Omar Castillo Alfaro — Archéologie du goût — Cité internationale des Arts — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 28 → October 29, 2023

Omar Castillo Alfaro puts the Archaeology of Taste back into play, thwarting stereotyped representations. Behind the glass and neon lights of the Petite galerie, the telenovela narrative is shattered, breaking the linearity of modernist teleology. Marimar¹, an archetypal image of the “modern martyr”, a submissive woman presented in scale one. A panel of black earth glistening with fragments of junk gives them the dignity of archaeological objects. A black image: an opaque, reflective surface that thwarts the injunction to be transparent. The inverted mirror into which the artist invites us to enter is that of a ritualistic time. The glass box becomes opaque and the site of an experiment in the performance of objects and subjects. Each piece becomes autonomous and enters into a dialogue with history, opening up a critical distance. The soil becomes an agent in this reversal from the vertical to the horizontal, in which the chains act as vectors of liberation and break the framework. Walls of universal earth replace the curtains of baroque draperies and their factitious theatricality. The intra-action of the materials reorganises the top-bottom hierarchy and creates a correspondence between the infra-world and a reality that we enter with our bare feet. Plants grow from the ground upwards, crystallised here by the Stalactites of flowers frozen in paraffin. The vases in which copal² is burnt during funeral celebrations are also planted in the ground, like candles. The solid resin becomes gaseous: sublimation. Crystallisation, metamorphosis and transformation become the three modes of an economy through which our bodies pass.

Marie de Brugerolle

Omar Castillo Alfaro (Mexico) is in residence through the “ENSBA Lyon x Cité internationale des arts” programme and is the 2022 laureate of the Prix de Paris.

¹ Marimar is a Mexican telenovela, directed by Beatriz Sheridan, broadcast on the Televisa network in 1994. The main character is played by Adriana Thalia Sodi Miranda, known as Thalia, a very popular actress and singer.

² Copal is an amber-like resin used in purification rituals, particularly to honour the dead. Vessels are buried in the earth to burn the substance.