Surreal Visions
And With What Body Do They Come:
Los Desaparacidos
(The Disappeared)
ARTIST NOTES:
This series employs combined myths to illustrate the journey to salvation and enlightenment. The title alludes to a poem by Emily Dickinson which in turn refers to the Resurrection.
Los Desaparecidos/The Disappeared is the name given to people who were considered to be political or ideological threats to military governments and who were arrested or kidnapped and then vanished without a trace. This painting is an homage to the thousands of Latin American victims in Guatemala, Chile, Argentina and El Salvador.
SYMBOLS:
A worried monkey presides from the top of a gnarled candelabra tree with eyes in the branches. An assortment of pre-Columbian figurines sit in the tree and lie in the ground. Each coffin is a small retablo (a devotional painting in Mexican folk art).
MATERIAL NOTES:
The metal used as the substrate for the painting and the attached elements (coffins, rats) was cut from old aluminum newspaper press sheets.
Dimensions: 27in x 23in
Media: Acrylic and oil on metal, metal sculptures adhered to frame.
Year: 1991