Cansancio colectivo
- Carlos Alfonso, Colombian, 1986
- Born: Colombia
Carlos Alfonso, Cansancio colectivo (Collective Fatigue), 2022. Oil paint and acrylic paint on wood; 16⅝ × 24⅛ in. Denver Art Museum: Funds from Charles G. Patterson III, 2022.337 © Carlos Alfonso
A painter, sculptor, video artist, and writer, Carlos Alfonso was born in 1986 in Popayán, Colombia. After several years of a nomadic life, traveling with his wife to different countries and regions of Colombia while collecting stories and connecting with peoples of diverse cultures and backgrounds, the couple settled in the countryside on the Cundinamarca region where he grows traditional Colombian food crops, native fruits and trees. Alfonso is interested in oral traditions, storytelling, anecdotes, and generally all aspects of the traditional culture of his native Colombia, including cooking and serving food. His paintings incorporate texts and images to generate narratives that deal with religion, superstition, and past and present history. Intimate, personal, and portable, Alfonso employs small to medium size formats traditionally associated with ex-voto painting since colonial times, which include large cartouches with texts that relate to and explain the images depicted. Imbibed in history yet strikingly modern, Alfonso's visual vocabulary references the ancient world, the cultures of pre-conquest Americas, and the arts of the colonial age.
The fictional narrative of Cansancio colectivo (Collective Fatigue) from 2022 deals with the present-day sense of universal collective exhaustion —tacitly suggesting post-COVID trauma and the perspective of a hopeless future. Dealing with superstition and being charged with a sense of humor, it is inspired by the ritual ceremonies of cleansing, healing, and well-being with a long tradition across Latin America. Infused with symbolism and poetry, all the elements depicted, include, among others, cocoa, salt, black pepper, ground maca root, piloncillo (unrefined whole cane sugar), cashew fruit, a soft-boiled egg, a plantain, chili pepper, a white candle, chamomile flowers, a branch of rosemary, a spice clove, and the grains of a corn cobb, are part of the fictional ritual described on the text which is intended to bring back the dove of peace that according to the artist is hiding in a hole full of smoke while growing back its wings. The fruits, vegetables, and seeds depicted come from different places, the Americas, Europe, and Asia, a refined allegory to the multicultural, mestizo, nature of Latin American material culture and society.
A mirror of today's post-COVID society and art, the proposed artwork showcases how present-day artists look for inspiration and transform and adapt the formats and visual repertoires of the colonial period for creating present-day expressions associated with the region's identity and the spirit of the present.
- Jorge Rivas, October 2022