If Home Depot is the handyman’s central where one can complete the domestic project of one’s dreams, it’s also common to encounter groups of day laborers or immigrant workers huddled together in Home Depot parking lots waiting to be contracted for a day of work. This handyman’s central is a metaphor for the American Dream, and it presents an idyll still unattained by many who’ve come to the States looking for a better life and better wages. It is in this setting that Yoshua Okón stages his most recent video installation Pulpo.

Beneath the surface of the installation lies a web of international and historical references that seamlessly weave together to illustrate a delicate socio-political balance. Pulpo receives its title from the Guatemalan nickname given to the United Fruit Company—now known as Chiquita Banana—a company directly linked to the 1954 coup d’état in Guatemala which resulted in enough deaths to classify as genocide. It is this civil war that Okón’s actors attempt to re-enact with a slight twist. The major difference between Okón’s video and typical historical war commentary is the current day Home Depot setting that becomes the active military zone. This time the war is happening on U.S. soil with Home Depot as an inactive protagonist. But it’s an important point that Okón hasn’t decided to set his stage with just any corporation. Rather, Okón’s setting is the national corporation claiming to help every average American build the home of their dreams with their own hands. 

Projected onto four screens of varied heights and sizes, Pulpo consists of various scenes and still images captured from different perspectives but recorded in the same moment. The film stills include images of the parking lot pavement, the Home Depot building itself, and the widely recognizable orange Home Depot sign. Between these stills are action shots that feature a group of men holding imaginary assault rifles; they combat no visible enemy. Meanwhile, shoppers walk past barely aware of the scene; only a few cars honk at the disruption made by the group. There is no sense of humor or irony in the actors’ faces, who Okón pulled from groups of migrant workers who indeed stand in the Home Depot parking lot day after day.

Pulpo has myriad layers filled with incredibly smart and specific references, yet it is just as easily viewed without the knowledge of these references as an absurd, ironic and cynical illustration of U.S. influence in Latin America throughout history. In the past these war zones have stayed contained within Latin America, affecting only the citizens of the countries in which the U.S. intervened. Here Okón enacts the consequences of U.S. interventions throughout history and illustrates how these battles are fought on U.S. soil daily. Here the war zone is Home Depot’s parking lot, where such socio-economic and political discourses continue to play out while hardly disrupting the reality in which North Americans live. Okón’s actors hardly disrupt the shopping experience of customers as they act out the quintessential American achievement of creating the home of their dreams.

Pulpo was produced as part of the Hammer Museum's Artist Residency Program. The Hammer Museum's Artist Residency Program was initiated with funding from the Nimoy Foundation and is supported through a significant grant from the James Irvine Foundation. Pulpo is on view at Casa Rafael Galván in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City until January 14, 2010.