TETRAPAK PRINT ON VINTAGE LINEN
R 3 850.00
 
The Mercantile Infanta' [Wabi Sabi]. 2025. Tetra Pak print on vintage linen, heirloom lace, brass dowel and chain. 450mm x 550mm. Edition variable of 3 | 1 Available.
 
The Mercantile Infanta' [Wabi Sabi] is Tetra Pak print on vintage and antique reconfigured 'lappies', and heirloom lace. Each piece carries the material memory of domestic labour and empire. This work is a direct reference to Spanish colonialism—drawing on Velázquez’s portraits of the infantas as icons of empire. It gestures not only to the conquest of the so-called New World but also to the broader era of maritime imperialism: the Age of Sail, the East India companies, and the vast colonial machinery they set in motion. Beneath the Infanta’s skirt, a teleology is revealed, from early colonial expansion to the monstrous scale of anthropocene shipping and consumerism.

The tattoos across her Habsburg face reference Indonesian cultural tattoos, marks that speak to the violent entanglements of cultural appropriation, domination, and resistance. Behind her, stylised waves and currents invoke orientalist wave pattern, with undulating forms echoed in the folds of her stately dress; enfolding the eurocentric desire for hydrocolonial global expansion.

The image is printed from marks incised into a discarded tetrapak, an ironic matrix that mirrors the extractive, disposable logic of empire.