Art and Culture - Monday, February 27, 2023

Museum of Contemporary Art of Bogotá exhibits the artistic work of William Darío Bahos Velasco

Within the framework of the 20th anniversary of the Thesis project, the professor of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Cauca, presents his works: Cauca rural landscape, Firm character # 1, # 2, # 3, and Lead white.

Transgressions is the title of the first of five exhibitions to be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Thesis project. In the five exhibitions that will take place in 2023, the recent works of artists who have had the opportunity to present their thesis, in one of the versions of these 20 years of the project, will be exhibited.

 

The professor of Plastic Arts of the University of Cauca, William Darío Bahos Velasco, invited by the Museum to this commemorative event, presents his exhibition starting on February 23, in which sociopolitical aspects of our country are addressed.

The Thesis Project is an annual exhibition event, which collects the best theses in plastic arts in the country, to exhibit them at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Bogotá MAC. Its first version was made in 2004 in which the selected theses of 2003 were exposed.

 

At the moment, it is a great information bank of the graduates of the country's art faculties. It has also served as a platform to start the professionalization process as artists by exhibiting their work for the first time in a Museum.

This is a large-format work, which is made up of three modules. In it, the viewer is presented with a dark surface with a large number of spots of a light hue, between ocher and sienna. Although it can be said that it is an abstraction of a landscape, the truth is that the real landscape is there, in every centimeter of the 330 long and 183 high pieces. By taking a closer look at the surface, the viewer can tell that the light earth-toned patches are literally dirt and that the dark surface is some kind of synthetic material, which can make it hard to tell what kind of material it is.

 

The material with which this piece is built are rectangular fragments of about 36 pairs of peasant boots from Cauca, and in them are engraved the rural roads, the long working hours, the sweat of the peasant's feet, the weight of the load of harvested product, the rain that drenched him while he worked, all that landscape is in the memory of this indispensable element in field tasks.

 

Due to the above, this work can be a good example of the pictorial genre of landscape and through it a tribute is made to the Cauca people, an Indigenous, Afro, Peasant people, a people clinging to their customs, to the land and with great power in the voice of its inhabitants, who make it heard by the entire country in each march and mobilization organized to claim their rights. Rights continually violated especially by state institutions.

It is a drawing project in which I take a characteristic element of the Colombian peasant, such as his boots, known as "pantanera boots" an essential element in hard work in the field, these boots contain engraved on their surface the marks of the intense and hard working days because they have been used by peasants from Cauca, more precisely by peasants from the municipality of Bolívar where I am from.

 

Because these boots have been used by illegal armed groups and are often the only way to distinguish them from state agents, a kind of stigmatization has fallen on them. "Of a firm character" is a work that has a kind of spring in its reading, because at first sight, when the viewer faces it and sees "marsh boots" in a firm position as the one assumed in military discipline, whether legal or illegal, refers directly to the use of this element in the Colombian conflict.

He has had individual exhibitions such as: "Protection measures" in 2018 at the MAC Museum of Contemporary Art, "Losses, distortions and reflections" in 2013 and "Sercenado" in 2010, in the gallery: twelve zero zero in the city of Bogotá; as well as: "Pictorial Bodies and Heavenly Bodies" in 2009 at the Proartes house in Cali.

 

He has exhibited collectively in shows such as: Animal, Regional Salon of Artists 2021, 2015 and 2012, Dissolving body: flows, secretions, residues / Contemporary Colombian Art, 2013. 2012. National Salon 2004.

 

From 2017 to the present he is part of the "Faenza Project".

 

One of the main themes that he has developed in his work is the body; its components, its color, the large number of aspects that cross it, have allowed it to address landscape, cosmogonic, political, social, esoteric, identity and historical themes, worked from different points of view and different techniques.

 

Faculty of Arts

Email: facartes@unicauca.edu.co