Famly of Humans seeks to illustrate how we all are equal, regardless of the color of our skin or the shape of our features. It begs acceptance of the idea that tolerance and respect without judgment can exist. By presenting a disparate population in microcosm where no one is prejudged and there is no exclusivity, Famly of Humans promotes the idea of diversity where we are all on equal footing, no one is marginalized, and social acceptance is the norm.
My work is a deep dive into the human mind. I became very interested in what happens inside our minds ever since I had to deal with a case of mental disturbance in my family.
For a long time, I have used my body in creation of my work. The landscapes/maps on canvas are distillations of my urban wanderings, both physical and psychological. The emergence of these public performances—I’ll call them “urban en plein air interventions”—have become imperative for my survival “in the time of now.”
It is important to make the distinction between the languages of contemplation and those of action. The language of the birds is a contemplative language. It delivers its messages directly, the meaning of which disappears, it ceases to be understood, as soon the stimulus ends, that is, once the bird is silent. Contemplative languages are languages of direct experience, languages of ’what is.’ The occurrence of such language is equivalent to that of dreams in the sense that it paralyzes the physical body while agitating the subtle core.
These abstract worlds are composed of undulations and vibrations that I define as beings. The cosmic forces that come together in the scenes find their impulse in the decomposition of modern dualism, in contemporary ways of relating to the world, and in a nature that does not faint in its eternal flourishing. In this way, Bloom emerges as a body of work in development, composed of small- and large-format artwork designed for both digital and analog media.
From time immemorial, there have been crimes committed by women who were driven to pursue their own power. These transgressive crimes center on the tearing down of established systems. They make it possible for us to reflect upon the meaning of the offenders, sacrifice in Euripides’s Bacchae: offenders who, beyond their frantic alienation, rise, as Medea did, through a reflective process that leads to a destruction that does not horrify them and that few of them repent.
City of Women is an encounter with the confusion about what happens to a woman’s body over her lifetime. We become divided subjects from the beginning — separated from the womb and ourselves in birth. Then the divided mind, now we become both subject and object, observer and the observed.
José Vívenes is a Venezuela-based painter. His work reconsiders the gaze given to collective references. Vívenes assumes painting as a means of communication to reflect on the complex circumstances that his country, Venezuela, is going through.