Diego Ramirez (1989, Mexico) currently practices as an artist and writer in Melbourne, Australia. His mixed media work puts forward the notion that consumers and audiences are active readers that appropriate the signs of popular and consumer culture to construct their identities. Remixing mass media with the everyday or the personal to articulate their aspirations and socio-cultural realities. More importantly, the artist aligns this strategy with postcolonial politics, arguing that this mode of engagement with dominant culture is common in colonial environments,where the colonized appropriates the vocabulary of the colonizer to disguise the practice of unofficial cultures. In casual conversation the artist describes his work as somewhere in between a monster movie, shopping mall aesthetics and a Mexican ‘thing’. His favourite hashtags are #pop, #trash and #freak.
