Joana Toro

Joana Toro


Thursday

Oct 17, 2019 | 7pm

Join photographer Joana Toro for the launch of her new photobook “Hello I Am Kitty” which reveals the underground world of costumed characters in NYC. 

Artist statement:
"Being an immigrant is an enormous challenge, this book provokes a reflection on the status of Latin immigrants in the US, their cultural appropriation and new identities, ironies of immigrant life on the margins of a globalized world. 

“Hello I am Kitty” is the result of a personal journal to find my new “identity” viewing right through an eye hole in the head of my Hello Kitty costume while I asked for donations after posing for pictures in Times Square between 2012-2013. 

The phenomenon of Latino immigration is a cultural issue of social appropriation, in which symbols play an integral role in generating images and self-images of Latinos in a society that is itself globalized. This project is challenge symbols and misconception about Latino immigrants."


JOANA TORO is a self-taught photographer based in both New York City and Bogota, Colombia. Her work explores issues of immigration, human rights and identity. She worked as a staff photographer with major magazines and newspapers in Colombia before she migrated to the United States in 2011 to further her career as a documentarian and artist.

PHOTO: A Peruvian grandfather while on lunch break from his job as a character impersonator at Times Square, Manhattan, New York State. From the series, I Am Hello Kitty. © Joana Toro Mora

Our venue is on the ground floor and is wheelchair accessible. The bathroom is non gender-segregated.