Venezuelan Petroleum for the South Bronx (They Called it Mena’)

(2024)

Venezuelan Petroleum, Sargassum Algae, Glycerine, Water, Deadstock Silk Organza

80” W x 140” H x 1” D

Venezuelan Petroleum for the South Bronx was made in Cabimas, the Venezuelan city where the country’s oil industry was born, and my mother’s hometown. It uses petroleum her uncle received as a present to make his own gasoline due to shortages of this fuel.

The piece seeks to start conversations around a chapter starting in 2005, in which the Venezuelan government invested millions of dollars in “humanitarian aid” in the South Bronx, via CIT, its USA-based petroleum company. art of a larger, and ongoing, petro-diplomacy campaign partaken by the Venezuelan government that continues even today, in the context of Venezuela’s economic collapse, one of the largest in contemporary history.

The piece looks to re-imagine multipolar world building, centering citizens instead of governments.

The piece is part of They Called it Mena’, an ongoing research project exploring petroleum’s past, present, and future, centering overlooked histories and narratives. It borrows its name from Mena’, the word used by the Wayuu people to refer to the black and viscous material that emanated from their territory’s subsoil.