Fulana (2000–2018) was a media collective founded by four New York-based Latina artists joined by a love of video and satire, a critical gaze, a bilingual sense of humor, and a shared desire to create collaboratively. Focusing on popular culture, and using parody and satire as a critical tool, Fulana’s mock commercials, music videos, performances, and prints explore themes that are relevant to Latinx cultures in the United States, experimenting with strategies to make visible what we’re so often made to read between the lines. Fulana’s bilingual aesthetic—which ranges from cable-access kitsch to Univisión tinsel—responds to the ways ideologies and identities are marketed and sold to us—and how we sell ourselves—through the mass media. The founding members write, direct, produce, and perform in Fulana’s videos, which have been exhibited internationally in festivals, institutions, and art galleries, including the 2009 Havana Biennial, Exit Art in New York City, Galería de la Raza in San Francisco, and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MACO) in Oaxaca. Fulana’s work is available online through our website, Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo, and they are also historically preserved in the permanent collections of the Centro Cultural Pablo de la Torriente Brau in Havana, Cuba, and the Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library at New York University. Encouraging emerging artists to engage in critical thinking through parody, Fulana teaches workshops at colleges across the United States, such as Yale University, Dartmouth College, Rutgers, and New York University. “Fulana”—derived from the Arabic word for “anyone”—is a popular term in Spanish and Portuguese that refers to an “imaginary or undetermined person,” much like “Jane Doe” or “so-and-so.”
Founding Co-Directors are: Cristina Ibarra, Marlène Ramírez-Cancio, Lisandra María Ramos, and Andrea Thome.