Fernando Arias: Nada que cesa
30 years of controversial, transgressive and integrative artistic production. 16 April - 1 November 2020, Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, MAMBO, Colombia.
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Social Leaders Go To Heaven. 2020
Video- diptych
Since the signing of the Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) in 2016, the murder of social leaders have not ceased. On the contrary, it has increased enormously. Until today, more than 700 leaders have died among indigenous, Afro-descendants, peasants and ex-combatants who were defending their territories, their communities, human rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, the environment, among others.
In this video installation, Arias claims for the lives of those leaders killed and, poetically, lends his body to refer to the flight they take to heaven when they die. Through a laboratory cell counter, a hand counts up to a thousand, denouncing a country anesthetized by violence, which does not care about life, but about counting death. A country where it became customary to count the numbers of bodies in mass graves, count the numbers of missing persons, the thousands of victims without tombs, the indigenous children who are starving, or the hundreds of femicides.
© Text: From press and curatorial information
© Photo: Courtesy Fernando Arias & MAMBO
30 years of controversial, transgressive and integrative artistic production. 16 April - 1 November 2020, Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, MAMBO, Colombia.