OPENING 3. NOVEMBER 2015, 19 Uhr
4.- 13. NOVEMBER 2015
Di-Fr 11-15 Uhr, Sa 12-16 Uhr und nach persönlicher Vereinbarung
SCREENING 6. NOVEMBER 2015, 19 UHR
Seit seiner Kindheit ist Federico Rosa (HON) mit der Gewalt auf den Straßen Tegucigalpas, bekannt für die höchsten Mordraten weltweit, konfrontiert, und thematisiert diese in seinen Arbeiten. In seinen Malereien übersetzt Rosa Tatortfotos, die er von einem befreundeten Pressefotografen noch vor ihrer Veröffentlichung bezieht.
Neben seinen künstlerischen und kuratorischen Tätigkeiten schreibt Rosa regelmäßig für die hondurianische Zeitschrift LA Tribuna und hat in den vergangenen drei Jahren im diplomatischen Dienst von Honduras in Brüssel und Berlin gearbeitet.
FEDERICO ROSA
Federico Rosa ist in Tegucigalpa geboren, wo er den unabhängigen artist space X3 Projekts gründete und Ausstellungen hondurianischer und internationaler KünstlerInnen organisierte. 2003 schloss er mit einem B.A. in Malerei an der London Art School ab und beendete 2005 sein Masterstudium Skulptur an der London`s Slate School of fine Arts. Neben Ausstellungen in Long Beach, Brussels, Tegucigalpa, und La Havana, kuratierte Rosa mehrere Ausstellungen, unter anderem in der National Gallery of Honduras und der Fundación para El Museo del Hombre. Er lebt und arbeitet seit 2013 in Frankfurt am Main.
Rising Up & Rising Down
Federico Rosa Suazo, born in Honduras, grew accustomed to living with some measure of violence in Tegucigalpa, the country’s capital. Yet, since 2009, when an unprecedented political crisis in which the President was ousted, the country’s already catastrophic economic and social situation worsened perpendicularly. By 2010, the country’s second largest city, San Pedro Sula, had the highest murder rate per capita outside of a war zone, and has since been in the most dangerous cities lists in the World. Adding fuel to the fire, drug Cartels from Mexico and Colombia moved inside the country’s northeastern coastline, known as “La Moskitia”, known for it’s inaccessibility, making it an ideal zone for improvised landing strips used for smuggling cocaine from South America to Mexico and the U.S. In addition, rival youth gangs, a rising problem for more than a decade, have now become a key factor in the country’s social strife. These groups are utilized as domestic movers of illicit drugs, and are often provided with weapons, and have entire neighborhoods under their dominion, charging a so-called “War Tax” from local businesses and public transport drivers. To add insult to injury, the national Police has been revealed to be one of the most corrupt in the region, and as such, has exposed the entire country’s social system to be destroyed from within. 2014 saw an unprecedented number of Honduran children trying to cross the border from Mexico to U.S. creating a humanitarian crisis and at the same time, forcing the U.S. to raise the stakes in the War on Drugs. The country’s future remains uncertain; because of this, many see fleeing north towards the U.S. as the only option for survival.
In the context of the present exhibition, “Rising Up & Rising Down”, Rosa Suazo borrows the title from a 3,000-plus page book of political anthropology written by William T. Vollmann, who intends to analyze violence in its different manifestations as moral and ethical decisions. For his purposes, though, Rosa Suazo uses the title as an entry point, a catalyst to imagine the of paradox of societies rising and falling; of violence as a means to useless ends, where only death is omnipresent.
Violence and it’s implications in Honduran society then, is the main focus of this particular body of work. Rosa Suazo makes his paintings by transposing (or re-interpreting) recent (2014-15) crime scene photographs of homicides, obtained from different journalists who work in the region. Rosa Suazo translates photographs into stark, dense images, painted in black and white. The images, while abstracted, retain a sense of uneasiness and tension. Images of dead bodies, painted in sharp, sometimes awkward styles, accentuate nature while simultaneously reducing figures to shapes within a landscape. This space leaves the works open to a multitude of reflections on the subject, which would be too vast to cover in single, coherent images. The artist is of the opinion that chaos is impossible to express as a social comment.
While much of the works are of people who will forever, as their killers, remain anonymous, a pair of paintings are intended as an homage to an acquaintance of the artist, who lost her son to local gang members that shot and killed him for unknown reasons. No one ever was ever accused or arrested for this crime. This is what the majority of Hondurans, who live far below the poverty line, are exposed to. In one painting, taken from a newspaper image, the weeping mother cries over her son’s body as she discovers it, dumped in an empty wasteland.