CHRISTINA VILLAMOR

In A Machine for Fiction, Christina Villamor explores cycles of time and negotiations of power to consider the geological, the mythological, and the historical. These narratives resonate as collapsed history in a reframing of deep time, folklore, and Spanish colonization through the 19th-century cologne, Florida Water.

Wildly popular as a “toilet water” in the 19th century, Florida Water was marketed for its many uses, including its purported healing potential. In the present day, the cologne is prescribed for cleansing rituals in hybridized belief systems, Espiritismo and Voodoo.

At its core, the name “Florida Water,” bases its efficacy as a magical elixir from a fountain that propelled Ponce de Leon to colonize the oldest settlement in the New World. Myth, as a non-existent and innocuous justification, led to the colonization of Florida by the Spanish Crown: the imposed dominance of a place and displacement of a people. Also substantiating this myth is the desire to be forever young. 

Straddling myth and fact, Villamor hawks the panacea using the combination of a fictional QVC-type set, geological “strata” in the pedestal details, window merchandising, sales demonstrations, and museological display. 

Christina Villamor received a B.Sc. in motion pictures and studio art from the University of Miami (2018) and an MFA from California State University Long Beach in photography (2022).

Visit the artist’s website: www.christinavillamor.com