Camilo Godoy (b. 1989, Bogotá, Colombia) is an artist and educator based in New York. His multidisciplinary practice uses videos, photographs, performances, sculptures and zines to explore how political meanings and histories are constructed. At the intersections of gender, history, race and sexuality, his work is informed by queer, Latinx, feminist and Black perspectives, often revisioning different and subversive ways of being. A graduate of The New School with a BFA from Parsons School of Design, 2012 and a BA from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, Godoy has participated in numerous international exhibitions, biennales and residencies.
What did they actually see?, 2021
This newly commissioned work consists of three black-and-white photographs of the artist dancing. It focuses on the artist’s research into colonial texts by European missionaries and explorers describing the dance practices of non-European people. These texts represent non-white people as “out of control,” “lacking discipline,” and being without “civility.” Godoy’s project confronts how racist legacies of the colonial gaze constructed specific notions of non-white bodies that continue to reverberate in the present.
An installation photo of Camilo Godoy’s What did they actually see? (2021)
Photo: MOMENTUM. Courtesy of the practicioner.
