El "Exotismo Híbrido" de Gonzalo Fuenmayor
Gonzalo Fuenmayor's 'Hybrid Exoticism'
Gonzalo Fuenmayor's 'Hybrid Exoticism'
Francine Birbragher*
A selection of works by Gonzalo Fuenmayor is being shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (USA) until September 13, 2015. They are the result of the experiences of this artist from Barranquilla (Colombia), based in the United States, who spent some time in Leticia and Ciénaga, both in Colombia.
Under the title "Tropical mythologies," he's showing charcoals and photographs, by way of which he explores exoticism and hybridization from the visual vocabulary he's been developing for years.
At the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where he earned his Master's degree in Fine Arts (2004), Fuenmayor took an interest in identity and in what he calls "hybrid exoticism."
Even though he's been living in the United States from a young age, his fellow students used to call him "The Colombian." Oddly enough, when he visited Barranquilla they called him "gringo."
The self-questioning of his identity led him to search for an element that would allow him to convey that ambiguity, a symbol that would display his concern, and he decided to use an agricultural product from Latin America, which is a staple of the American diet: bananas.
In his early works, bananas took on a complex meaning way beyond the usual reference to the tropics and the sexual connotation that is usually ascribed to it. For Fuenmayor, the real (perishable) fruit became a corpse when he presented it in a state of decomposition on large canvases.
Later, it picked up other meanings. For example, when he transformed the peel into a sort of a skirt, the banana became a female, somewhat slippery entity, which recalled Marilyn Monroe's iconic image.
The title of this piece, Monroe Act (2004), also hints at the "Monroe Doctrine" (1823), by way of which the United States justified military intervention in the event that any European nation tried to interfere with the internal affairs of North or South America. The humorous and critical tone of the titles is a constant in his works and permeates the visual imagery.
Subsequently, Fuenmayor camouflaged the fruit in spaces decorated with Victorian-style objects. In the same way that Victorian culture masked reality in an era in which privacy and appearances took priority socially, the artist hid the banana with its multiple connotations, especially the sexual ones, and mixed it with very elaborate crystal chandeliers, or placed it in richly decorated spaces.
Historically, this fruit has been considered a symbol of social inequality, or of economic crisis, because of its relation with trade-union problems that generated conflicts and even carnage, such as the so-called Banana Zone Massacre (1928), immortalized by Gabriel García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
As his visual works evolved, he took an interest in carrying out a work of historical gravitas, without falling into the merely decorative. Instead of carving or drawing the fruit's peel, he engraved Victorian designs in an indelible form, so that the oxidation process would reveal them with the passage of time. The result, documented in large works, showed the engraved fruits whose surfaces changed as they ripened.
In his supermarket series, he mixed these bananas with fruits for sale, in photographs that hark back to works by Gabriel Orozco and Félix González Torres.
As an homage to the latter, he made the installation Esto no pertenece aquí [This Doesn't Belong Here], with hundreds of intervened bananas, piled up in a corner of the gallery. Upon oxidation, the Victorian elements would appear on the peel and merge with the stains on the bananas about to ripen.
The work had an olfactory element, since a smell of decay permeated the room as the fruits were rotting, as well as a taste element, since the ripened fruit would be regularly used to bake banana bread, which was then offered to the gallery goers.
In the banana series, he used drawings and photography. In both mediums, he manipulated the images, played with their different meanings, and kept on mixing the bananas with the Victorian furniture in larger works carried out in black and white hues.
Knowing that everything related to Latin America has been associated with the colors of the tropics, Fuenmayor removed color and adopted charcoal as the medium and the shape in order to define its hybrid identity.
That hybrid character led him to portray somewhat strange images that make us wonder what is going on in the scene, as well as what the artist is trying to depict. The scenes take on a theatrical atmosphere because of his handling of the light.
The Victorian interiors in which bananas still turn up are progressively dramatic and show, through delicate crystal chandeliers and the texture of the velvet curtains meticulously detailed, his skillful handling of charcoal.
It is in the chandeliers where you can better appreciate the mastery with which he draws and explores the light. It is a long and tedious process in which light emerges from the paper.
At a symbolic level, the challenge about identity and culture continued to evolve, as evidenced in The Moment of Surrender / El momento de la rendición (2013), in which a boa constrictor is trying to swallow whole a Victorian hat rack.
According to Fuenmayor, the image represents a culture that is absorbing another. In this case, the snake is swallowing Europe up. The golden background of this work alludes to the legend of El Dorado.
It is also the theme of the series of drawings in which he appropriated Columbia Pictures Corporation's logo and changed the word to Colombia, in this way writing, according to him, his own history. Continuing with his play on words, he created pieces such as "God Bless Latin America" (2014), unmistakably conceptual in his approach, in which humor and criticism can be perceived.
In 2013, he traveled to Leticia (Colombia), thanks to an SMFA Traveling Scholars Fellowship from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He saw the Amazon River for the first time and spent the night in a nearby native village.
He, then, started working on "Project Papare" in Ciénaga in the Magdalena Province, a Colombian area known for its banana plantations. Right at the center of one of them, he set up four fancy chandeliers.
The large-scale photographs documenting the project manage to convey the same thematic approach and reflection on the light as he does in his drawings.
Gonzalo Fuenmayor continues working on his pieces, and future projects include an exhibition at the Hollywood Art and Culture Center in Florida, as well as a solo exhibition at Galería El Museo in Bogotá (Colombia). Both are scheduled for next year.
*The author has a Ph.D. in Latin American History and Art History from the University of Miami.
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Diego Guerrero / ARTERIA
Courtesy of: Gonzalo Fuenmayor and Gallery Dot Fiftyone
"Intermission." One of the works that shows Gonzalo Fuenmayor's conceptual process and skills in charcoal.
Courtesy of: Gonzalo Fuenmayor and Gallery Dot Fiftyone
"Apocalypse Magnus." Charcoal on paper.
Courtesy of: Gonzalo Fuenmayor and Gallery Dot Fiftyone
"Tropical Myopia." Charcoal on paper.
Translated from the Spanish by Miguel Falquez-Certain