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Workman, Lachell C.
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Spring 2025
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2025
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9871_Giovanna_Becerra.pdf
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This thesis explores the Ecuadorian festival La Diablada Píllareña through sculptural installation and anthropological analysis, examining how communal joy functions as a form of resistance within post-colonial contexts. Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Ecuador in January 2025 and collaboration with Ecuadorian artist David Maya, this research investigates the festival's unique deployment of devilish imagery divorced from religious context - a rarity in Ecuador's predominantly Catholic cultural landscape. The installation employs mixed media including PVC pipe structures, plaster masks, papier-mâché, and thrifted materials to capture not merely the physical representation of festival participants but the energetic "other" that emerges through their performance. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of mimesis, alterity, affect theory, and concepts of radical joy, this work interrogates how marginalized communities transform historical pain into collective celebration, creating temporary autonomous zones of power through embodied performance. The thesis ultimately proposes that La Diablada Píllareña demonstrates how tactical joy serves as both political resistance and cultural preservation, offering insights into broader decolonial artistic practices across the Americas.
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