Catalina del Cid
Catalina del Cid, El Salvador 1973
Period of residency: March – 2015
“Los eternos indocumentados, los hacelotodo, los vendelotodo, los comelotodo…“, Roque Dalton
Catalina del Cid and her personal projects open dialogue and reporting on vulnerable people in El Salvador: migrant children in route and women who work as domestic servants. She uses the picture and theatrical performative acts as a vehicle of expression.
The project Uniform Domestic Service is a need for reflection on stigma imposed on the use of uniform to a domestic servant in El Salvador and Central America. That is, a uniform is used to distinguish a profession or occupation and this is adapted depending on the needs requiring such work. Domestic work is hard work that logic dictated that takes place under pants, long sleeves, covered and non-slip shoes.
Therefore, the current uniform: Is it imposed in order to score, subjugate another human being? Will this uniform some sort of containment to dominate and take away rights and freedoms of another human being? Will there be some kind of similarity, in the background, among Islamic women in burkas and the need to impose a uniform bounding socioeconomic gaps Central American women?
Through the realization of performative acts representing transgressive activities it aims to highlight that women are forced to wear the uniform of domestic service, are present and must be made visible by the Central American society. The theme of the uniform is the tip of the iceberg of working conditions, salary, employment benefits, non-existent contracts, schedules and leave domestic servant.
She is a visual artist who studied MA in Painting at the University Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), United States. Works independently with different theater directors in El Salvador producing sets, costumes and props for plays. Throughout 2014, she was given five art exhibitions to celebrate ten years of the Teatro Luis Poma with themes on dramaturgy, theater director and theatrical performance. In 2013, she was the producer and artistic director of the play O-Yarkandal of Salarrué, thanks to the Ovation Award from the Poma Foundation. She has been the recipient of a Ford Foundation Grant to illustrate and write a children’s book on migrant children published by UCA Editores, in 2012. She received the First Prize in the Biennial of Visual Arts Conjunctions Costa Rica in 2011.
