Mulata in Repose

This chapter offers a close reading of work by two NYC-based AfroDominican artists, Joiri Minaya (1990) and Josefina Baez (1960). I argue that Baez' "Carmen FotonovelARTE" (2020) and Minaya's "Containers" (2015-2020) play with the trope of repose and mixed-race beauty to chart pathways of AfroLatina representation that are shaped by, yet that radically challenge, the colonial script of the mulata. The artists create a space of refusal that transforms repose into a powerful site from which to articulate, problematize, and dismantle reductive systems of representation.