 Hello, as you can see my work I deal with Dominican identity. We have, like most of the Caribbean countries, we are a mixed-race, but we have a small, big problem is that our basis of our identity is still in 2007 based on the Greco-Latin beauty. So everything which looks like white is beautiful, everything which looks like black is not beautiful. And therefore my work faces that, the identity. I start with that, like if you look yourself in the mirror and you don't like yourself, the way you really are, then you have a problem and that affects all aspects of society. Therefore I deal with blackness, dressing, that's what we are embracing and recognize that we are. Therefore I deal with that with identity. I have dealt with it for many years and still have to address it because even today we haven't faced that problem. These are the interiors of the Dominican house. Poor people that they decorate their houses with whatever they feel very colorful. And I deal with collage. These are composed of three different photographs. We saw Photoshop and I put them together as one. So the Photoshop is done in the brain when you look at it. In a way of emphasizing the lack of opportunity the artists have Photoshop, electricity and social security. Therefore that's an empathy in color because that's the way we, which are a mixture of the race, also the three photographs is a metaphor of the different races that conform to the Dominican Republic and the rest of the Caribbean. When I go random I go to their houses and these people have never seen them. I knock on the door, I ask them, they get surprised because they do not consider their house as photogenic. But I told them that I like their house to be photographed. So I negotiate with them and finally they like that to have their last photograph. I enter their house, their bedroom, their kitchen, everything and I start taking photographs. Then with the photograph printing is small, I do the collage at home. And then I assemble another photograph, which is the final result. How long have you been working with this theme, with this idea? Well I spent like three years working with a photograph with this theme. Before I worked with other different subjects but everything has to do with the Dominicanness. Because I want us to like ourselves the way we are. Since photography is such a democratic tool, people can relate them and see themselves in their work and start reflecting why this guy is having a photograph of me. I'm ugly but this guy is taking a photograph and they see it in the museum. So they start questioning themselves. Whatever they have been traditionally being said that they are ugliness, then come this person having their photograph. It's like a grain of sand that I'm putting in this whole society. So people start questioning that they are not as ugly as traditionally have been said to. Yes, we do have not as many as people. That's a good question because people don't like what I'm doing. Because they see my work as ugly. It's cast in the establishment of a beautiful landscape of the Caribbean, a stereotype of beautiful white people as they project themselves. So people think, even artists, that this is not an issue no more. They think that we overcome that but really not. If you're a white Anglo-Saxon, you have more opportunity to be accepted in the Dominican society than if you're a black even today. For instance, I married a black, well-educated, good-mannered woman. They say that I'm going backward. If I married, even today, I married a blonde, illiterate, beautiful, not beautiful, blonde blue-eyed woman. They say, oh wow, believe you have reached a level in the Dominican society. So that's still an issue. Do you have many opportunities to show your work or discuss these issues within the Dominican society? Yes, there are events that you can show. We have museums and yes, we have opportunities, you know, I think so. What's the reaction like when you've been describing that it's unclear that people start to read these things? People think, why am I wasting my time in such a poor neighborhood, why I don't photograph high society, why I don't photograph why more beautiful people, why I don't photograph beautiful landscapes, having so many beautiful beaches, you know. That's the idea to start questioning the society because in order to face it where you have to like yourself and that's the only way through this means that people can become a very human being because if you don't like yourself that affects all aspects of society. It's not as simple as the color of the skin, you know. It's something outside the identity which affects all aspects of society. Well, in the formal fine arts service, are you able to communicate this message or fine arts students in the Dominican Republic or Latin America, are you able to introduce them to these notions of this kind of aesthetic they can't have just? Yes, yes. I teach creative photography at the Santo Domingo Museum of Modern Art. Creative photography one, two and three. I also had a radio show every once in a while and every time I had the opportunity I addressed this point as a very important issue in the Dominican society and I think I put a small grain to have more conscience about our identity because I wish there's some example that I can put like in Mexico and Brazil, you know. For an artist we have to struggle so much if a contemporary artist, you know because this is not a very likable theme. We are accustomed to the more not questioning, peaceful theme that does not question yourself because I have not only addressed the racial issue, now I address the ecological issue with some other subjects which are very transcendental that we do not address we don't take into consideration. It's incredible. One of the things that impressed me more and when I got here although I know, you know, is when I saw, I'm standing here, near here in Brooklyn he saw the garbage recycled according to bottles and things like that, you know that we still, I'm afraid to say, you know, we throw our garbage elsewhere, you know and I was talking to some other guy from the Caribbean, you know and that happened elsewhere and that's part of the educational and conscious awareness that I want to address throughout my work. What are you working on now? What kind of new work are you making? Well, I'm working on ecology, garbage and I'm working in this subject we have, it's called animal print which I'm really mixing the animal skin with the human skin and I have to do a little bit with Kafka metamorphosis like that, it seems that when you throw your garbage out of your window you're behaving like an animal, when you don't protect your environment you're behaving like an animal, there's so many similarities between the human being and the animal, you know and well, they're saying that the only animal which makes the same mistake twice is the human being, so... You know it's funny that they say that animals do live according to their environmental rules because instinctively they know that, but because we use our brains so much we don't so actually they do that much more than we do, they protect their environment Of course, of course, because with the warming up of the ocean we're going to make an artificial island right in front of our beautiful Malecón which is the sea view of the city and so on we are overcrowding the beaches, you know, and making private public places and it's like Raquel said, you know, it's incredible we're going backward, I saw that today I wasn't going to be addressing as an artist this subject because it's so obviously nowadays, you know, that we have to deal with it we're having a main domain where we don't have the basic educational level social security, we don't have energy and things like that it's something absurd that nowadays we have to, as an artist, you know we have to address that to make government society aware of the basic that's why this word according is like a non-photoshop word because not many artists have access to internet, energy and things like that and it's like a finished word, like a badly done because I could have done like a photoshop you know, making this look like a one photograph, very simple, you know but I addressed it in that way to put an emphasis on the basic thing we still have to deal with as an artist Anything else you want to add? No, for me the artist is a more important person in society that 50 years from now we're not going to talk about any politician and so on we're going to talk about artists which are conscious of their society are wary about the problem of the society and address it in a contemporary way to communicate what's the problem and that the Caribbean itself is a place where it's taking place new things with new eyes, the art world and everything have to reconsider it the way address the contemporary art throughout the Caribbean we have to get through our skin first to understand our situation like to melody a couple of years, getting inside and learning about ourselves in order to understand us because we were by our own rules that's what I think because we have so many basic problems to address we don't have time to think elsewhere every other thing