Relocating SAL. Curated by Claire Breukel and Lucas Arevalo of MARTE Contemporary
Karlos Carcamo, Parked in An Exaggerated Manner: East Coast, 2012, C-print, Series of 6, 20.5 x 20.5 cm, ed.
Relocating SAL
Curated by Claire Breukel and Lucas Arevalo of MARTE Contemporary
Opening: May 12, 2015, 7pm
Duration: June 13, 2015
With works by Mayra Barraza, Ernesto Bautista, Karlos Cárcamo, Rodrigo Dada,
Natalia Domínguez, Mauricio Esquivel, Melissa Guevara, Victor Hugo, Walterio Iraheta,
Mauricio Kabistan, Ronald Morán, Jaime Izaguirre, Irvin Morazan, Luis Paredes,
Crack Rodriguez, Simόn Vega, Danny Zavaleta.
Support: Ernst Hilger, Mario Cader-Frech, MARTE
Relocating SAL is curated by Claire Breukel and Lucas Arevalo of MARTE Contemporary—the contemporary art program at the Museum of Art of El Salvador.
El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America. Its history, however, is substantial and like many nations in Latin America, its past has been characterized by a conspicuous socioeconomic inequality from its colonization period until recent times. El Salvador´s history includes a civil war, U.S. and Russian intervention, a social and political climate that has for many years been in flux. As a result many Salvadorians migrated to different parts of the world, primarily to the U.S. As such, the country is often pigeon-holed as a “Third World” space and discounted as a possible destination for contemporary art. To the contrary, the contemporary art community operating in and around the country’s capital San Salvador is actively experimental, real, fun, and more. Relocating SAL plays with this notion and attempts to relocate generalized perceptions and non-perceptions of contemporary artistic practice within El Salvador.
The exhibition Relocating SAL explores the contemporary phenomenon where Salvadoran artists displace and relocate objects from the everyday in order to give them, and their context new meaning. These provocations explore notions of social convention and aim to disrupt the modus operandi of common understanding through technological reinterpretations. Relocating SAL presents a selection of new media artworks that show an artistic approach to serious as well as seemingly innocuous topics that is concerned with the re- and de-contextualization of an object/s. That is, all relocate the inherent meanings affiliated with an object or objects in order to infuse them with renewed meaning apart from, or in addition to, how they are commonly understood within the everyday.
Eagle-less U.S. coins become a map, a knife is wrapped protectively in cotton, human bone powder substitutes the sand in hourglass clocks, a spacecraft is created with recycled materials and objects, a Mayan headdress is a refashioned beat-box, and more. All carry with them an innate sense of irony and humor.
The artworks are by Salvadoran artists living in El Salvador and abroad. These artists’ works shift the context and meaning of an object that is conventionally understood as functioning as part of everyday life. For example, a coffee cup becomes a pyramid representing social hierarchy, the shell of a Volkswagen Beetle is pushed in middle of a busy street, and an AF/FM stereo becomes part of a contemporary Mayan headdress.