Montoya’s Montage: Destiny and the “Atmosphere of You”

MARIA: What’s the story behind your relationship with collaging? Did you start the classic way with magazine cutouts? Or did you begin completely online?

DESTINY: Yeah, I actually did start with traditional scissors and magazines! I would go to Bookman's and buy every single National Geographic I could because they were like a dollar. [laughs] When I was early into making collages, I was going through the grief of losing my mom. I didn't have a lot of outlets or familial connections where I could vocalize what I was going through. I actually started trying to [re]create memories from when I was 15 and younger since my whole memory during that time was blank because of how much I went through. 

I use [collaging to] deal with these emotions [...] in a very healing way. Like memory associations. I was a Tumblr girl all throughout my teenage years, too. I noticed this weird attraction that I had to specific, niche types of stylized photos. And so I was like, well, what if I just switched to using these [kinds of] photos? What kind of themes will come out if I use [more modernized] photos? 

Above are a few collage pieces Destiny has made in the past (that are personally my favorites).

MARIA: This photomontage you made is derived from another one of your works called Tiny’s. It includes up to 100 mini collages from Tiny’s to visualize “the atmosphere of you”. Tell me more about it, and why you decided to integrate it into this project.

DESTINY: Tiny’s started last fall. It’s a play on my name. But it’s funny ‘cause they're not that tiny. This image [holds up a pancake cutout] is almost four by six inches. But when I compress them digitally, I can adjust their sizes easily.

It was when I was beginning to feel dissatisfied with the full landscape collages [that I used to make regularly]. I was feeling lost and it was too much for each piece. I really got into three-object pairings because I found that, for me, these visual signifiers meant so much more in their compactness than it did as a whole expansive landscape.

I would say that the transition from using images from National Geographic to found images from the internet was really important in fully actualizing what this project was going to be. It’s also very important that the photos are printed and I’m able to play with composition. My goal is to eventually make a book of all the tiny collages.

MARIA: What do you want people to understand about you through this project?

DESTINY: I want people to understand object associations as social signifiers, [which are used] to address a certain group, or [to show] that this is what I'm into. My practice now is more so in tune with personality and persona. I want people to question why I'm using certain objects in relation to one another here. 

MARIA: Are you welcoming viewers to make assumptions about you through this piece? Or do you want them to think more vastly, as in what these collages may represent generally in the world? 

DESTINY: Projections of self is what I'm interested in conveying. I relate a lot to this artist, Arnaldo Roche Rabell. He'll take canvas and have his family members stand under it in the nude, the shape of their bodies directly imprinting onto the canvas. Through this process, he's recalling the idea of screen memories. That's the term I relate my process to. It is a term coined by Sigmund Freud which loosely describes distorted memories of childhood experiences that repress or mask traumatic experiences that actually occurred.

I spent so much of the beginning of my life just in survival mode, where now that I'm in my 20s, I'm safe. I can reflect now, and upon those reflections, I realized I have no idea who I am. I had just been surviving up until this point. My practice lets me bring things I loved back [into my life], to curate my own idea of what I think reality is. 

MARIA: You recently graduated with a B.A. in Museum Studies from Arizona State University. What would you say is your favorite part of the curation experience when working on an exhibit? What’s the most challenging?

DESTINY: As a curator, you take this position of neutrality because you are facilitating this other person's artwork. It's necessary in this position to listen and unlearn. Unlearn everything I thought was hierarchical in our society, mostly from Western perspectives. I recognize how much of my high school education was shaped from colonial perspectives. My favorite part of this job is being introduced to new perspectives, having my mindset challenged in the healthiest ways possible.

The hardest part of this job is dealing with institutional factors. So much of my senior year was unveiling how bad institutions are. They are the “enemy” in a way, because they are the perpetrators of colonialism. Many [museums] are funded by plantation money and upheld by white Eurocentric perspectives. 

As an indigenous curator, that's my biggest challenge: learning how to deal with all this frustration and anger that comes with working in this field, but also not wanting to leave. One, because I recognize my voice is valid and that I deserve to be here. And two, understanding the practicalities of what it means to actually enact change. 

Not through anger or impulsive reactions, but rather through thoughtful and strategic ways. That's where I struggle the most because it can be really hard to keep your calm after learning about all of the pain that institutions have caused and continue to do.

MARIA: What is one thing you wish people knew more about museums and how they operate?

DESTINY: I wish people were more aware of the amount of work that goes into exhibitions - not just the workload, but the amount of people who participate in it.

This is partly to blame on the institution, because many times when exhibitions are announced, you read that little tiny label on the wall, and it only really mentions the curator. So I'm trying to break it down - for myself and for others - what does curatorial authority mean? Through my internship, I realized that it's a team of eight to ten people who actually help with marketing, layout design, things like that. We have graphic designers, interpreters, and researchers on top of the curator, who is presented as the sole face of the exhibition.

I wish that museums did more in making sure that all these people's work was recognized. So yeah, invisible labor, let's talk about it. 

You can see Destiny’s full final project by purchasing 03: The Identity Issue.