The generation of confinement
Young Salvadoran Art
The generation born in El Salvador in the mid-eighties and early nineties and raised during the postwar period (1992 to the present), began its development and association with the art world in the early 21st century. Some of the remarkable efforts produced during this time to project regional and national contemporary art include:
· 1996. Inauguration of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design of Costa Rica (MADC). The MADC organized the Mesótica II exhibition to showcase the newest Central American art. Shown in Europe, the exhibition turned Costa Rica into the center of development of contemporary art in the region. Rodolfo Molina and Eugenia Marta Valle participated for El Salvador.
· 1998. First Central American Isthmus Biennial in Guatemala, won by Salvadoran Walterio Iraheta along with two other artists.
· 1999. Virginia Pérez Ratton (1950-2010) founded TEOR/éTica and established a work group of international curators –some from Central America– who helped create a regional network of artists and related contacts.
· 2000. Walterio Iraheta, Ronald Morán and Simón Vega studied in Mexico thanks to a grant from the country's National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA).
· 2000. Temas Centrales (Central Issues), First symposium on contemporary artistic practices, TEOR/éTica/MADC. Salvadorans Janine Janowsky and Rodolfo Molina participated.
· 2003. Inauguration of the Museum of Art of El Salvador (MARTE).
Combined with these efforts, in the late nineties and the first decade of the 21st century several events made art production visible and served as reference for the younger generation. Although most of these events have disappeared, the following are worth mentioning: Arte Digital, organized by the Clic Foundation; the Palmarés painting prize; the Arte Joven contest of the Cultural Center of Spain; the Arte Paiz Biennial; the auction of the Museum of Art of El Salvador (still open); and the PROMERICA Selection for the Central American Biennial (still open). These events, organized by private entities, coupled with individual and collective projects, allowed this generation to relate with international artists and activities and built awareness of the need to reflect on art production and to professionalize the processes of artistic creation and distribution. However, for various reasons most of these activities were stopped at the end of the first decade of the 21st century; undoubtedly, the global economic crisis was one of the circumstances involved.
It should be noted that some of these events set a thematic trend towards social violence, migration and maras (gangs); examples include:
2005. Alex Cuchilla wins the III Arte Paiz Biennial, with the work: Ángel caído (Fallen Angel).
2005. Ronald Morán, Second Prague Biennale with the installation of the work Habitación infantil (Children's Room).
2006. Danny Zavaleta with his work El Tour (The Tour) at the Central American Isthmus Biennial, El Salvador.
2007. Ronald Morán at the Venice Biennale with Habitación infantil.
2008. Mayra Barraza presents the República de la muerte (Republic of Death) Exhibition at CCE/SV; in Guatemala in 2009, and Honduras in 2010.
2008. Danny Zavaleta, with the work Made in; Young Art First Prize, CCE/SV.
2009. Proyecto Migraciones exhibits the work Mirando al Sur (Looking South) at the Cultural Center of Spain.
2009. Curando Latinoamérica (Curating Latin America) project, Cultural Center of Spain.
2009. Jaime Izaguirre with Niño barrio 1 (Child Neighborhood 1), First place, Art Auction of El Salvador, SUMARTE.
2010. Mauricio Esquivel with Líneas de referencia (Reference Lines), First place, Young Art Prize, CCE/SV.
Many of the specialists who selected and awarded various works in some of the above events and other related activities were foreigners; and, since the themes of violence and gangs are the most visible cultural particularity of the country at the international level, logically this issue became prominent. Moreover, as there are international agencies and local institutions working to prevent violence, this and other related issues are still current. However, they are not the only ones.
Given their influence on current artistic production, other prevailing Salvadoran peculiarities to consider include:
1. Ongoing migration, which started during the time of war.
2. Increasing gangs and social violence.
3. Gradual increase of security measures in private homes.
4. Emergence of private residential areas.
5. Emergence of private security firms.
6. Promotion of secure recreational facilities (malls).
7. Remittances turned into a driver of desertion from rural work, and are promoting migration to the cities.
8. Dollarization[1] raises the prices of staple foods, and the increase of minimum wages is not substantial.
9. Widespread access to and everyday use of the Internet.
10. Cell phones are becoming ever smaller and include more features.
11. Laptops are becoming more affordable.
12. Video game development has spiraled since the nineties.
13. Popularization of cable TV.
This list of characteristics allows acknowledging that issues of violence, migration, and others are relevant because they were and are a prominent reflection of context. Additionally, the ensuing situation of insecurity is intensified by the interests of the different sectors, which, as highlighted by items 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, shows there is a situation of confinement that will become comfortable due to the gradual and affordable development of technology, including video games and the media (items 10, 11, 12 and 13). The generation raised during the nineties and the early years of the present century grew up among these peculiarities; coupled with a lack of activities to promote the visibility of works and artists, this fostered attention only to certain issues that began to stand out.
The exhibition entitled La generación del encierro (The generation of confinement) attempts to make visible the work of some young artists and to contextualize it, from the social problems linked to gangs and the insecurity and death to which these refer, through the construction of landscapes as metaphors for finding other spaces or escape routes, to productions concerning more personal and even intimate reflections. It presents an overview of current Salvadoran artistic production from the perspective of aesthetic expressions that match what In Situ calls "Aesthetics of Confinement".
The journey begins with the work of Mayra Barraza Asociaciones ilícitas (2009) (Illicit Associations), which opens the exhibition with a face taken from newspapers and belonging to gang members. This piece confronts us directly with a physiognomy that, though unknown to us, is perceived as threatening.
The work of Walterio Iraheta Diálogo con Magritte (2008) (Dialogue with Magritte), from the series Mis pies son mis alas (My feet are my wings), requires us to recall the murder of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero in 1980. A crowd gathered outside the Metropolitan Cathedral during the mass celebrated prior to his funeral. The army used gunfire and bombs to disperse it. While they fled, people left all kinds of footwear behind them. The shoes in the series "My feet are my wings" are, according to Walterio, "an analogy between the object and the human being", as well as a metaphor for the journey and the record of a path that also relates to a migration, not only physical but mental, even an escape.
The work by Melissa Guevara Sin título, vértebra humana metalizada sobre almohada (2014) (Untitled, Human vertebra metallized on pillow), may refer to the "normalization" of violence, and allows for different interpretations, notoriously among them the purchase of human remains. Melissa uses it as a resource to talk about temporality, registration, history, death and the particularities of violence of the context from which they originated.
These works aim to make visible the current climate of violence in El Salvador, through which the body is physically modified, as in the works of Mayra (physiognomy) or Melissa (death). Moreover, within the confinement, the body becomes a space for exploration and representation; in this way, in her work Sin título (2014) (Untitled), Virginia Cortés subtly intervenes ceramic plates with illustrations of intimate and erotic scenes stemming from the personal experiences of the artist. Some of these illustrations construct landscapes that go unnoticed and force us to take a second look. Furthermore, the decorative arrangement introduces us into a domestic space.
In turn, Jaime Izaguirre, with his work Cielos de bolsillo (2013) (Pocket Skies), executes an almost automatic process whereby the stain and the tonal degradation may be translated as a sky; a sky which, ironically –due to the pocket book format– becomes a metaphor for space. The result is the construction –in the mind, at least– of an open space. This is the situation of confinement where the "in-security" that Jaime presents as a mental state, has an equally mental response in the personal construction of a metaphorical "space" of "freedom."
In his work Estéticas del encierro (2014) (Aesthetics of Confinement), Mauricio Esquivel explores the possibilities of landscape building. The piece refers to the work The Innocent Eye Test, a painting by Mark Tansey (1981) in which a cow observes a famous painting by the Dutch Baroque painter Paulus Potter, called The Bull (1645). In Tansey's painting, the cow watches the bull and the others seem to be expecting her opinion. Following this cue, Mauricio paints a scene where a toy cow watches a little bull.
The work playfully invites to see, search for and recognize new landscapes as metaphorical horizons for escaping the uncertainty generated by the exterior. It also proposes asking why issues such as violence are so iconic in Central America, and what would happen if artists stop talking about them: will the non-violent be visible?
Within these processes of reflection, the intimate work Sin título (Untitled), from the 2013 series Extremidades (Extremities), by Sandra Leiva, reflects on the affectivity and the contradictions that emerge when close and secure bonds become aggressive, coercive and possessive. Using the body as a representation of the physical –but understanding it as inseparable from the psychological– it presents body language as a result of the emotions.
At the same time, Abigail Reyes builds her work Prelibiri, from the series Prelibiri (2013), from intimacy, making references to femininity, sexuality and everyday life, in order to project an emotional and aesthetic personal experience through a collection of visual anecdotes.
Meanwhile, with his work Melting Carrot (sketch) (2013), Luis Cornejo recalls the visual culture of the period and the influence that media and technology have had on this generation. With images drawn mostly from magazines, Cornejo combines elements from comic books, video games and cartoons to create his characters and scenes. The final product is a sort of chimera in which different realities are mixed.
The realities posed by Cornejo lead the way to Rodrigo Dada's piece Limbo, which describes an uncertain space corresponding to a transitional situation where uncertainty turns into context, in terms of what Bauman calls "liquidity" to refer to the changing and unstable character of reality and its institutions; it is a reference not only to our present times, but to the context and daily reality of El Salvador. For the author, this is in turn a typology of male portraits which revolves around the notions of boundary, transition, tunnel; at the border between reality and dream, between tranquility and turbulence; it shows a subject entering a different context.
With this intimacy, perhaps fostered by the feeling of loneliness, we approach the work of Nadie, entitled Sólo existen las personas que he besado (2012) (Only the people I have kissed exist). It is a reflection on how the other certifies the self, and how in each person's individual reality "there are only people who have proven I exist"[2]; for, as mentioned by the author, the other is confirmed in the intimate relationship and becomes part of his world as a new horizon or territory to explore.
This other to explore, who builds something else between them, is what the ARCA collective represents in their intervention Saudade ("a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy," according to Manuel de Melo), a Portuguese word expressing a primary affective feeling, close to melancholy, stimulated by temporal or spatial distance from something loved and involving the desire to annul this distance. Designed to be read from the beginning or from the end, this piece by the ARCA collective is perhaps the most intimate of the exhibition, as it narrates a relationship from the personal experiences of the artists.
Throughout, our goal is to craft a vision of how context influences artistic production, and how at present a change can be observed, since after a decade of addressing issues of social violence and gangs, today multiple works are emerging from "inside", which can also be a form of violence, as when the impossibility to exit triggers thoughts and questions about the self, confinement, daily life, the building of landscapes, intimacy, sensuality, sexuality, and other issues.
The exhibition offers a perspective and an approach to the scenario of young Salvadoran production. It refers indirectly to social issues, influenced by the peculiarities of the present, and raises a concern about the need to reflect on the current artistic production in a country like El Salvador, where the political system institutionalizes violence as a social control system implemented by organized crime.
Historically, violence to the body and punishment as a means of social control exercised by the State shifted from a system of public violence to one of punishment in confinement, where the goal was the rehabilitation of the subject; that is, "Punishment shifted from the body to the soul."[3] In present-day El Salvador, the control of public violence involves, at least in part, confining society not for having committed a crime, but because the "soul" itself of the subject has locked-up the body as a means of "protection", as a relationship between violence and social punishment exerted on the physical body of individuals, who in this case are instrumentalized as a political body coerced by power relations; thus, the themes of the exhibition are consistent with their context.
InSitu
Jaime Izaguirre • Mauricio Esquivel
[1] El Salvador dollarized its economy in 2001 under the government of President Francisco Flores.
[2] "Only the people I have kissed exist." Nadie. http://dicenquenadieesperfecto.blogspot.com/2012/10/solo-existen-las-personas-que-he-besado.html
[3] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
Young Salvadoran Art
The generation born in El Salvador in the mid-eighties and early nineties and raised during the postwar period (1992 to the present), began its development and association with the art world in the early 21st century. Some of the remarkable efforts produced during this time to project regional and national contemporary art include:
· 1996. Inauguration of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design of Costa Rica (MADC). The MADC organized the Mesótica II exhibition to showcase the newest Central American art. Shown in Europe, the exhibition turned Costa Rica into the center of development of contemporary art in the region. Rodolfo Molina and Eugenia Marta Valle participated for El Salvador.
· 1998. First Central American Isthmus Biennial in Guatemala, won by Salvadoran Walterio Iraheta along with two other artists.
· 1999. Virginia Pérez Ratton (1950-2010) founded TEOR/éTica and established a work group of international curators –some from Central America– who helped create a regional network of artists and related contacts.
· 2000. Walterio Iraheta, Ronald Morán and Simón Vega studied in Mexico thanks to a grant from the country's National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA).
· 2000. Temas Centrales (Central Issues), First symposium on contemporary artistic practices, TEOR/éTica/MADC. Salvadorans Janine Janowsky and Rodolfo Molina participated.
· 2003. Inauguration of the Museum of Art of El Salvador (MARTE).
Combined with these efforts, in the late nineties and the first decade of the 21st century several events made art production visible and served as reference for the younger generation. Although most of these events have disappeared, the following are worth mentioning: Arte Digital, organized by the Clic Foundation; the Palmarés painting prize; the Arte Joven contest of the Cultural Center of Spain; the Arte Paiz Biennial; the auction of the Museum of Art of El Salvador (still open); and the PROMERICA Selection for the Central American Biennial (still open). These events, organized by private entities, coupled with individual and collective projects, allowed this generation to relate with international artists and activities and built awareness of the need to reflect on art production and to professionalize the processes of artistic creation and distribution. However, for various reasons most of these activities were stopped at the end of the first decade of the 21st century; undoubtedly, the global economic crisis was one of the circumstances involved.
It should be noted that some of these events set a thematic trend towards social violence, migration and maras (gangs); examples include:
2005. Alex Cuchilla wins the III Arte Paiz Biennial, with the work: Ángel caído (Fallen Angel).
2005. Ronald Morán, Second Prague Biennale with the installation of the work Habitación infantil (Children's Room).
2006. Danny Zavaleta with his work El Tour (The Tour) at the Central American Isthmus Biennial, El Salvador.
2007. Ronald Morán at the Venice Biennale with Habitación infantil.
2008. Mayra Barraza presents the República de la muerte (Republic of Death) Exhibition at CCE/SV; in Guatemala in 2009, and Honduras in 2010.
2008. Danny Zavaleta, with the work Made in; Young Art First Prize, CCE/SV.
2009. Proyecto Migraciones exhibits the work Mirando al Sur (Looking South) at the Cultural Center of Spain.
2009. Curando Latinoamérica (Curating Latin America) project, Cultural Center of Spain.
2009. Jaime Izaguirre with Niño barrio 1 (Child Neighborhood 1), First place, Art Auction of El Salvador, SUMARTE.
2010. Mauricio Esquivel with Líneas de referencia (Reference Lines), First place, Young Art Prize, CCE/SV.
Many of the specialists who selected and awarded various works in some of the above events and other related activities were foreigners; and, since the themes of violence and gangs are the most visible cultural particularity of the country at the international level, logically this issue became prominent. Moreover, as there are international agencies and local institutions working to prevent violence, this and other related issues are still current. However, they are not the only ones.
Given their influence on current artistic production, other prevailing Salvadoran peculiarities to consider include:
1. Ongoing migration, which started during the time of war.
2. Increasing gangs and social violence.
3. Gradual increase of security measures in private homes.
4. Emergence of private residential areas.
5. Emergence of private security firms.
6. Promotion of secure recreational facilities (malls).
7. Remittances turned into a driver of desertion from rural work, and are promoting migration to the cities.
8. Dollarization[1] raises the prices of staple foods, and the increase of minimum wages is not substantial.
9. Widespread access to and everyday use of the Internet.
10. Cell phones are becoming ever smaller and include more features.
11. Laptops are becoming more affordable.
12. Video game development has spiraled since the nineties.
13. Popularization of cable TV.
This list of characteristics allows acknowledging that issues of violence, migration, and others are relevant because they were and are a prominent reflection of context. Additionally, the ensuing situation of insecurity is intensified by the interests of the different sectors, which, as highlighted by items 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, shows there is a situation of confinement that will become comfortable due to the gradual and affordable development of technology, including video games and the media (items 10, 11, 12 and 13). The generation raised during the nineties and the early years of the present century grew up among these peculiarities; coupled with a lack of activities to promote the visibility of works and artists, this fostered attention only to certain issues that began to stand out.
The exhibition entitled La generación del encierro (The generation of confinement) attempts to make visible the work of some young artists and to contextualize it, from the social problems linked to gangs and the insecurity and death to which these refer, through the construction of landscapes as metaphors for finding other spaces or escape routes, to productions concerning more personal and even intimate reflections. It presents an overview of current Salvadoran artistic production from the perspective of aesthetic expressions that match what In Situ calls "Aesthetics of Confinement".
The journey begins with the work of Mayra Barraza Asociaciones ilícitas (2009) (Illicit Associations), which opens the exhibition with a face taken from newspapers and belonging to gang members. This piece confronts us directly with a physiognomy that, though unknown to us, is perceived as threatening.
The work of Walterio Iraheta Diálogo con Magritte (2008) (Dialogue with Magritte), from the series Mis pies son mis alas (My feet are my wings), requires us to recall the murder of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero in 1980. A crowd gathered outside the Metropolitan Cathedral during the mass celebrated prior to his funeral. The army used gunfire and bombs to disperse it. While they fled, people left all kinds of footwear behind them. The shoes in the series "My feet are my wings" are, according to Walterio, "an analogy between the object and the human being", as well as a metaphor for the journey and the record of a path that also relates to a migration, not only physical but mental, even an escape.
The work by Melissa Guevara Sin título, vértebra humana metalizada sobre almohada (2014) (Untitled, Human vertebra metallized on pillow), may refer to the "normalization" of violence, and allows for different interpretations, notoriously among them the purchase of human remains. Melissa uses it as a resource to talk about temporality, registration, history, death and the particularities of violence of the context from which they originated.
These works aim to make visible the current climate of violence in El Salvador, through which the body is physically modified, as in the works of Mayra (physiognomy) or Melissa (death). Moreover, within the confinement, the body becomes a space for exploration and representation; in this way, in her work Sin título (2014) (Untitled), Virginia Cortés subtly intervenes ceramic plates with illustrations of intimate and erotic scenes stemming from the personal experiences of the artist. Some of these illustrations construct landscapes that go unnoticed and force us to take a second look. Furthermore, the decorative arrangement introduces us into a domestic space.
In turn, Jaime Izaguirre, with his work Cielos de bolsillo (2013) (Pocket Skies), executes an almost automatic process whereby the stain and the tonal degradation may be translated as a sky; a sky which, ironically –due to the pocket book format– becomes a metaphor for space. The result is the construction –in the mind, at least– of an open space. This is the situation of confinement where the "in-security" that Jaime presents as a mental state, has an equally mental response in the personal construction of a metaphorical "space" of "freedom."
In his work Estéticas del encierro (2014) (Aesthetics of Confinement), Mauricio Esquivel explores the possibilities of landscape building. The piece refers to the work The Innocent Eye Test, a painting by Mark Tansey (1981) in which a cow observes a famous painting by the Dutch Baroque painter Paulus Potter, called The Bull (1645). In Tansey's painting, the cow watches the bull and the others seem to be expecting her opinion. Following this cue, Mauricio paints a scene where a toy cow watches a little bull.
The work playfully invites to see, search for and recognize new landscapes as metaphorical horizons for escaping the uncertainty generated by the exterior. It also proposes asking why issues such as violence are so iconic in Central America, and what would happen if artists stop talking about them: will the non-violent be visible?
Within these processes of reflection, the intimate work Sin título (Untitled), from the 2013 series Extremidades (Extremities), by Sandra Leiva, reflects on the affectivity and the contradictions that emerge when close and secure bonds become aggressive, coercive and possessive. Using the body as a representation of the physical –but understanding it as inseparable from the psychological– it presents body language as a result of the emotions.
At the same time, Abigail Reyes builds her work Prelibiri, from the series Prelibiri (2013), from intimacy, making references to femininity, sexuality and everyday life, in order to project an emotional and aesthetic personal experience through a collection of visual anecdotes.
Meanwhile, with his work Melting Carrot (sketch) (2013), Luis Cornejo recalls the visual culture of the period and the influence that media and technology have had on this generation. With images drawn mostly from magazines, Cornejo combines elements from comic books, video games and cartoons to create his characters and scenes. The final product is a sort of chimera in which different realities are mixed.
The realities posed by Cornejo lead the way to Rodrigo Dada's piece Limbo, which describes an uncertain space corresponding to a transitional situation where uncertainty turns into context, in terms of what Bauman calls "liquidity" to refer to the changing and unstable character of reality and its institutions; it is a reference not only to our present times, but to the context and daily reality of El Salvador. For the author, this is in turn a typology of male portraits which revolves around the notions of boundary, transition, tunnel; at the border between reality and dream, between tranquility and turbulence; it shows a subject entering a different context.
With this intimacy, perhaps fostered by the feeling of loneliness, we approach the work of Nadie, entitled Sólo existen las personas que he besado (2012) (Only the people I have kissed exist). It is a reflection on how the other certifies the self, and how in each person's individual reality "there are only people who have proven I exist"[2]; for, as mentioned by the author, the other is confirmed in the intimate relationship and becomes part of his world as a new horizon or territory to explore.
This other to explore, who builds something else between them, is what the ARCA collective represents in their intervention Saudade ("a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy," according to Manuel de Melo), a Portuguese word expressing a primary affective feeling, close to melancholy, stimulated by temporal or spatial distance from something loved and involving the desire to annul this distance. Designed to be read from the beginning or from the end, this piece by the ARCA collective is perhaps the most intimate of the exhibition, as it narrates a relationship from the personal experiences of the artists.
Throughout, our goal is to craft a vision of how context influences artistic production, and how at present a change can be observed, since after a decade of addressing issues of social violence and gangs, today multiple works are emerging from "inside", which can also be a form of violence, as when the impossibility to exit triggers thoughts and questions about the self, confinement, daily life, the building of landscapes, intimacy, sensuality, sexuality, and other issues.
The exhibition offers a perspective and an approach to the scenario of young Salvadoran production. It refers indirectly to social issues, influenced by the peculiarities of the present, and raises a concern about the need to reflect on the current artistic production in a country like El Salvador, where the political system institutionalizes violence as a social control system implemented by organized crime.
Historically, violence to the body and punishment as a means of social control exercised by the State shifted from a system of public violence to one of punishment in confinement, where the goal was the rehabilitation of the subject; that is, "Punishment shifted from the body to the soul."[3] In present-day El Salvador, the control of public violence involves, at least in part, confining society not for having committed a crime, but because the "soul" itself of the subject has locked-up the body as a means of "protection", as a relationship between violence and social punishment exerted on the physical body of individuals, who in this case are instrumentalized as a political body coerced by power relations; thus, the themes of the exhibition are consistent with their context.
InSitu
Jaime Izaguirre • Mauricio Esquivel
[1] El Salvador dollarized its economy in 2001 under the government of President Francisco Flores.
[2] "Only the people I have kissed exist." Nadie. http://dicenquenadieesperfecto.blogspot.com/2012/10/solo-existen-las-personas-que-he-besado.html
[3] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish.