My work plays at the intersection of gesture, ritual, and myth within the Black diasporic imagination. I rework, repurpose, and transform artifacts such as brown paper bags, Hispano cuaba soap, dominoes, and organic residues through actions like sewing, folding, cutting, burning, and layering.
I use the subjective experiences of these artifacts or actions to interrogate how they create social meaning and cultural norms. These explorations point to slippages of self and tensions around colonial relations to exoticization while expanding our capacity for pleasure, refusal, and liberation.
Francheska Alcántara is a queer Afro-Caribbean interdisciplinary artist based between The Bronx and Tulsa, OK.
Francheska was raised by a village, living at the house of their grandparents, Felicia y Emilio. Around the house, it was Francheska’s sole responsibility to collect the tamarind, limes, tropical cherries and passion fruit. Francheska was also in charge of dusting off the classic and heavy mahogany furniture with the thick plastic coverings and their grandmother’s faceless clay dolls, as well as a wooden Cleopatra bust.
The house had a cistern with a narrow opening where Francheska became a self-taught floater. Also, they lived right next to an empty lot that served as the neighborhood’s dump, urban jungle, and baseball field. Francheska cried at every single one of their birthdays. They always chose to wear pants over dresses, and their main source of calcium was chocolate milk. One of Francheska’s favorite activities is to climb cinder-block walls and go on artist’s dates.