The lyrics, the inspiration behind Lopaz’s series of collage animations, present two different yet complementary perspectives. First, God-like figures represent the superior being dictating behaviors and beliefs. Confidently, they tell humans: “I can do anything, I can be anything. Just watch me fly. Living is my delight; my future is so bright. I’ll never die.” Second, the chorus represents a distant observer of the unfolding story. As the song continues, gods and goddesses explain how, by adopting and even reproducing their beliefs, humans might blend in and find acceptance and love: “So let us just guide you, this unguarded space, make it a void you can fill up with numbness through our grace. So just smile, and you can make it, this could be love, and you’ll never be hated.” Here, New Past alludes to the dangers of normalizing violence toward marginalized communities. Still, there is another voice that quietly asks the deities: “What is your safety if only measured by others’ unease? What is your preference, if it depends on violent fear? What is your love if your lineage has left you numb? What do you owe your identity to?” Persistently, this voice keeps asking the last question until both voices fade out and the song ends.

The lyrics serve as a reminder of how easily we can become complicit in the very systems of racism and patriarchy that already harm our own communities. Lopaz takes this complex story, animating deities and scenes with over ninety collages. The aesthetics of the work draw from collage’s rawness, tactility, texture, layering, and fragmentation, creating a jittery movement and visual narrative that call attention to the constructed nature of both identity and belief systems. By cutting up and recontextualizing images of fashion magazines and popular culture, Lopaz moves beyond harmful stereotypes to create hybrid and mythical figures, facilitating the construction of speculative realities for Black communities. In the opening scenes, six gods and goddesses are formed with fragmented faces of black subjects, along with materials like quartz, clay vases, fabric, headscarves, and shells. As the video unfolds, other figures representing humans from different communities come into contact and at time seven seem to clash or attack one another.

New Past uses silence, contrast, and moments of instrumental overload to communicate the two perspectives’ struggle to reconcile a vision made to privilege one group in detriment of others. Lopaz, in turn, gives life to these complex stories with hybrid forms that are only partially human moving across times and multidimensional spaces. By physically layering these fragmented subjects and worlds, Lopaz’s animation resonates with the song’s core: a call for collective awakening, unlearning bias, and embracing our shared duty to create solidarity within our communities.

Text by Erandy Vergara Vargas

Isaiah Lopaz is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, and archivist based between Brussels and Rotterdam. Drawing from recent family histories shaped by colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade, their practice explores the ways in which personal narratives inform broader global entanglements. They are the founder of Black Visual Grammar, an evolving workshop and exhibition project that documents Black perspectives through collage-making and public archiving. Their work has been presented at institutions including: the HAU, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, and the DAAD Galerie. They have been a guest lecturer atKunsthochschuleWeissensee, UDK, and St. Lucas Antwerp, and have received funding from the Berlin Senate for Culture and Europe, and StiftungKunstfonds.