadly fireworks bursting across an eerie night sky on his television screen–reminded Mark Nelson of the video game Nintendo, a fitting comparison coming from an artist who believes that in America anything can be reduced to an amusement. While he watched the news, ideas started coming for his new installation piece, GringoLandia II.
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Nelson’s first GringoLandia, mounted in a Chicago gallery a year ago, was a 3-D walk-through arcade constructed of objects found on barrio streets, American artifacts, toy machine guns, and pictures of General Noriega. The idea was to portray the Panamanian invasion (during which the artist, who spent much of his childhood in that country, and his Panamanian wife watched for news of their family and friends) as a perverse Disney park appealing to America’s appetite for entertainment. The sequel echoes this theme. “It’s about the whole idea of trivializing somebody else’s world,” Nelson says. “Everything can be made into some kind of bizarre cartoon and be accepted by so many people in this country because it doesn’t affect their lives.”
Nelson’s front door was blocked by GringoLandia II’s walls for five months while he was building it. “I really have to live with a piece before I can put it out in public,” he says. Just as he tried to alter his own environment with the piece, his artistic aim is to pull viewers into the unfamiliar, challenge them to see things differently.
