During my first stay in Brussels, between 2010 and 2011, I developed Brussels Bestiary, a series of ink drawings and screen prints that emerged from my experience as a foreigner. Unable to speak the local language, I experienced a profound sense of estrangement that led me to identify with the figure of the monster: the one perceived as “other” when confronted with an unfamiliar territory.
The series draws on the Chronicles of the Indies, the accounts of Christopher Columbus and Bartolomé de las Casas, and the European tradition of representing the unknown through extraordinary beings. Blemmyae, giants, hybrid creatures, and other medieval monsters belong to an imaginary world that was subsequently projected onto the New World.
I was also interested in examining how these European images were transformed upon reaching the Americas, particularly in the work of Guamán Poma de Ayala, where European and Andean visual traditions converge.
Drawing inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch, medieval bestiaries, Renaissance and Baroque imagery, as well as pre-Columbian visual cultures, I construct a hybrid universe in which these creatures become metaphors for foreignness, displacement, and the ever-changing nature of identity.
Brussels Bestiary ultimately proposes a reversal of the gaze: those who were historically represented as “the other” now look back from within Europe, questioning who the monster really is—and who has the power to name it.
Diana Valarezo
2010–2011
