Argentina
Rosemberg Sandoval: the sublimation of violence in Colombia
February 10, 2024 | nadiaevangelina
The W-Archivo gallery, located in the heart of Buenos Aires, presents the exhibition "Oro y mugre" (Gold and filth) by Colombian artist Rosemberg Sandoval. The visual artist and performer excavates the brutal violence in Colombia through visual poetics that he defines as "marginal". The exhibition brings together works made from the 1990s to the present.
The common thread of Gold and Dirt is the element Earth associated with a series of questions. If land, a central problem in Colombia, is associated with space and the warmth of a home, what happens when the right -and all that it entails- to housing is violated through the use of violence? How can artistic practices transfigure those tears? In turn, Sandoval's work is closely linked to his life experience.
The circumstances that have traversed Sandoval's life and his artistic training have not differed much from those that have marked millions of Colombians for decades, such as drug trafficking, crime, and guerrilla groups' actions, among others. Sandoval's family, in particular, was the victim of forced exile when he was just a child, which is why the displacement of rural and indigenous populations is directly related to the Earth in this exhibition.
The curatorship by Karime García Martinez proposes two themes where family and childhood are paramount. The first, "The façade", deals with the symbolic housing conditions. While in the second, "Shelter", the deficiencies both within the home, as well as in the home itself, are highlighted through the affectation of the materials.
Through means such as drawing, frottage, photography, video, and performance, Sandoval performs actions on and with the objects -true remains of real events- denouncing situations of social inequality generated both by war conflicts of deterritorialization and uprooting, as well as by inoperative policies that jeopardize fundamental rights.
Images become effective when the materials are chosen and the traces impregnated in them not only accompany but also construct and unveil meanings. Rosemberg Sandoval explains it as follows: "What we artists seek is to produce sensations through images and supports, the point is to produce them in a heroic and ephemeral way to reveal the soul. Art is the purge of the Inhuman and making art from the marginality and with the marginality is my only crime".
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| Rosemberg Sandoval |
The common thread of Gold and Dirt is the element Earth associated with a series of questions. If land, a central problem in Colombia, is associated with space and the warmth of a home, what happens when the right -and all that it entails- to housing is violated through the use of violence? How can artistic practices transfigure those tears? In turn, Sandoval's work is closely linked to his life experience.
The circumstances that have traversed Sandoval's life and his artistic training have not differed much from those that have marked millions of Colombians for decades, such as drug trafficking, crime, and guerrilla groups' actions, among others. Sandoval's family, in particular, was the victim of forced exile when he was just a child, which is why the displacement of rural and indigenous populations is directly related to the Earth in this exhibition.
The curatorship by Karime García Martinez proposes two themes where family and childhood are paramount. The first, "The façade", deals with the symbolic housing conditions. While in the second, "Shelter", the deficiencies both within the home, as well as in the home itself, are highlighted through the affectation of the materials.
 |
| Rosemberg Sandoval |
Images become effective when the materials are chosen and the traces impregnated in them not only accompany but also construct and unveil meanings. Rosemberg Sandoval explains it as follows: "What we artists seek is to produce sensations through images and supports, the point is to produce them in a heroic and ephemeral way to reveal the soul. Art is the purge of the Inhuman and making art from the marginality and with the marginality is my only crime".
 |
| Rosemberg Sandoval |
Location: W-Gallery, Defensa 1369, C1143 San Telmo, Buenos Aires (Argentina)
Opening Date: 3rd November 2023
End Date:9th February 2024
Working hours: Tuesday-Saturday: 12pm to 6pm
Official website:
Mentioned Artists:
