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Ariella Granados: Disabling utopia

Updated: Aug 5, 2023


The image is of a mostly-white "Resident Alien" identification card, issued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. An official seal and some identifying information is in the middle (with some redacted in white). On the left is an image of a young man in half-profile. He has full dark hair, a mustache, and light brown skin. His mouth is closed. On the right of the image is the artist, also showing her head and some of her shoulders. She is a young woman with long brown hair pulled up on to the top of her head, light brown skin, flamboyant square glasses, and a tank top. Her mouth is open, indicating that she is speaking.

Ariella Granados, No Documents (video still), 2021


Michael O’Rourke writes that José Esteban Muñoz “aspired to the making of queer worlds and to the framing of an aspirational politics of ‘queer world-making’ in the form of a ‘dream work’ in which worlds are as palpable as things.” Alex Kitnick describes video art as “a slippery art that might sneak outside art…, turn people around (maybe even on), and deliver them to some not-yet-quite-defined third space that would be neither life nor art but some heightened consciousness (.)” BIPOC queer communities of mutual support have long insistently expressed their world-making through art, in the sense whereby O’Rourke draws on theologian John Caputo’s sense of the “insistence of God.” Invoking the now-commonplace magic of video while also drawing on the visual language of social media mythology, artist Ariella Granados modestly but insistently generates both worlds and consciousness, both in communal projects and in solitary reconstructions of her own history and embodiment.


The artist is facing the camera, with a pleading expression. She is wearing makeup, a golden-brown wavy hair wig, and a lavender blouse. She is set on the left side of the screen. A shadowy domestic interior is behind her, and there is a yellow caption at the bottom of the screen reading, "You are more than just a photo that I keep in my wallet."

I Used to Have Cable Before He Left (still from video series), 2019


The image shows a televised interview between two women, both of whom are the artist in different costumes. Behind them is a brightly-lit image of a shop floor in a meat processing plant. The woman on the left is smiling with her mouth closed, wearing a hair net and an apron, with a plain gray long-sleeved shirt. The woman on the right is holding a microphone and is speaking into it. She wears a blue blazer, a lacy white blouse, and a brown wavy hair wig. Both women are wearing makeup. There is a caption in yellow letters at the bottom which reads, "But I want to congratulate you for being able to achieve a life of many sacrifices.."

I Used to Have Cable Before He Left (still from video series), 2019


There are two video stills side by side on a black field. Both of them show the artist sweeping or mopping. She seems to be in a partially outdoor area on a sunny day, with an array of colorful fabrics hanging on a rack behind her. She is wearing a black top, colorful shorts, black sandals, glasses, and has straight medium-length reddish hair.

Labor Like My Mother's (video stills), 2021


In 2019 Granados started creating videos about her parents, in response to having learned at age 15 that her stepfather was not in fact her birth father. In her series I Used to Have Cable Before He Left, as well as the standalone No Documents, she ingeniously depicts her mother, her stepfather, her birth father, and herself. Subtitles are used creatively and humorously to translate her family members’ Spanish dialogue, as well as her own internal and external monologues, through which she both empathizes with and comments on her family members, while referencing tropes of Mexican telenovelas and TV news. Along with clever editing, Granados makes ample use of her background as a professional makeup artist to single-handedly portray multiple roles, now a staple practice among TikTok creators. And in the more understated 2021 video Labor Like My Mother's,

Granados simply recorded herself doing the domestic chores her mother would do, cleaning and ordering her space.


The image looks like a still from a program on the Home Shopping Network, with information and logos displayed in three areas on the screen. There are two women, one on the left who appears to be speaking, wearing a straight long haired blonde wig, a black pantsuit and black glasses, as well as a black scarf with white polkadots. On the right, the other woman is posing with her eyes wide and her mouth open, wearing a bright red dress and black boots with one knee bent. She is holding what appears to be a large shopping bag that has a large image of an urban skyline, and reads "Hello, Chicago." She has brown wavy hair.

Bodies in Progress (example from photo series), 2020


The image shows two photos side by side. The first appears to be an Herbalife advertisement for a "10 Day Belly Buster Challenge," and advertising copy in green and black text takes up the left and most of the middle portion of the image. On the right, the artist is posing in a gray t-shirt and blue jeans, flexing her right arm and looking at the viewer. Some tattoos are visible, and she has wavy brown hair and bright pink lipstick. On the right is what appears to be an advertisement for the Trinity Broadcasting Network. The background is a dark variegated tone with bright purple highlights,, and the copy in the top, in multiple fonts, reads "Praise, join TBN's studio audience." At the bottom, in a purple text box, it reads "Get free tickets." A gray-haired smiling man, probably a host of the broadcast, is featured from the waist up on the right. He is wearing a black zippered jacket. On the left is the artist, smiling with her arms crossed, wearing a purple wig, bright pink lipstick, and a flowery blazer with shoulder pads.

Bodies in Progress (examples from photo series), 2020


In Bodies in Progress, a photo series from 2020, she continues cleverly spoofing television formats familiar from her childhood, including ads from Herbalife, TBN, and the Home Shopping Network, while in her ongoing series of infomercial-style videos and performances, entitled 1-800-INACCESSIBLE, she struggles to use kitchen implements. This struggle with mundane tasks becomes eroticized in the series Eating With Desire, wherein Granados seductively opens name-brand packaged snacks with her teeth in lingering closeup shots. All of these advertising-themed works cleverly hint at the operationalization of influencer niche-marketing, alongside critical commentary on the exclusion of queer, Brown, and disabled bodies.


The image appears to be a still from a home shopping infomercial. The artist is in the center of the image, and she is working at a cutting board, so her torso, arms, and hands are visible, but not her head. She is wearing a purple robe, and attempting to chop an onion. Her right hand, which holds the knife, looks significantly smaller than her right hand, because of the artist's disability. She appears to be in a kitchen, and the cutting board in front of her also contains an orange, a banana, a blue sphere of some kind, and a pink plastic object. There is a large knife to the right of the cutting board, and a white kitchen wall and shelf are visible behind her. A pink and white text box on the top left says "today's special," the word "live" appears in white text on the top right, and shopping information is visible on the lower left portion of the screen.

1-800-INACCESSIBLE (video still), 2021


The image is a closeup shot of the artist's mouth gently biting the top edge of a plastic bag containing a snack cake. The background is bright green, and she is holding the back with an orange-gloved hand. Her hair is orange, and her lipstick is reddish orange. She has a black shirt on, and her nose is cropped off but visible at the top of the frame, with one ring on each side of her nose.

Eating With Desire (video still), 2021


Perhaps hinting at Muñoz’s influential book Cruising Utopia, Granados’ final project this year as the first-ever artist in residence with the Chicago Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, through the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, was entitled Disabling Utopia. In this work, volunteer disabled contributors created miniature sets which they then performed in as backdrops, through one of Granados’ signature tools, that of the green screen. She has recently parlayed chromakey symbolism into creating a fully green “alter ego,” erasing distinctions between herself and her environment in a provocative literalization of the social model of disability. Granados also speaks of ASL interpreters and live captioners as performance artists, figures whom she intends to meaningfully integrate into her future productions “as another element of the performance,” while also incorporating music and experimental graphic scores.


There are two stacked images, both featuring the artist painting her right arm blue, in a busy daytime street scene in Puebla, Mexico, apparently in a large public square. She has reddish hair and is wearing a loose black outfit with short sleeves and long pants, as well as light colored socks and shoes. She is wearing a medical face mask, as are most people on the street. Many people are looking at her, interested in or bewildered by her performance, including one man in a khaki uniform and black vest who appears to be a police officer.

Subverting Otherness, part one (video stills), 2021


In the first video where Granados plays with chromakey, she paints her face green, revealing a portrait of her mother as the background. In another she paints her arm green; the shape of the painted arm is filled by static, while Granados is isolated in a bustling London crowd. The arm Granados paints in the video is paralyzed by Erb palsy, a condition acquired at birth. “I think of the color green as a way to render my body,,” she says. “In post-production, green is used as a way to render space… By using the color green… I use it as a way to take agency over my body and to reclaim my body again.” Subsequently, Granados did a video in a full-body blue morphsuit, topped off with a jacket and wig, and later painted her arm as a 2021 public performance, entitled Subverting Otherness, in front of a church in Puebla, Mexico. She saw this performance as an act of protest, saying “I was learning a lot about the Spanish colonial time, and how bodies were treated if they didn’t adhere to European standards… I don’t think a body like mine would have been honored, or treated well.” Granados later did a similar painting performance in Chicago while dressed in a hospital gown, a wig, and her blue morphsuit, with an assistant dressed as a nurse.


The image features the artist in the center of a busy city park in Chicago, with lots of people sitting on blankets and lawn chairs. The artist is wearing a skin-tight blue morphsuit, which covers her entire body, including her face. She is also wearing a long hospital gown, and a pink wig. Her assistant is a brown-skinned man with short blonde hair dressed as a nurse, painting her right arm blue. Nobody appears to be paying attention to the performance.

Subverting Otherness, part two (video still), 2021


The image is of a still from a Spanish-language television show, evident from the yellow comic-sans credits at the bottom of the screen. The still is a blurry image of a couple kissing in bed. There is an obviously artificial window behind them, showing a moon and stars, and two lamps flanking this window. The full body of the artist is visible at the right side of the screen. She is wearing a skin-tight blue morphsuit that covers her entire body, including her face. and she additionally has on a light pink blazer, a brown wig, and light colored slip on sandals.

Untitled (video still), 2021


These videos underscore the complexity of the claims Granados makes on her body through the device of chroma key. Through paint or costuming she literally makes herself invisible, mirroring the personal invisibility she used to seek out as an insecure disabled young person, but conversely, also the official invisibility she has confronted as an adult in multiple attempts to assert her identity and acquire disability benefits. Currently Granados has a range of ideas for installations integrating sculpture, video, music, and performance, all referring insistently to the blue and green monochromes that literally embody the notion of being “under erasure.” And she intends to continue performing this erasure collaboratively in community spaces. Through her residency with the MOPD in Chicago, Granados said, “I’ve learned that I have a skill for programming… with really thinking about accessibility and inclusivity And I would hope to continue doing this kind of work.” She has been a resident DJ with a regularly scheduled sober queer dance party called Lez Get Together, and she reflected on nightlife in Chicago, saying that “there’s still a lot of work to do in regards to making sure that those spaces are accessible, safe and comfortable for people with disabilities.”

Project sketches, 2023


Another artist known in part for visibilizing the invisibility of domestic work, particularly in her iconic residency project with the New York Department of Sanitation, the feminist artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles writes in her 1969 Maintenance Art Manifesto that “Maintenance is a drag. The mind boggles and chafes at the boredom. The culture confers lousy status on maintenance.” “The exhibition of Maintenance art…” she continues, “would zero in on pure maintenance… My working will be the work.” But transformed through ideas of queer community and crip time in the work of artists like Granados, the “drag” of maintenance can take on new connotations of hope, play, and mutual support. “For me my queerness is less about my sexuality,” she says, “but has always more so been about the body that I’m in, it’s more about my disability. My queerness is informed in the way I have to navigate the world, and how I navigate through the world.”

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