IB Art (SL)

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Title: Marijuana
Technique: Embossed Metal
Year: Dec/2011
Dimensions: 90.0 x 27.7 cm

This artwork was inspired in the book "Hemp for Health" by Chris Conrad (1997) I want to show the different values that marijuana has for our society nowadays; it represents slavery to social media, the absence of questioning the truth about the facts that are exhibited in our daily newspapers and magazines. Personally, for what I've read and investigated, cannabis has many beneficial effects to treat chronic diseases. However, powerful entities, such as the pharmaceutical industry and even our own governments, have distorted the truth about this plant as it is not favorable for their interests; for them maintaining the marijuana illegal is a profitable business that they don't want to lose. Imagine what would happen if people didn’t have the necessity to pay for many of the medical treatments or medicines that actually exist in the health market, because they could cultivate and use plants as a medication but grown in their own backyards. How much money the entire population would be saving? But on the contrary, How, much money the pharmaceutical companies would be losing? Thus, this artwork shows the real value of marihuana (as the image in the left) and how by the manipulation of the media, the knowledge and value the society has of it, is as empty as the image on the right.

Title: Slavery Manual for Dummies
Technique: Calligraphy
Year: Feb/2012
Dimensions: 30.0 x 37.8 cm

This artwork was inspired in Maurizio Cattelan works and is intended to represent how fear is the principal component of human slavery. By using the Ten Commandments, I do not mean to criticize them or to show any kind of disagreement, simply I think they are a perfect example to show how fear is a perfect tool to control and limit a population. According to the Bible, every person is supposed to follow the Ten Commandments strictly because otherwise they would be punished for eternity. Thus, people get afraid of breaking any of this rules and end up completely enslaved by religious dogmas, or other ideologies that limit their liberty and sometimes their own identity.

Title: Self-enclosing
Technique: Acrylic on canvas
Year: April/2012
Dimensions: 61.0 x 23.2 cm

This artwork was inspired in the song titled “Libre” by Nino Bravo. While listening to this song, I realize how selfish is to lock a bird in a cage just to contemplate its beauty. This animal is able to fly, which for me is a symbol of freedom, and taking that possibility away only for the superficial desire of admiring it, is completely egotistical. Thus, I decided to use the birds as an analogy of humanity; many people build and lock themselves in their own cage because they fear something. They auto limit themselves by being scared of things they don’t even know if would happen; they build up fear and that is why need walls and many boundaries around them, without knowing if they are necessary or not.

Title: Are you free?
Technique: Mixed
Year: Nov/2012
Dimensions: 25.5 x 30.4 cm

This artwork intends to represent how many people are attached (sewed) to an ideology that limits their freedom. The fact that the lines and shapes are sewed and not painted, and that the brain is made up of screws is resembling this idea. Nowadays, we human beings seem to work like machines, we just follow a consumerist life model trend as everyone else (we are born, we work, we die), we are slaves of what society dictates for us.

Title: Religion puppet
Technique: Charcoal on paper
Year: Dec/2012
Dimensions: 53.6 x 67.2 cm

What this artwork intends to represent is, how the idea of religion has been manipulated throughout history to control the society. In this case, I emphasized Catholic religion; I used as reference Gabriel García Márquez book “Of Love and Other Demons”, as this piece exposes, how the catholic church as one of the most powerful entities in Colombia, permitted and supported slavery, changing the concept that everyone is made in the image of God to only white men are made in the image of God.

Title: Aesthetics and stereotypes
Technique: Lipstick on paper
Year: Feb/2013
Dimensions: 78.5 x 58.4 cm

Nowadays, women, including myself, try to fit in a beauty style imposed by society. Little by little, we start enslaving to this idea of perfection, and in this moment is when we handcuff ourselves into a measuring tape that tells us we should be 90-60-90 cm. fit and skinny.This piece tries to expose this beauty enslavement and invites the public to reflect on it. Additionally, the artistic technique used in this work was inspired by Natalie Irish.