Author: Angel Cabrales

* with a commentary by A.R. Sandru

Tender Care Piñata is a visual commentary on children in detention centers presented at Cabrales’ exhibition It Came From Beyond the Border

The exhibition depicts the epistemic conflict of a fictitious danger – in the form of UFO’s – that is in fact completely benign – the UFO’s are in fact Mexican sweets called conchas.

To the untrained eye, the conchas are not self-evident, they do no present themselves immediately as benign, nor as neutral sweets. They are as the title of the series suggestes something from beyond the border. As unknown objects they can become objects of fear, they can become the transitive target of projections of fear and hatred.

The choice of depicting the threat from beyond the border as flying conchas reveals the ridiculeness of fictitious danger, of defense mechanisms and of exagerated measures against migrants.

The core of this ridiculuous fictitious danger is exposed in the video featured at the It Came from Beyon the Border, that shows the mundane triviality of life beyond the border. It presents it however in a diffuse manner, in an almost tyring play of colour saturations. This manner of depicting mundane life functions in the same logic as the posters: it shows how fear is projected onto its imagined object, and does not reside within it. Here is the video, which will act as context and reinforcer of the message of Tender Care Piñata, that follows immediately after.

In the background of the above video and posters, the brutality of the Tender Care Piñata apears more evidently. Here is Cabrales’ description of the Tender Care Piñata:

The traditional seven-point piñata is a representation of the struggle against temptation and sin. Each point represents one of the seven deadly sins: envy, sloth, gluttony, greed, lust, anger/wrath, and pride with the center representing evil. The candy in the center has been said to represent the good taken from the world. The stick which is used to break the piñata symbolizes love. It is supposed to destroy the sins by hitting and breaking the pinata into pieces. The candies and treats that come pouring out from the broken piñata symbolize the forgiveness of sins and a new beginning.

The Tender Care Piñata takes this meaning and replaces the candy with children wrapped in survival blankets, representing the children taken to detention centers throughout the United States due to the current administration’s immigration stance. The pinata is now a steel cage, unbreakable, unwavering, cold and uncaring.

And here is the installation itself:

Putting the posters and the It Came from Beyond the Border video together with the Tender Care Piñata the conflict between the benign danger of flying conchas orpeople selling fruit and the draconis measures that cage a fictitious threat becomes manifest.