Dream Hotline

Ivester Contemporary is proud to present Natalia Rocafuerte’s, Dream Hotline, a multimedia installation inspired by surveying a “dream hotline” that was created by the artist to collect recordings of Mexican immigrant women’s dreams. Rocafuerte sought to answer the question; “Can the rendering of Mexican immigrant women’s dreams through a media landscape give insight into the complexity of identity and land?” The artist expands on her idea by including images of fruit as a way to understand immigration’s intertwined complexity in creating personal identity.  
 
From the artist:
“Fruit, like people, must pass specific inspections and rules to be admitted into the US. Both are subject to labeling systems that have a complex hierarchy based on origin. Unlike fruit, humans can assimilate, thereby shifting their perspective, nearly erasing a memory that can only be visited in a dream. Inspired by the term Pocha, meaning rotting fruit but used as a slight  towards assimilated Mexican Immigrants/ Citizens, I created a visual language for internal experiences of assimilation and immigration. The audio, video and print works simultaneously explore dreams and identity as landscapes through media as a psychodynamic tool.”
 
Natalia Rocafuerte is a video artist exploring her dreams through installations, films, and print. Rocafuerte’s recent installation film “Dream of Emma and Tony” was featured and won best “Michigan Filmmaker” at the 59th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Rocafuerte was also featured in Remezcla for "Top 40 Latinx Texas Artists to Know in 2020". Natalia Rocafuerte's studio practice explores using technology as mediums of psychological reflections, immigration, duality, and borders. She grew up on both sides of the Rio Grande Border in Tamaulipas and Texas and became a naturalized  US citizen in 2019. Rocafuerte is a current Master of Fine Arts Candidate at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor & Rackham Fellow.