Painting as a ritual implies a materialization of the intangible. This act of creation is not to bring into existence, but rather to realize and to give expression to that which already exists. Similarly, death is a fact, and through rituals of exhumation and inhumation it is known. Hailing from a family that was subject to state terrorism during Guatemala’s dirty war, I find painting analagous to reclaiming meaning through exhumation and inhumation. Sometimes when a person is identified in a mass grave, not all parts of their body are found. In these cases, the family buries only found fragments, sometimes just one bone. The act of exhuming and inhuming in tandem is an abstraction-- scarce remains represent ancestors, and in so doing, memory/history is reclaimed. In my paintings I intensify the fragmentation of memory, which is distorted-- magnified in some parts and contracted in others. Abstracted images come together to trigger an anachronic viewing. I juxtapose images that represent history, body and memory with the reality of our current decaying global ecosystem. This juxtaposition challenges our socially and culturally embedded anthropocentric understanding, which is reflected in the body of paintings’ incongruence.
Deliberate disorder was introduced to mass graves as a military strategy to prevent the identification of the assassinated and disappeared. The aesthetics of the unintelligibility of mass graves are magnified in my paintings. This unintelligibility augments the juxtaposition of memory, body, and pollution in our ecosystem. I deliberately use materials typically found in mass graves that survive the weathering of time and tend to avoid decay in the earth, such as latex, plastic, and polymers in general. I contrast these artificial textures and objects with imagery of flora and fauna. My practice is concerned with rescuing the value of that which is conventionally deemed artificial, and questioning artificiality as a way of separating human species from “nature,” a separation that has been further deepened by the genocide of indigenous peoples, such as the Ixil in Guatemala.
I see inhumation and painting as ways of resisting a double death, the asssasination of embodied life coupled with the obliteration of memory provoked by clandestinity and disappearance. Disorder and anachronism are reaffirmed in exhumation and burial as distortions of time, where a distant past returns because a future depends on it. The identification and burial of a missing person presents an opportunity to reclaim someone who was violently seized, and imagine a future that is linked to our past. The burial of our ancestors provides continuity and a sense of belonging. I approach painting with an attitude of sober joy, which honors the persistent legacy of the dead or disappeared.