Ecoxidios

At the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Environment in Stockholm, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme became the first head of state to use the word «ecocide» to refer to the massive destruction of the natural environment in Vietnam, at the hands of the U.S. military and the defoliants used by the latter during the “Vietnam War.” In 2021 the term evolved thanks to the impetus of civil society and, above all, the action of an international group of 12 jurists defines ecocide as “any unlawful or arbitrary act perpetrated in the knowledge that it is likely to cause serious, widespread or lasting damage to the environment.” The question is: What of what is happening in contemporary life and this socio-economic style it’s not or does not in some way participate in an act that, in principle, we can intuit blameworthily?

On the other hand, but connected with the foregoing, it is well known that in almost any major city in third world countries, things like favelas, slums, shantytowns, and so on, and their inhabitants are the utmost expression of remissness of contemporary society and their development models, that only benefits a few, while condemning an overwhelming majority to ostracism, nihility, and invisibility.

«Ecoxidios» is the first work of his series “Sheets (Chapas),” where, in formal terms, it’s a hybrid between sculpture, installation, and paint. At the same time, conceptually, it pivots on the interesting thesis «Environmentalism of the poor» by the ecological economist Joan Martinez-Alier and the historian Ramachandra Guha. In which the two types of environmentalism are distinctive, on one side, the one that is proper to the countries of the progressed North with a post-materialist ideological base; and on the other side, the one that is steered by materialistic interests and evolved remarkably in the impoverished countries of the South. In the first one, the motivations, explained by the authors, are fundamentally settled in ecocentric thought that exhibits the protection of the environment as an obligation that goes beyond the demands of individuals or groups. In the second, the so-called «Ecologism of the poor,» the concernments for the natural environment begins as a vital need of caring for the resources that provide the basics for individuals and groups, as in the case of multiple native populations and leaders who seek to protect essentially the areas they inhabit.

During the process of research, analysis, and exploration, the artist sought to identify materials and pictures related to these issues associated with the destruction of the environment and the reality of people in extreme poverty. Thus zinc roof tiles appear, a material that is undoubtedly present in the slums of the poorest neighborhoods in the South of the American continent. This material was unveiling for my work, not just because of the nature of its origin, but for the deterioration process it has is fascinating in two aspects that are important in this series: The invasive nature of rust, which metaphorically behaves like the invasive processes of cities on natural spaces. Needless to say, by being tiles, they were used initially to mend the need for protection of families in situations of extreme poverty; the vestiges of deterioration that time has left on the metal are, moreover, in a way, the witness of the suffering of those who had made these tiles their refuge.

Furthermore, while the deterioration processes of the pieces are sometimes thwarted before the metal is manipulated, others are not, which allows the work to remain alive, changing, and with the potential to redo itself at every instant.

The images depicted in the series work with particularity as well that seeks to represent the idea that, at least for the artist, the tragedies that society must deal with (in terms of environmental damage) are just as crucial as the micro-stories of families brimful of adversities that survive in the outskirts of mighty cities. Hence, the series began with aerial views that show vast fragments of land; then other views in which the image reveals plan views of parts of the city; followed by others that show in a horizontal view that displays the streets of these neighborhoods; others that unveil the interior of the houses, and finally others that are close-ups of personal objects of the inhabitants of these slums. For the artist, this idea of close-ups, from the general to the particular, was a way to engage his work with much more intimate narratives than he could’ve initially imagined.