UN HECHIZO EN EL ESPACIO

Works by: Ana María Millán and Giovanni Vargas + some audio taken from the so called “Tropical Goth” movement (led by Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo´s movies produced during the 70´s-80´s in Cali, Colombia)

Sugarcane plantations and mines. Slaves in Cali and rural sorroundings made deals with the devil: “please make me earn more money without having to work more”. The Devil fulfilled the deal with one condition: money should not be spent in productive purposes, for example: you can not buy a pig to fatten and then profit it. Under the deal you can spend your money just in vice and excess. (Aneqdocte taken from antropologist Michael Taussig).

You could say that the main monument of Cali is the installations of three crosses located over one of the city´s main guardian hills. The popular belief says that this instalation was made in order to scare away the devil, but the actual effect was that the crosses locked the devil inside.

This exhibition creates a choreography with the works of local artists working with a certain notion of terror in which the terrible end is being announced all the time but it never happens. Likewise the drug trafficking violence was lived in Cali during the nineties: the final catastrophe was replaced by a never ending suspense.

The Devil, Monsters, Zombies and Vampires are recurrent figures blamed by the inhabitants of Cali, because of its propensity to excess, vices and failure.

This idea of a non centralized subject, a subject that is not the controller of its own will and of the destiny of his/her city has been a key component in the local belief and economies.

This feeling of being in the dark, guided by unknown forces is reproduced in the exhibition where the spectator does not completely choose its own journey inside the exhibition. The spectator enters to a completly dark room and the works start to activate themselves one by one by the action of a mysterious and invisble presence

Museo La Tertulia, Cali; 2015. Curated by Ericka Flórez