New Process Series piece uses hologram guides

Holograms will serve as campus tour guides this weekend in “En Mi Espejo, Veo Tu Cara,” a presentation created by UNC art professor Roxana Perez-Mendez.

The latest piece from the Process Series, whose English title is “In My Mirror, I See Your Face,” explores colonialism in the Americas from the perspective of a Puerto Rican woman. Participants will be guided along the 20-minute tour by holographic images.

Perez-Mendez said she decided to create the piece two years ago after walking the Camino de Santiago, a Christian pilgrimage route in Spain. Although Perez-Mendez only completed half of the walk, she inadvertently passed through one of the towns inhabited by her ancestors. The experience inspired her to think about the incredibly long journey her ancestors had to make to Puerto Rico.

She said she has been creating installations as part of her work for 10 years and used holograms and two-way mirrors to create modules that guide the audience from the Morehead Planetarium to Swain Hall, where the presentation ends with a live component.

“The whole piece is a piece of reflection, figuratively and literally,” Perez-Mendez said.

Joseph Megel, the artistic director of the Process Series, said the show is particularly special because it is the first faculty-made piece the series has ever presented. The program has made a point of featuring one student-created piece each season, and from now on organizers hope to do the same with faculty pieces.

“We have first-rate artists on our faculty,” Megel said.

The advisory committee, made up of representatives from each of the campus departments that sponsor the Process Series, chose Perez-Mendez’s piece because of its provocative and significant subject matter.

“It just felt like a perfect piece for the series,” Megel said.

He said he hopes audiences will be excited by the chance of getting to see such a unique piece and appreciate the fact that a UNC faculty member created it.

“I hope they are transported somewhere and that for that moment they are lost in the ideas of that piece — that’s what I hope all art should do,” Megel said.

Jim Hirschfield, the chairman of the art department and one of the members of the advisory committee, said he is most looking forward to finally seeing one of Perez-Mendez’s performances in person and getting a sense of her artistic process.

“It’s a unique educational experience,” Hirschfield said.

Perez-Mendez said she tries to subtly involve the politics of colonialism in her work, and she hopes the audience will be able to make connections between the colonial past and the present day. Although she faced many challenges in creating this work, she said the product brought its own reward.

“The favorite part was finally being able to draw together these characters that have been with me my entire lifetime into one piece,” she said.

arts@dailytarheel.com