El descenso / The descent
A hunger artist
Oil on canvas
100 x 77 cm
Based on the story by Franz Kafka with the same title. This series of works emerges as a new variant of my work with cattle (cows and bulls) based on their importance and historical-social and economic connotation in Cuban society, but this time I focus my gaze on one of the parts, to me, most important of the animal - the udders. In this way I begin to carry out several investigations on certain experiments that were carried out in the years 1966 in the agriculture and livestock sector, with an emphasis on larger livestock. These experiments arose in part with the discovery of the super gifted Ubre Blanca cow and its record in milk production, together with the need to search for economic changes and self-sufficiency so necessary but utopian in Cuban society immersed for very few years in a political process such as the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Then in the 90s with the “unexpected” arrival of the Special Period, these changes became more necessary and these experiments intensified, reaching somewhat ridiculous extremes. In this series I dare to carry out and propose my own experiments from the surreal, amorphous based on the theories of Biogenetics and the Super Animal, endowing it with the gift of abundance, infinite productivity or at least superior to the standard canons. A bit to confront the ideas that are manifested in the world about hunger, exhaustion and / or food shortages, and to tell my direct personal experience in a country with great economic difficulties, aggravated in these times of Pandemic. For the development of this series, inspection as a means of inspiration for the works of the great masters of art such as Tomas Esso, Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso and in the literature of Franz Kafka, who in their work structure They have deconstructed the image of the world, of society to later build their own, authentic, from their point of view.