In the context of the current geological period called Anthropocene by specialists, in which the man´s trace leaves irreversible damage to ecosystems and species, art must generate, in my view, reflections from ethics, activating its political and relational function, to generate empathy and knowledge.
My project focuses on researching the relations of oppression, slaughter, absence and appropriation of endemic animals, in the hands of man, embodied in the figure of the Armadillo, as representative of all threatened species in Chile and Argentina (my countries of residence and birth). The strategies of repetition, the recording of the process, the trace and the body intervention, give sustenance to my visual work.
I research shapes and materialities to create work through repeated modules, in reference to the morphology of the animal´s shell as a trigger symbol of oppression, highlighting the mechanization of doing and repetition. Flat morphologies are engraving matrices that create embossing (reliefs), referring to footprint and absence. These modules are then converted to empty volumes representing absent beings. The object/body, animal/man relationship, in bodily interventions, show the appropriation of the human being on animal species and the objectification of them.
The last stage of the project (and perhaps the most eloquent) is the inclusion of living materialities into the work, a symbiosis between yeasts and bacteria that acts as engraving support. These materials have a slow growth time, which was necessary to observe and respect in order to produce the work. This difficulty became a powerful trigger for personal reflections, rearding the human being's quest to control nature´s time.