Juan Carlos Escobedo

I originally committed to using cardboard as a primary making material during graduate school, which was at a predominantly white, middle-class, institution located in Boston, MA– a stark difference from the brown, Spanish-speaking city of El Paso TX which I am from. I used this material because it was available,practical, and I was aware that it could be used for more than just packaging. My family in Cuidad Juárez used it as the principal building material for their homes. As I used it for object making, people overly questioned its presence, they encouraged me to cover its brownness, or they were simply offended by it. My identity underwent a similar amount of scrutiny— my American citizenship was questioned, I was encouraged to diminish my brownness, and people felt uncomfortable discussing my socio-economic background. This forced me to evaluate myself in spaces that were not originally aimed at people with my socioeconomic background or race. I used cardboard more adamantly because its identity is charged with "negative" perceptions and physical traits similar to mine. This led to the creation of "Cartone by J.ESC" , a fictitious fashion line with accompanying catalog descriptions. With each satirical description, I offered alternatives to expensive clothes, but warned the viewer of the social implications that arise from wearing a garment that is charged with "undesirable" socioeconomic and racial characteristics. Through humor, I intended to make the audience complicit in normalized negative perceptions of "lowbrow" materials and brownness. As I continued working something changed. I introduced landscapes and miniature homes made out of white materials. These new spaces are replicas of movie and t.v. homes I YEARNED to inhabit as a kid. They were spaces that were aspirational to my young self and which allowed a brief escape from my reality. People really responded to the new change in the J.ESC series. The miniature white spaces began to validate the haphazard brown landscapes and homes I had made previously... and so, a new parallel between these objects and myself appeared. I realized that I am no longer just a brown individual with features like the brown cardboard, but that through my education, I acquired a code of whiteness that validated my brown identity. This white code allows me to maneuver through professional and academic spaces that my previous self was not privy to. This is similar to the perception of the "valid" structure of the white homes. They exist, unquestioned and admired, but the only difference between them and the brown homes is 90 degree angles and color. The funny thing is that all white paper starts off as brown and is merely bleached of its original color. In the pursuit of these aspirational white spaces, my identity has undergone some whitewashing and deracialization, and I foolishly shed central aspects of my brown identity. Now I am in constant negotiation with these selves. These clothes are a physical manifestation of what has been described as "the gentrification of a brown body" where the resentment and tension between these identities is palpable.