Amy Gelera
Amy Gelera (they/she) is a Latinx Graphic Designer and Art Director based in Helsinki. Their design and research aim to visualise, advocate for and support efforts that aim for systemic change.
Hegemonia Saliva
Art InstallationCollaboration with Domink Fleischmann
Exhibited at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte as part of Nuoret, 2023.
In our work, Dominik and I demand accountability of colonial powers. Our collaboration questions the relationship between Europe and Latin America and discusses responsibilities regarding the global ecological crisis. We draw from our personal photographic archives and experiences in Central America and Finland. Situated in an intimate space the works attract, provoke and repel through a vibrant mix of pulsating colors, personal stories and activist research within the clash of fragile prints and trashy digital media.
The artist duo is influenced and inspired by the discourse directly linking modernity and coloniality, developed by Latin American authors Aníbal Quijano and Walter Mignolo. Modernity and coloniality are inseparable, two sides of the same coin — similar to the dark side of the moon, coloniality being the dark side of modernity.
At Hippolyte’s Studio space, the two artists discussed the relationship of hegemonies between Latin America and Europe in their personal visual language. The work clashed mediums and materials, perceptions and values. A flashy projection bouncing between emoji hearts and protest footage of the streets of Guatemala, meet two framed artworks that speak of violence and separations in the name of conservation. The media installation is opposed by a calm reading nook presenting two handmade zines and Amy Gelera’s academic research on the colonisation of visual culture and the oppressive influence of stock photography.
Paraíso Terrenal
Risography publicationCollaboration with Domink Fleischmann
Exhibited at Uusi Kipinä Gallery, 2021
This photographic publication emerged from a visual dialogue in 2021, where we explored the entanglements of colonization—of people and of nature. The series focuses on the exotic plants of Helsinki’s Winter Garden, presenting them as objects of observation to evoke the ways supremacy, superiority, and objectification have historically shaped both human and ecological relations. Printed in risography, the work reflects on how colonial legacies continue to inform our ways of seeing and relating to the natural world.
The Cyber West manifested in the Corporeal Rest
Master of Arts ThesisAalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture
Spring 2022
Project Page
In brief, The Cyber West manifested in the Corporeal Rest is an MA thesis that interlaces theoretical, critical, social, and visual arguments. It seeks to create a protest against the colonization of visual culture by acknowledging the oppressive consequences created by the fluctuation between digital stock photography and its manifestation in the tangible world outside of ‘the West’.
How is digital stock photography contributing to the colonization of visual communication in urban Guatemalan spaces? Currently, the dogmatic relationship between western ideals and their visual omnipresence in cities, has created problematic and oppressive visual phenomena. Among these is the widespread use of digital stock photography in visual communication design. The invasion of western images fluctuating between digital stock photography and their manifestation in the corporeal Global South impulse the lack of representation of people of colour and impose whiteness as the visual standard.
The massive use of stock photography inside Guatemalan urban spaces contributes to Eurocentric ideals through neoliberal systems–stock photography is a tool for visual neocolonialism. Furthermore, the research suggests terminology that helps describe the phenomenon in question, which can be potentially incorporated in the visual communication design jargon.