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What Was the Bodega?
Tschabalala Self’s ambivalent investigation of the cornershop.
Previous shows featured portraits of women walking down bright aisles, metal and laser-cut crates, black cats made of plywood, and still lifes of Boar’s Head meats. The Pop colors and lively packaging suggest a sense of wonder at the cornucopia of choice provided by the market, yet Self’s wobbly lines also make you feel woozy, as if her subjects are walking through a hall of mirrors. On the one hand, there is her affection for these mom-and-pop enterprises that are part of a dying urban tapestry; on the other, her ambivalence about the way poverty and its consequences (addiction, malnutrition, self-defeating escapism) are reflected in and perpetuated through them.
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