Imagined Landscapes
“A stereotype is a form of knowledge and identification that oscillates between what is always ‘in its place’ – already known – and something that must be compulsively repeated… it is a discursive articulation of fixity in the construction of otherness.”
— Homi K. Bhabha

The stereotype goes beyond mere visual simplification to become the primary discursive strategy of colonial power.

Presented as the ‘Spanish East’, Morocco was reduced to an archaic territory in urgent need of civilisation under the false pretence of a shared past: Al-Andalus. This colonial farce was underpinned by a supposed moral superiority that Orientalist painting helped to consolidate and disseminate.

The work alludes to and reflects upon this process of disseminating images of ‘the other’ through art. Spanish soldiers, standing tall, elegantly dressed, in their uniforms and on their dusted-off horses, face an anonymous mass of ‘Moors’ —portrayed as oscillating between violence and indolence, and reduced to mere props in an exotic landscape. Whilst General Prim stands out with his name and historical individuality, the native crowd remains faceless, trapped in the mechanisms of the hegemonic imaginary.

* A for ambivalence.
* R for repetition.
* O for objectification.
* F for feminization.