Paradoxluxe is a non-hierarchical collective built on shared authorship, mutual accountability, and long-term trust. The name combines “paradox” and “luxe” to foreground the tension between the allure of luxury and its hidden costs: systems of inequality, extraction, and exclusion masked as aspirational and accessible. Paradoxluxe examines how the promise of the “dream” is packaged as attainable while remaining structurally out of reach: an illusion that keeps people invested in a facade that benefits only a few. We are also interested in how luxury branding is often imitated in exaggerated, tacky, or grotesque ways, such as copies that mimic refinement but reveal the fiction, further exposing the paradox at the core of the “luxe” ideal.
Cacerolazo is our symbol: a domestic object turned amplifier during times of protest. In Puerto Rico and Latin America, the frying pan transforms cookware into percussion, the kitchen into public square, the tool as weapon. The gesture began as a response to scarcity and political crisis, and evolved into a collective language of resistance.
paradoxluxecollective@gmail.com
Harvesting for the winter, 2019–20
Multi-channel video, 00:20:05
Harvesting for the Winter is a multimedia video that proposes the idea of “masked war” by using objects of celebration that resemble weapons. These props execute futile gestures to express the flaccid struggle against corruption in both the Greek and Puerto Rican governments, as well as against the larger colonial entities (the EU and the US) that economically occupy the land through privatization and capitalist interests. The artists reveal their own privileged position living in New York City, looking back at their home countries as spectators attempting to participate in finding sociopolitical solutions through art-making. The video juxtaposes reactions to hopeful rebellion and defeat, an incongruence that overwhelms the younger population in both countries. These various actions suggestive of revolution and high alert are intended, metaphors performed with indifference and humor.