In my work, I have used autobiography, and more specifically, the void created by adoption as a place to investigate the construction of identity. Rather than retelling events about my adoption and other definitive moments that “formed” my identity. I prefer to combine and confuse both factual and fictional elements to revisit the past/childhood and question the rigidity and fixity of what we´ve come to understand as “one´s identity” and open the arena to an idea of identity being malleable, changing.
Recently, I have begun working on a new project titled The Glamour of Evil. This project extends my fascination with the construction of identity through an investigation of Multiple Personality Disorder, and consists of still photographs, video clips, research materials, script excerpts and sculptural props used in the production of the fil, The Glamour of Evil. The fil itself follows the adventures of an eight-year-old boy and the five thousand and forty-seven personalities that lived within him. All characters are portrayed by the artist.

The Belligerent Triumph of an Anonymous Hand Modell
Scenes from The Glamour of Evil
By Marcos Rosales

The scene is typical, you find yourself stumbling through a darkened corridor in an unfamiliar building. You stumble, your arms feeling out darkness in front of you. The only sound is your heavy breathing. Compelled by a recurring vision, you continue on. Cut on that vision, a pair of badly burned hands sporting fake fingernails nervously weaving a jumble of black cords together. The flicking of plastic fingernails and rusting of the cord are punctuated by coughing and grunting. You always woke up before the identity of your dream visitor was revealed. Somehow you know this unfamiliar place and that vision are related. Cut to the corridor as it grows longer, then darker. You feel out in front of you, then out to the sides. Finally, a door. You enter and strain to make out faint shapes of hospital beds dimly lit by moon light. To you’re the outline of a door becomes clearer as your eyes begin to adjust. A close-up of your hand as it nervously reaches for the knob and turns it, but it is locked. Across the room another door appears out of the darkness. You trip on the edge of a bed and hit the floor with a loud thud. Your heart begins to beat faster, your breathing becoming louder and more erratic, certain that there is someone also in the room. Getting up, you reach for doorknob of the second door and discover it hanging loose. Having pushed the door open, you reveal a dimly lit room. A huge mound of black cord sits in a pile on the floor. Strands shoot out in all directions, anchoring themselves to the walls and on the decrepit furniture. As you move closer to inspect the black mass, you find that every strand is woven together into intricate patterns. A flashback to the badly burned hands, then to the woven mass on the floor. As you reach out to touch the macramé atrocity, it suddenly moves. As you try to move away, a scarred hand lashes out and wraps itself around your ankle. Struggling, you scream as it drags you in. Your face freezes in horror and becomes a background, as the credits begin to roll and music pours out into the theater.

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Marcos Rosales was born in 1967 in East Texas. In 1990, he graduated from BFA University of North Texas at Denton and graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California in 1995. In addition to photographs and paintings, Rosales creates large installations using macrame manual technology. This creates installations from nets, knots and tassels pulled from black material. Some have a somewhat spooky look, they resemble nerve or vein bundles, others are elegant and entertaining, act like variable ink drawings in space.