XXI Bienal de Arte Paiz Projects (Selection)
Magdalena Atria
Serena y furiosamente, 2018
Casa Ibargüen
In a career spanning more than 20 years, Magdalena Atria's work bridges the experiential and non-rational with the intelligence of emotions. Her installations are often site-specific and ephemeral, responding to specific historical structures or objects. Interested in the idea and the experience of play, her installation for the Bienal Paiz uses plastilina to create an abstract intervention along the wall of Casa Ibargüen. Atria has worked with the material in numerous projects and is interested in how geometries made of the moldable clay might modify themselves--how they are always changing--even as they are touched, or as they touch the wall. The plastilina "es el soporte y el pigmento al mismo tiempo," she observes, giving it a material distinction from paint or stone. Further, it reacts to its place and the interactions of its viewers; when it is touched, it holds the mark of that touch. "El arte mejora nuestra capacidad de sentir," says Atria. Titled Serena y furiosamente, in reference to a Sui Generis song, the installation references seemingly opposing emotional states. To be both calm and furious at the same time is difficult to explain rationally, but in these vibrant abstractions we find a reflection of what that experience might feel like.
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La obra de Magdalena Atria, que cubre más de 20 años, comunica lo experiencial y lo no-racional con la inteligencia de lo emocional. A menudo sus instalaciones están creadas para los espacios donde se exhiben y son efímeras, dialogando con estructuras u objetos históricos específicos. Respondiendo a su interés en la idea y la experiencia del juego, su instalación para la Bienal Paiz utiliza plastilina para crear una intervención abstracta a lo largo de la pared de la Casa Ibargüen. Aria ha trabajado este material en varios proyectos, y se interesa en la manera en las que las geometrías producidas con este material moldeable podrían modificarse –la manera en la que están cambiando constantemente—aún cuando se las toca, o cuando tocan la pared. La plastilina “es el soporte y el pigmento al mismo tiempo”, apunta la artista, diferenciándola materialmente de la pintura o la piedra. Además, reacciona al lugar y las interacciones del público; al tocarla conserva la marca de ese tacto. “El arte mejora nuestra capacidad de sentir”, dice Atria. Titulada Serena y furiosamente como referencia a la canción de Sui Géneris, la instalación hace referencia a dos estados de ánimo aparentemente opuestos. Es difícil explicar racionalmente la condición de sentir a la vez tranquilidad y furia, pero en estas abstracciones vibrantes encontramos una reflexión sobre cómo podría sentirse esa experiencia.
Simón Vega
Apollo-Soyuz-Chapultepec Project
Encuentros espaciales, acuerdos terrenales y olvidos universales
Centro Cultural Metropolitano
In July 1975, NASA astronauts and Russian cosmonauts met for the first time in space in a jointly-designed docking module. The module allowed the two dissimilar space craft to connect in orbit—a major technological achievement—but the gesture was also groundbreaking in terms of international diplomacy, signaling a thaw to the Cold War. Working together to design the capsule, engineers had to cross language and cultural barriers, and the event was heralded as a major political success.
For his Apollo-Soyuz-Chapultepec Project, Simón Vega takes the year 1975 as a signal moment in history, connecting this spatial encounter with two events in the same month of that same year: the Miss Universe pageant held in San Salvador and a student massacre, also in San Salvador, just over a week later. Here, he builds a room-size installation of two space capsules from scavenged materials—aluminum, plastic, found electronics, household objects, plants—with a docking station between them. In one capsule, Vega creates a beauty salon with video of the Miss Universe pageant playing on a television inside. In the other capsule, he makes a small coffee station and archival images of the massacre flash past. In 1992, the Chapultepec agreement was signed, officially ending the Civil War in El Salvador. And yet, much like the Apollo-Soyuz encounter, the peace accord did little to end the war, which continues in daily acts of extreme violence, extortion, poverty, and resulting migrations of people. Here, in Vega’s version, the two capsules never connect, their fragmentation a reminder of the optimism and failure of such encounters.
Humberto Vélez / Sumpango
Rajawal tinamit / El Espíritu del Pueblo
Sumpango
For their collaboration, the community of Sumpango and artist Humberto Vélez created a day-long festival honoring the spirit of the community. The culmination of months of research, exchange, and collaboration, the event began with the dance of the Moors and the Christians, a traditional dance that describes the historical encounter between cultures. From the performance (held in front of the municipality), the community and visitors walked together through Sumpango in a procession led by musicians, ancianos, spiritual guides, and special guests. The procession, with its Baile de los Gigantes (Dance of the Giants) to the music of marimba, chirimía, y tambor, paused in front of the cemetery. There, the community’s spiritual guides made a gesture of respect and prayer for the ancestors of Sumpango and unveiled the giant kite built especially for the biennial. The procession continued to the community’s traditional site for flying the barriletes on the Day of the Dead in November. There, the community held a traditional Maya ceremony in gratitude to the nahuales, especially Keme, the nahual of the community. Following the ceremony, the kites were launched into the sky by teams of kite fliers.
Inés Verdugo
Dulce hogar, 2018
Concepción 41, Antigua, Guatemala
La casa no solo se observa, es un volumen que se habita, se vive dentro de sus proporciones. Se hace propia. Constantemente la casa ha estado presente en mi trabajo, ya sea por lo frágil o estable, lo vacía o lo llena, o por ser un elemento que expresa las relaciones entre lo público y lo privado.
El hogar es el primer universo del individuo y tiene la facultad de guardar recuerdos, siendo el lugar donde recaen los pensamientos y se forman las primeras imágenes. He encontrado en la casa una sensación de aprisionamiento, un refugio lleno de protección. Su propia fisionomía entre lo abierto y lo cerrado, lo oscuro y lo luminoso, lo callado y lo evidenciado la hacen un espacio íntimo, lleno de contradicciones y ambivalencias.
Dulce Hogar propone construir una casa con ladrillos de panela. Con esta construcción busco traspasar los elementos simbólicos de su arquitectura y encontrar en su material, el paralelismo entre lo dulce y lo amargo, lo justo y lo injusto, lo eterno y lo efímero.
A medida que va pasando el tiempo esta casa empezará a derretirse, a gotear, a fermentarse, incluso podrá ser devorada por invasiones de insectos y animales. Lo que pretendió ser un hogar se inundará de abandono y su olor agridulce será omnipotente. El arte resiste ante cualquier gobierno, la casa no lo hace, esta se desvanece, perdiéndola para siempre.
—Inés Verdugo
Roberto Escobar
Acuarelas de la serie Paseo
Galería José Gorostiza
The watercolors in Roberto Escobar’s series Paseo show the subtle details of the artist’s home and his observations from his daily walks. Here we see crates for Gallo beer, jugs for transporting gasoline, electrical wires, an abandoned toy drum, barbed wire barriers, the back side of the 18th street market. In one image, a small truck carries a mountain of empty plastic containers, piled up in an extraordinary configuration. Escobar has titled the work Persistence of the real and it is a characteristic scene from this particular city, something both local and universal in its dailiness. Based on his photographs, the watercolors represent these small, forgotten moments in a city, but they take on an ephemerality in their medium. As the washes of paint fade into the expansive white space of the paper, they are gentle reminders of the transitory nature of our days, a suggestion to slow down and look carefully around us as we move through the world.
Kevin Frank Pellecer
No permanecer en este lugar
Embajada de México
Drawing from his extensive body of photographs of Guatemala City, in this new work Kevin Frank Pellecer finds common discomfort in Guatemala and in a nondescript city in the United States. Looking to the banal spaces of encounter: in the streets, public transportation, raves and house parties, Pellecer records awkwardness, silence, and conflict, often in the spaces we least expect to find them. Seen together, the photographs in this series muddy the familiarity of each city, making it impossible to tell if the image comes from Guatemala or Houston, two cities often forgotten in the international news, but connected by the current migrations of Central American refugees. Pellecer's photographs work on the level of the emotional--appearing like hard-to-recall nightmares--rather than on the level of the didactic. In them, he suggests that even as we dream of other places, we cannot remain still where we are.
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A partir de su vasta colección de imágenes de la Ciudad de Guatemala, Kevin Frank Pellecer encuentra, en esta nueva obra, espacios de incomodidad comparable entre la Ciudad de Guatemala y una ciudad sin nombrar de los Estados Unidos. Observando los espacios banales del encuentro: las calles, el transporte público, fiestas de rave y house, Pellecer registra lo extraño, el silencio y los conflictos en los espacios donde a menudo menos esperamos encontrarlos. En su conjunto, las fotografías de esta serie oscurecen la familiaridad de cada una de las ciudades, haciendo imposible saber si la imagen proviene de Guatemala o Houston, dos ciudades a menudo olvidadas en la cobertura internacional de noticias pero que están conectadas por la actual migración de refugiados centroamericanos. Las fotografías de Pellecer impactan más a nivel emocional –con su apariencia de pesadillas difíciles de recordar—que a nivel didáctico. En ellas sugiere que aún cuando soñamos con otros ámbitos no podemos quedarnos quietos ahí donde estamos.
El Colectivo
P.A.L.A.B.R.A.
Facultad de Arquitectura
Universidad de San Carlos
Drawing from their experiences as professional clowns, El Colectivo has a substantial body of conceptual work in which they collaborate to make visible the absurdities of the city and the art world. Their critique reveals a sophisticated relationship to humor and play, and their performances are often participatory, allowing various publics and passersby to join them. In other works, they make subtle gestures in the public spaces of the city, intentionally causing confusion or changing meanings, teasing out the ways in which we understand those spaces to work.
For their performance at the Facultad de Arquitectura at Universidad de San Carlos, Christopher Ticas and José Oquendo of El Colectivo installed a series of seven letter piñatas that spell the word PALABRA (WORD). The installation hung in the communal space of the building, under a historic mural by “El Tecolote” Arnaldo Ramírez Amaya and alongside a sculpture by Luis Díaz. Biennial visitors, artists, curators, and students from the architecture school destroyed the piñatas together in joyful abandon, symbolically breaking apart the word until it could no longer be read. Seen in the context of the school, and alongside works by important Guatemalan artists, the piece suggested a challenge to the centrality of language, a destruction of discourse, and also a kind of untranslatability of experience.
Alfredo Ceibal
Jardines de otros mundos
La colección de obras aquí expuesta presenta formas de piedras y asteroides, sobre los cuales ocurre la vide, como si cada una fuese un mundo o copia del propio universo. Podría ser así, ya que la misma tierra, clasificada entre los planetas rocosos ha sido formada por estos materiales que después del caos traen la vida y el orden.
Cabe recordar que en sus inicios la historia humana fue pintada en el interior de las cavernas, como también gran parte de la civilización y registro de los imperios está plasmado sobre piedras. Son éstas quienes darán los últimos testimonios de la cultura y civilización sobre la tierra una vez los escritos en medios modernos se hayan disuelto en el tiempo y el olvido.
Los cuerpo minerales o metálicos, en forma de asteroides, llegados desde las zonas más heladas y remotas del sistema solar, como remanentes de su formación, han impactado el planeta por millones de años. Formado así un ciclo puntual de extinción y renacer para la vida en la tierra. Hoy, el temor humano a su propia extinción no se limita a los resultados de la sobrepoblación descontrolada, la guerra, la pandemia, o el colapso climático; sino también a impactos de cuerpos celestes que provocan destrucción y extinciones masivas. Esto explica la obsesión humana de encontrar lunas o planetas para colonizar y hallar la salvación en las profundidades del universo.
Nuestro destino está escrito en las alturas de la bóveda celeste. Somos hijos de los minerales, del agua, de las actividades físicas y térmicas cósmicas, el tiempo, la gravedad y las fluctuaciones y espuma cuánticas. En los espacios del azar está escrita una fecha y una hora en las que se revela la próxima visita e impacto de uno de estos objetos para que la vida inicie de nuevo. Es solo cosa de tiempo, revelan los astrofísicos, quienes valiéndose de la intuición y el cálculo agotan su vida buscando las respuestas en la helada oscuridad y la luz del infinito.
—Alfredo Ceibal
Hellen Ascoli & Jorge de León
Correspondencia
Centro Cultural Metropolitano
In this collaboration, Hellen Ascoli and Jorge de León took their long-distance correspondence as a site for thinking about distance and loss, drawing and politics, and weaving as artistic process and metaphor. Installed at the Centro Cultural Metropolitano—Correos—Correspondencia includes postcards drawn in graphite by de León, continuing his use of images from Guatemala’s daily press. These images explore the violent and grotesque events of the day, offering an image of Guatemala that would never appear on tourist postcards. Further, since the national mail service was discontinued, the act of making postcards and sending them to a friend or collaborator is an exercise in frustration.
Ascoli, who recently moved to the United States, sends texts, emails, and photographs to de León and other friends, showing her daily walks at a nearby lake, her observations about the landscape surrounding her new home, and her experience of distance. In the installation, Ascoli presents a video of these texts and images. De León’s postcards draw a line from the video around the room, to a series of drawings he completed while thinking about Ascoli’s work and teaching as a weaver. In the center of the room, visitors are invited to write and draw their own postcards. The project suggests the richness of artistic exchange, while also allowing space for disorientation, frustration, and loss.
Tercerunquinto
Intento de reconstrucción de un mural
Between 1950 and 1952, Guatemalan artist Carlos Mérida completed one of his most impressive architectural interventions in Mexico City: more than 4000 m(2) de decoración plástica de todos los edificios del multifamiliar Juárez. Based on Aztec legend, the murals were carved directly into the walls of the building, creating an immersive environment of extraordinarily beautiful Modernist interpretations of traditional narratives. En esa época no había antecedentes de obras de este tipo, y no existía ninguna integración plástica a esa escala. These murals, built directly into the building, were destroyed in the earthquakes of September 1985. From the buildings' ruins, only the exterior murals were salvageable; the majority of Mérida's work was lost.
For Intento de reconstrucción de un mural, the artist collective Tercerunquinto (Gabriel Cazares y Rolando Flores) of Mexico searched la Ciudad de Guatemala for deshechos de construcción / ripio that could be used to reconstruct one fragment of Mérida's project at the multifamiliar Juárez. Collecting debris from the peripheries of the city, they found enough green-painted concrete to re-imagine Mérida's version of Coatlicue, the Aztec serpent-goddess, most famously depicted in a massive sculpture on view at the National Archeological Museum in Mexico. Here, they do not fully reconstruct the original mural; instead, they suggest the poetry in the fragment. What does it mean to be unable to fully reconstruct the past? Like an archeological museum, they install the fragments to suggest the missing whole. These absences provide space for imagining alternative narratives, spaces in which the politics of a city unfold. Further, using materials from the destruction of buildings in Guatemala City, the artists reflect on how the life of a city is determined by power and access to materials. This reconstructed mural, then, is both an homage to the lost work of Mérida, and to the destroyed structures of Guatemala. It is a reflection on cultural patrimony and how we give value to objects and buildings. And, finally, it is a meditation on memory and its many absences.
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Entre 1950 y 1952, el artista guatemalteco Carlos Mérida completó una de sus intervenciones arquitectónicas más impresionantes en al Ciudad de México. Más de 4000 metros cuadrados de decoración plástica de todos los edificios del multifamiliar Juárez. Basados en leyendas aztecas, los murales se tallaron directamente en las paredes del edificio, creando un ambiente inmersivo de extraordinariamente bellas interpretaciones modernistas de narraciones tradicionales. Por ese entonces no existían antecedentes de obras de ese tipo, y no se había hecho ninguna integración plástica a esa escala. Los murales, construidos directamente sobre el edificio, fueron destruidos por los terremotos de septiembre de 1985. Sólo los murales exteriores pudieron rescatarse de entre las ruinas de los edificios; la mayor parte de esta obra de Mérida se perdió.
Para Intento de reconstrucción de un mural, el colectivo artístico Tercerunquinto (Gabriel Cazares y Rolando Flores) de México, buscó en la ciudad de Guatemala desechos de construcción y ripio que pudieran utilizarse para reconstruir un fragmento del proyecto de Mérida en el multifamiliar Juárez. Recogiendo desechos de la periferia de la ciudad encontraron suficiente concreto pintado de verde como para re-imaginar la versión que Mérida hizo de Coatlicue, la diosa-serpiente azteca, cuya representación más famosa es una enorme escultura expuesta en el Museo Arqueológico Nacional de la Ciudad de México. Aquí no reconstruyen el mural original en su totalidad, sino que sugieren la poesía del fragmento. ¿Qué significa el no poder reconstruir el pasado en su totalidad? Como un museo arqueológico, los artistas instalan los fragmentos de manera que sugieren el total faltante. Estas ausencias permiten imaginar narrativas alternativas, espacios donde se despliegan las políticas de una ciudad. Aún más, utilizando materiales tomados de la destrucción de edificios de la Ciudad de Guatemala, el artista reflexiona acerca de cómo el poder y el acceso a los materiales determinan la vida en la ciudad. Este mural reconstruido es, entonces, tanto un homenaje a la obra perdida de Mérida, como a las estructuras destruidas en Guatemala. Es una reflexión sobre el patrimonio cultural y cómo asignamos valor a los objetos y los edificios. Y, finalmente, es una mediación entre la memoria y sus muchas ausencias.
Ricardo Lanzarini
Encendido: Arte busca mirada
Centro Cultural Metropolitano
Ricardo Lanzarini’s Encendido: Arte busca mirada includes layers upon layers of charcoal and graphite drawings on the walls. In the center of the room, hanging from the ceiling, he has built a large structure from bicycle frames that, when pedaled, provide energy to light bulbs that illuminate the drawings. The interactive installation pulls from long traditions of caricature: here, religious and political figures are in compromising (and often scatological) situations, showing their hypocrisies and indecency. But the drawings here are also remarkably intricate, piling up over each other and filling the walls from floor to ceiling with fantastical images that range from the scale of a thumbnail to a large mural. By activating the viewer with his seemingly whimsical bicycle structure, Lanzarini also engages with how we see. Here, the drawings are lit only by the active exercise of the visitor who pushes the pedals. Bare light bulbs, like those that might be found in an interrogation room, flicker on and off in a seizure-like pattern that makes it difficult to know if what one is seeing is really there. That ambiguity—between imagination and the grotesque, between what is there and the illusion—is both a beautiful visual experience and a strident political metaphor for our times.
Manuel Chavajay, Canal Cultural
K'aslemaal' Tz'unun Ya' / Energía del Colibrí Agua
San Pedro La Laguna
At the central basketball court in San Pedro La Laguna, the artistic collective Canal Cultural painted a mural for their participation in the Bienal Paiz. Titled Energy of the Water Hummingbird, the mural includes imagery from historic photographs of the Tzutujil community of San Pedro. In the first panel, an abuelo and healer of the community looks out over the lake, red flowers behind him and an incense burner beside him. The smoke from the incense offering floats over the water, transforming into a hummingbird, a bird that is always in movement and that can move backward as well as forward. It’s a fitting metaphor for history and community, and this mural continues Canal Cultural’s work to honor local heroes and histories, making clear the connections between the past and the present. Other panels, divided by candles in a nod to traditional ceremonies and offerings, include images of men rowing lanchas in the lake, and women carrying large jugs of water. Children drink from small gourds and behind them, a large image of maíz anchors the mural. The lake is the life-giving center of the community, a spiritual natural presence that defines the history of the Tzutujil. Similarly, corn is at the heart of the family, giving sustenance and wisdom. The mural is painted in a community space, used for small shops, basketball games, concerts, and presentations. It makes visible one of the elders of the community, and describes a life philosophy and local history. And, in this way, it also calls for holding on to the community traditions and beliefs as we move into the future.