Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle traces his understanding of otherness to the first time he saw a 19th century Spanish casta painting. Historically, casta paintings visually articulated the hierarchical system of race classifications in eighteenth century Hispanic America. In this film, Manglano-Ovalle recalls the effect and inspiration casta paintings instilled in him at a young age, against a backdrop of photographs of the artist’s 1998 installation The Garden of Earthly Delights at the XXIV Sao Paulo Bienal.

“I remember at the age of ten, difference was locatable to a particular sort of event…seeing eighteenth century casta paintings in a museum and not understanding them until somebody pointed out to me, that I was in one of those paintings,” says the artist. “They pointed to a painting where there’s ‘un espanol’ and ‘a mestizo,’ which is a mix between Español and India—a term that they invented.”