Giancarlo Montes Santangelo – Work in Progress

I am interested in how histories live in the body. Histories of colonialism, violence, queerness and fabulation intersect and become meaningful as I map out where I come from and where I want to go. Engaging with archival images made in Argentina and Puerto Rico is a form of research to understand the many moments that have brought me here. They offer an index of divergent histories that cemented the ways in which many, my family and I included, have had to negotiate with the past, present and future. Archival images point to the essential role images play(ed) in the process of nation building and to the varied autonomy peoples have in creating themselves.

I make collages in reference to archival images. I photograph, print, physically collage and photograph iteratively, sometimes printing largely and tiling images in large format in order to interrupt them with my own body. Portraits on the other hand, both archived and presently made, offer me opportunities to describe these histories of oppression, resistance and world making. I photograph family and friends to investigate the ways in which they navigate these shifting relationships between colonialism, nationhood, citizenship and home. Some images reference history directly and the implications of image production during the turn of the 20th century. Some images are symbolic in nature in that they describe these experiences indirectly; a cupboard filled with glassware, a dog hidden behind a fence and leaves or boys looking at a city from above.

Giancarlo Montes Santangelo was born and raised in Maryland. He photographs and collages in an effort to map histories of colonialism, violence, queerness and fabulation. Collaged photographs bring together the artist’s own body and staged scenes against archival images. In 2019, Santangelo was invited to exhibit his photographs alongside Paul Mpagi Sepuya and other collaborators as part of the Whitney Biennial. In 2020 he published his first monograph “Improvising Sight Lines” with Monolith Editions. This book includes images, collages and writing and is held in the libraries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Recently, he was awarded the Aperture x Google Creator Labs Photo Fund and completed a residency with Tangent Projects.