Signals from Nowadays
The signs of the current social, economic and ecological deterioration on a global scale, including its dangers, have its origins and were observed in the past. However, its dimensions were not fully imagined. Disagreements between groups, pollution and environmental destruction, largely due to excessive consumption are part of an inheritance that characterize and threatens our present and future on the planet.
Through his artwork Simulacro, artist Coco Valencia, denounces one of the first signs of discrimination. He addresses general derogatory terms employed by some social groups, to differentiate and distance from others. Those verbal antagonisms produce tensions that successively lead to physical violence, marginalization and, in extreme cases, to the extermination of minority groups.
The installation is comprised of threatening skulls that “shoot” insulting words in the form of flares. We see faces and prejudgment words, stereotypes, xenophobic, racist and gender prejudices that are present in the mass media, but also, in our surroundings, despite many educational campaigns and social struggles.
In the case of Vanessa Rivera and the artwork Acuífero III, the artist presents a sculptural installation made with the ancient technique of mosaic, produced with different discarded materials. It is not simply a free representation about the natural reserves extracted from the artist imagination, in this case, groundwater. Reversing the waste and giving it a new life, an aesthetic one, the artist warns us about the dangers that water is facing in our planet. Pollution and water scarcity are some of the biggest problems today and main challenges for the immediate future.
Abdiel Segarra presents a particular form of geometric abstractionism in the artwork Things about that unbreakable (and Unstoppable) consumption pattern. In recent years, the artist has collected: bags, labels, receipts, in short, material destined to be discarded. With these materials, he created collages of geometric forms. As the artist clearly states: “Through repetition, the creation of patterns and sets, highlights our dynamics and habits of consumption”. It is a subtle operation and a conceptual ambition that exceeds representative autonomy and the absence of narratives that geometric artists sought at the beginning of the XX century. The artwork contains and denounces the most distinctive habit of the capitalist society, consumerism.
The German philosopher Hannah Arendt in her detailed analysis of the tragic events that characterized, most part of the last century advised us: “The process of a single deed can quite literally endure throughout time until mankind itself has come to an end.” (1)
(1) The Human Condition, The University of Chicago Press. Chicago and London P.233
Juan Carlos López Quintero, MAPR Curator