Monument to Santa Anna's Leg
Collaboration w/ Jose Luis Benavides
Nice Legs
Video, 17:17min
In this video work Palestinian artist Qais Assali and Latinx artist Jose Luis Benavides search for Santa Anna's missing leg. The Mexican general Santa Anna not only lost his wooden leg to U.S. forces during the American invasion and occupation of Mexico in the Mexico-American War, but he also lost half of Mexico's territories to the U.S. at the end of that war in 1848. Sharing in the trauma of Mexico's stolen lands in 1848 and the 1948 Nakba in Palestine, the two artists film their strange journey to Springfield, IL (USA) where a military museum keeps guard of Santa Anna's wooden leg in its odd fortress as a macabre trophy of U.S. global imperialism.
