Unbags: Creating diasporic identity through cultural mestizaje in the artistic process of a bag collection

Abstract

The borderlands where Mexico and the U.S. meet are not only a geographical and political location, but an active and hybrid space where two cultures collide and a third culture emerges. The people living in this in-between of nations, cultures, histories, and languages have come to embody both sides of the border, and yet belong to neither.

It was in this space where the Pachuco subculture first started, a youth group using their cultural multiplicity to subvert the conventional and transgress through their over-sized suits, style and secret language. It was the women of the subculture however —Pachucas— who took it a step further to go not only against the perceived American conventions, but also broke away from the Mexican archetype of the woman, leaving their domesticity to occupy a space in between gender norms and establishing their own.

Unbags is a leather bag collection that mirrors the in-betweenness of the borderlands, composed of pieces that are in a limbo between done and undone, bag and adornment, in a permanent state of becoming. Using the Pachucas as a starting point and source of inspiration, it seeks to deconstruct signifiers and fuse material elements from Mexico and Finland to create a new borderland, an active space of hybridity where diasporic identities can be formed through artistic practices.

The notion of finding one’s identity in diaspora is not foreign to any immigrant. There’s an enhancement and a craving for cultural or national identity as soon as one is removed from their place of origin. This thesis documents the artistic process behind designing a bag collection, and aims to build a bridge between theory and creative production to make sense of the real and imaginary borderlands we come to inhabit.