Violence

​

"Violence" is a series that reflects upon the situation of war and grief around the planet.

​

I watched closely for several attacks and explosions when I had my art studio in Bogotá.

​

Those terrible situations of the encounters between Pablo Escobar's mafia groups and the Colombian army made people live in deep insecurity and fear. Every person who lived in Colombia was involved in that faceless war for the simple fact of being in Colombian territory. It was not safe to be outside of our own house, and it was no guarantee of safety to be inside of the house either because the bombs were going off in every neighborhood no matter what time of day, and with no respite from the maddened violence. There was the possibility of walking on something sinister in each street, where life was in danger at every moment without mercy for people.

​

Daily we were witnesses of how bodies and things were suddenly disfigured in the air that cried and moaned in anguish and pain. Colombia, at that time, was a single scream which was belted out with all the strength of the lungs. A wonderful country undermined by the wrath of power of a few.

​

The series also reflects upon the search for missing relatives in Buenos Aires, Caracas, Bogotá, and many other places around the world, where people went out to decry the disappearance of their beloved relatives.

​

This series is composed of melancholic and lethargic colored paintings. Intimate works silently suspended in a precise unrepeatable moment with a deep observation concerning those people directly affected by these traumas.

​

This is a series where my artist's eye cries a colorful tear of despair over the canvases.

​

Mari Gamarra