"Kayla Anderson – How did the repeat pattern become a motif in your work?
Joiri Minaya – My mom owned a clothing store in the Dominican Republic (D.R.) from when I was very young. Visually I grew up surrounded by repeat patterns in fabric. When I was in the D.R. and when I first came to the U.S. I was working with ideas around gender and domesticity, and domesticity led me to decoration and home environments. I actually didn’t grow up with wallpaper. It’s not very common in the Dominican Republic but, as I started reading about the Caribbean, also partly influenced by European and American visual culture, I started thinking of it as a way to convey ideas about stereotypes and societal formulas that people conform to— societal patterns that I wanted to question. We all recognize these codes, regardless of where we come from, because we are all the product of a society formed by colonization and imperialism, the processes that made these images..."
