As a multi-media/performance artist who works closely on the fragility of contemporary identity, I create and insert fictions about Puerto Rican achievements and monuments into the World�s meta-narrative. I use a wide range of tropes and models of modernization and globalization�i.e. embarking in a Space program, to juxtapose, reflect, deconstruct and isolate the strains of difference associated with Puerto Rican culture, class and status, the strains that define one as the Other. The result of my work is a range of small, almost gestural forms, performances and monumental projects that hover in and document an everyday world where illusion and reality are confused. The sum of the products and experience becomes a fiction that potentially forecasts the emergence of a new cultural, global politic that ends Puerto Rican exceptionalism.

Encantada: Puertas. 3 doors, peepholes, slides,

Excerpt from the exhibition text by Robert Wuilfe, Exhibition director Landmarks Contemporary Art Projects:
"In the same way that official history is subject to revision, P�rez-M�ndez works on the boundaries of fact and fiction, certainty and ambiguity. La Declaraci�n is not an attempt to definitively �correct� history. At times subtle and quiet, at others angry and passionate, La Declaraci�n is a series of challenges and questions with multiple interpretations. She provokes a sense of unease about what we believe regarding the construction of history and the lives of women. Has P�rez-M�ndez re-imagined the Powel House as a center of Puerto Rican power, as evidenced by the flag outside the building? Or is the flag a symbol of insurgency and revolution? When we watch her video performances, are we seeing a gentlewoman in the privacy of her own home, or a servant or slave releasing pent-up frustration while the Master is away?"

--Roberta Fallon Artblog and Philadelphia Weekly
It�s in that realm of conjuring and magic I�d put P�rez-M�ndez�s �Encantada��so much more than just �pleased to meet you.� The spare installation�which stretches over two floors and includes models, sculpture, soap samples and peephole environments�is a tall tale about the construction of El Encanto, the fictional tallest hotel in Puerto Rico. A symbol of all things new and shiny, El Encanto is everything advertising tries to sell you when it taps into your dreams. It�s the best car, the best vacation, the best house, the most opulent future, the impossible dream.
So what does this Emerald City accommodation look like? El Encanto, in its sculptural form, is an aqua-blue monolith sheathed in clear plastic and topped by what looks like a mantilla of doilies. Fanciful doesn�t begin to cover it. In a tabletop model of the hotel�s grounds are two swimming pools in which synchronized swimmers spell out the hotel�s name. (The pools are video monitors, and the swimmers are the creator�s alter ego, the Incredible Shrinking Woman, digitally cloned into a whole team of performers.) The hotel�s rooms, seem through peepholes, reveal bright tableaux involving a woman (the artist) in a French maid�s uniform. There�s muzak wafting through the space, and a complementary bar of El Encanto soap to take home as a memento.