Miguel Ángel Rojas: Metaphors of Dollar and Coke at Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional, Colombia

Curated by Maria Belén Sáez de Ibarra, the exhibition brings together diverse aspects of Rojas’ practice while pointing to profound reflections on social and individual issues that resonate within his immediate socio-political and cultural context.

On this occasion, Rojas resorts to symbolically charged materials like coca leaves and one dollar bills, to metaphorically refer to abysmal cultural differences that characterize our disrupted society.

Punctured coca leaves and dollar bills are contrasted on textual drawings covering 118 lineal meters of wall space, that like a mural, confront and encircle the viewer. These symbols—each representing two irreconcilable entities—evoke a tension or a clash that according to Sáez de Ibarra, “mobilize ambiguous relations that bring about violence, distress, and even the devastation of life itself.”

El Camino Corto (The Short Path) gathers and potentiates past plastic processes exploring the themes of drug trafficking, consumption, and double standards, which were originally embodied in the piece Broadway (1996), a path of coca leaves that like an army of ants, intervened the exhibition space while alluding to the production of cocaine in developing countries and its intrinsic consumption in first-world countries. In the installations that constitute El Camino Corto, Rojas intensifies his reflection on the degeneration of the divine essence of coca leaves that is intertwined with an attempt to dignify Colombia’s indigenous cultural heritage. Through impeccable formal solutions acting as conceptual signals, Rojas attempts to call the viewer’s attention about the grave social consequences of drug-trafficking.

The first large format installation titled El Camino Corto (The Short Path) is comprised of five interrelated segments. The first section titled El Camino Corto is made up of textual drawings made with coca leaves and dollar bills covering 118 lineal meters of wallspace; the upper section of the wall made with coca leaves. is covered with names of show-business people that have acquired a reputation for using cocaine. In contrast, the lower section made with dollar bills, displays the aliases of drug-traffickers. A mise-en-scene titled Territorio de decepción (Territory of Deception) is set out in the center of the exhibition space. Referencing natural devastation, this installation is made of natural pigments, coca leaves and coca dust ( mambe). Situated in front of the mise-en-scene are two large photographs ( Santa Uno & Santa Dos) representing natural landscape intervened by texts written out in diminutive skulls symbolizing the harmful effects of plyphosate fumigation. Cosecha (Crop) is the fourth installation featuring a series of hollowed out indigenous busts that have been scattered along the wall so as to portray a cultivated territory. Territorio de poder ( Power Territory) is the fifth segment made up of a series of engraved stars in bronce.

El túnel del Tiempo (The Time Tunnel) is the second large scale installation comprised of a video animation starring “Estrellita” and “Tenebron” who, amid a starry sky, engage in the dance of death. A dark tunnel of about 30 meters separates the video animation from a glass case containing the bust of a Pre-Columbian shaman or coca chewer from the Tumcao culture; the shaman, flanked by his witnesses, seems to be entering a state of trance that transcends time and space.

.............

Miguel Ángel Rojas, was born in Bogotá in 1946. He studied architecture at Universidad Javeriana and painting at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Selected solo exhibitions include: Nativo, Galería Casas Riegner, Bogotá (2012, upcoming), Objetivo-Subjetivo, Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá (2007); Bio, Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá (1991). He has participated in a number of international group exhibitions including 29 Sao Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil (2010), Cantos Cuentos Colombianos, Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zurich, Switzerland (2004), 39 Salón Nacional de Artistas, Bogotá, Colombia (2004), Re-Aligning Vision, Museo del Barrio, New York, USA (1997), Latin American Artist of the Twentieth Century, MOMA, New York (1993). His work can be found in collections like La Fundación La Caixa, Barcelona; Daros Latin America Collection, Zurich; Museum of Modern Art, New York; MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Castilla y León; Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Bogotá; Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, México DF.