Calabazas / Gourds 1992. Gourds, polyurethane foam, wood, glue.

CALABAZAS AT GALERIA SALA ALTERNATIVA, CARACAS

Botuto Guarura / Calabazas. Sala Alternativa, Caracas, Venezuela

Gourds were used by pre-Columbian cultures as containers. Somehow, in urbanized and industrialized Colombia, this tradition has survived and gourds are still used in daily life. I have mixed this element of Colombian cultural history with the modernist, formalist aesthetic tradition (which sought inspiration in natural forms and exotic cultures).

These series were part of an exhibition in which the concept was to make sculptural objects out of indigenous materials from Colombia. In so doing I break with the Latin American High Art tradition by using materials "not worthy of Art", as they are too common, too familiar, too close to our reality.

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"Gourds are a series of sculptures that assemble the near spherical, egg-like, and biomorphic shapes of gourds into chains, columns, and clusters like cells dividing. The materials however, also have a popular and folkloric connotation derived from Colombian culture“.

Roca, Jose y Martin, Alejandro.
Animalario de Maria Fernanda Cardoso.

(Bogotá: Seguros Bolívar, 2013), 19 - 20.

English