by Henry Estrada
Curator
Published: January 27, 1999
Illegal Games is emblematic of Anaida Hernandez's commitment to the cause of human rights. Throughout her artistic career, Hernandez's work has bridged boundaries of geography, class, ethnicity and gender by always inviting the public's participation.
In this interactive installation for the New Museum's Public Access gallery, Hernandez invites visitors to enter a disorienting maze of corridors and rooms to try their luck at games of fortune and thereby experience life as it is lived by the undocumented immigrant. This metaphorical rite of passage mirrors the difficult conditions endured by immigrants seeking refuge in this country. Like the ebb and flow of migrations across national boundaries, Hernandez's labyrinth is formless, dictated only by human passage and chance decisions.
On entering Illegal Games the visitor/player negotiates a series of casino-like rooms by spinning a game wheel or by tossing dice encoded with colorfully painted symbols drawn from everyday life. Each symbol in Illegal Games represents an aspect of the American dream for the immigrant, and each move decides the consequent paths or pitfalls involved in attaining that dream. Purposely avoiding text, Hernandez relies exclusively on a lexicon of signs and symbols understood by people from all cultures and walks of life.
In the first game room, Yo-Yo, I.D., the visitor/player enters a hall of mirrors filled with over one hundred and fifty yo-yos that hang from the ceiling. The yo-yos are painted with symbols that represent aspects of identity: nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, and the like. Reflected by the mirrored walls, the identity symbols are multiplied into a dense jungle of infinite possibilities. In Wheel of Fortune: The American Dream, the second game in the series, the visitor/player spins a roulette wheel at a gaming table, painted with corresponding symbols that determine the fate of the immigrant's journey. A key represents opportunity. A star signals fame and fortune. The Statue of Liberty's crown matches up with an image of barbed wire--a mixed message that points to freedom, but a freedom hard won. Illegal Games ends, appropriately enough, with a toss of the dice. In Loaded Dice, Hernandez has constructed a cement boat converting the hull into a playing board for a crap shoot. One die determines the player's mode of transportation through a variety of symbols such as a plane, a boat, a bicycle, and a pair of feet. The other die determines the player's fate with images such as a skull, a bridge, and a jail cell. The eagle is the ultimate prize, representing American citizenship.
By responding to cues provided by these symbols, visitors/players confront their own desires, motivations, and aspirations while taking part in a bewildering new narrative. In the process, they are transformed from spectators to active participants, experiencing first-hand the choices and risks faced by immigrants in this country who must struggle every day to forge a sense of identity on a constantly shifting playing field.
Currently based in Brooklyn, Anaida Hernandez was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico in 1954. She studied at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez, then received her M.A. from the Escuela de San Carlos in Mexico City, where she studied painting and printmaking. Graphic arts have a long history in Puerto Rico, and Hernandez has been a major innovator in the field. She is widely known there for her politically conscious use of prints, paintings and site-specific installations to address domestic violence and other human rights issues. She frequently employs games, riddles or puzzles as a strategy for involving viewers in her work.
As part of a series of game-related works, Hernandez constructed an immense crossword puzzle from hundreds of individual wood-cut prints which spelled out words pertaining to the tragedy of domestic violence. This monumental work on paper entitled Cruci-Grama (1995) extended the trajectory of traditional printmaking to a more interactive installation work which engaged viewers in the deciphering of its meaning. Here Hernandez reconfigured a fragmented jumble of letters and images on a grid to spell out a chilling text condemning violent acts against women.
In a related installation, Till Death Do Us Part (1994), Interview_with_the_Artist_Frame-Free Hernandez placed one hundred small paintings in as many niche-like boxes, stacking these in rows to form a memorial wall dedicated to victims of domestic violence. Each of the one hundred nichos represented a tribute to one of the one hundred Puerto Rican women killed by their spouses between 1990 and 1993. Mementos were placed in each niche, adding personal content to an urgent social crisis. In this somber installation, the vastness of the trauma was poignantly underscored by the serial repetition of boxes, names, and dates.
Like Hernandez's previous work, Illegal Games draws our attention to a tragic social reality by equating its public implications with individual decisions we make everyday. As players in Hernandez's game, we come to realize that the plight of undocumented immigrants--an underclass woven into the economic, social and cultural fabric of this country--is not merely an abstract political issue, but one with concrete personal consequences.
Henry C. Estrada, Curator
By John Glassie
New York Times Magazine: “(Real) Games (Real) People Play” -
Immigration wasn't much of an issue in last fall's election, possibly because the Government has been cracking down so heavily on illegal aliens. In the two years since Congress passed tough new enforcement legislation, the Feds have deported 300,000 immigrants, twice as many as in the two years before.
These days, coming to America illegally is a real crap shoot -- which is precisely the point of an interactive exhibition called ''Juegos Ilegales/Illegal Games'' that opened Thursday at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in SoHo.
Created by Anaida Hernandez, the casinolike installation allows visitors to embark down the risky path of unlawful entry. ''Immigrants dream of a better life,'' she says. ''This exhibition is about the chances they take to achieve that dream.'' The artist herself arrived in New York (legally) two years ago from Puerto Rico. In her Brooklyn studio recently, she provided a preview of her rather idiosyncratic work.
Would-be immigrants enter the installation through a small doorway, pass flashing lights and then find themselves in side a completely dark tunnel, an effect Hernandez says she hopes will create "uncertainty."
They must then make their way through a mirrored labyrinth, more disorienting lights and a bizarre blockade: 150 multicolored yo-yos hanging in midair.
"In Spanish, 'Yo' is 'I'," Hernandez says, "so the yo-yos represent the double identity of all immigrants and the struggle to maintain your heritage while adopting American culture." Some are painted with national flags; others, with images like glossy lips, golf clubs and the Chase Manhattan Bank logo.
Those with identities still intact continue through the maze to a wheel of fortune, where they can spin for prosperity, power, sex, fame and the like. A corresponding table of symbols, however, reveals the reality. Those who get the symbol of a wedding bell, for example, find out that their hope for true love in America may be replaced by the less romantic goal of a completed N-400 green-card form. Lady Liberty's crown, Hernandez's symbol for freedom, turns out to be a crown of thorns.
Players head toward the final game. To determine the outcome of their journey, they roll symbol-laden dice on the deck of a handmade concrete boat. "It's very likely that this boat will sink," Hernandez says. This is a metaphor for the big chance you take coming here."
One die is painted with images that represent modes of transportation; the other, with those representing ultimate fates.
In Henandez's world, it's possible for players to travel by horse and reach New York or to cross the border on skateboard and achieve citizenship. But it's far more likely that they will roll something like a fishhook (you're caught), a skull (you're dead) or a nasty looking question mark (you're in general trouble).
"Its very dangerous, and the vast majority of illegal immigrants do not achieve their dreams," says Hernandez. "But they try anyway. People go to a casino to win. No one goes hoping they're going to lose everything they have."
