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"Weepy days" is an interdisciplinary project, in production process, based on allegorical representations of the current state of global socio-political emergency. My intention is to create mixed reality worlds where dystopian primary fear is presented as hybrid scenographies simulating the experience of a video game.
In this art installation, different cartographies about the post-capitalist decline we are going through are traced through virtual worlds in dialogue with paintings and inflatable latex sculptures. With this, I seek to generate mixed reality stagings, created for VST (Video See-Through) technologies, where confrontation, oppression, refuge, precariousness and the gradual disappearance of institutionality configure interactive simulations, which are combined with artworks made with physical materials. These scenes ironically depict teratological personifications that represent the "organs" of the state such as political power, the media, the judiciary and the security forces while coexisting with the viewer on the same plane.
The museographic design of "Weepy Days" contemplates the simulacrum as a conceptual foundation, the mixed reality worlds include original paintings and object sculptures, their copy and virtual reproduction, making a commentary on the tension that exists between the uniqueness of the work of art and its experience mediated by digital devices.
Concept view - Physical installation
Concept view - XR installation
Being a hybrid installation, a floor plan will be designed for the mise en scène, creating a narrative and visual journey in which the paintings will be hung from the ceiling, forming a sort of walls, in dialogue with the inflatable sculptures that will be placed in strategic points of the installation. This will be supported by a room setting created with debris and obsolete objects that make an analogy with the proposed virtual worlds. At the same time, the mixed reality experiences will be configured based on this design, integrating the physical works and elements of the mise en scène.
Virtual works
These virtual worlds become like realities/non-realities in which the spectator, once the XR glasses are put on, finds themselves immersed in them and are invited to explore them under the conditions arranged by their very virtuality and programming.
“When the real world changes into simple images, simple images become real beings and effective motivations of a hypnotic behavior.” (Debord, 1967, p. 13)
These representations have an initial tinge of infinity, that everything is possible within them but that by exploring them, they show us their limitations while revealing the spectacular control over the true and the untrue that has been imposed by their creator.
For example, the alley world delimits a pre-established route along which we can walk while random meteorites fall from the sky and from which we cannot seek refuge, whereas the ocean world limits the possibility of displacement and only gives us the possibility of rotating 360 degrees on our own axis while the waves overtake our virtual presences.
Virtual tour - Alley
Virtual tour - Ocean
* I propose to make an additional virtual space so that there are more options for mixed reality experiences from which the spectator can choose.
Physical works
As for the paintings, I began working on this series in mid 2023 in order to exorcise my impotence in the face of the socio-political crisis experienced in Ecuador. These works emerged as a primary instinct of representation, like the narrative function in cave paintings, through subconscious compositions loaded with hard strokes and deformed sketch-like characters, which make an analogy with the voracity of these current times. These depictions contain scenes of confrontation, but also scenes of shelter and humanity as defense mechanisms against the politics of fear installed in our society.
Class struggles (One day all hell will break lose)
Oil pastels, oil sticks and oil on canvas / 145 x 235 cm / 2023
This work depicts a social battle in which the black bird represents the media and pits the characters on the left half of the composition against those on the right, while the multi-faced character in the upper right corner represents political power, observing this scene with indifference.
While we sleep
Oil pastels, oil sticks and oil on canvas / 140 x 140 cm / 2024
This representation specifically points to the imposition of a night curfew, established by the current Ecuadorian government, arguing that we are in an internal armed conflict against organized crime but as time passes, these gangs remain intact and the feeling of insecurity grow day by day, while it would seem that the real "targets" of this measure are ordinary citizens, since the president is taking advantage of the state of emergency to increase taxes and cut citizens constitutional freedoms.
Which makes me question: What does this government really do while we sleep?
Justice isn't updated anymore
Oil pastels, oil sticks and oil on canvas / 145 x 55 cm / 2024
This fossil-like character represents the law as an ancient and immutable being that holds individuals without any real control.
Compositionally, the incongruity in the position of the hands shows the lack of control of the judicial system.
Eat the (un)truth
Oil pastels, oil sticks and oil on canvas / 170 x 145 cm / 2024
This piece reflects on the fragility of truth and how the post-truth replicated by the media, represented through the black bird, has positioned itself as the dominant discourse, so that society “eats” everything that appears to be news and ultimately a truth managed on the basis of emotion and artificial beliefs of the contemporary narrative.
A status-quo family portrait
Oil pastels, oil sticks and oil on canvas / 145 x 105 cm / 2023
Family is the only shelter from the state
Oil pastels, oil sticks and oil on canvas / 130 x 102 cm / 2023
In this work there is a scene of familiarity and a sense of freedom, in which this family poses as if for a photograph on a sunny day, but what is this kind of freedom? and, is it available to any kind of citizen or is it only possible for the status-quo?
This piece acts as a counterpoint to the previous one, showing a lower-class family in front of a bonfire, sheltered from the political power that watches them from the upper right corner, almost as if it were stalking them.
Packed like hopeful sardines (triptych)
Oil pastels, oil sticks and oil on canvas / 50 x 150 cm / 2023
This triptych creates, through its arrangement, a narrative construction in which each piece serves as a “window” through which we see various characters with glowing eyes as they hide in the darkness.
After completing this work, I began to subconsciously think of these windows as part of a ship transporting immigrants to a more hopeful destination, although this may or may not come true.
Inflatable latex sculptures references
To complete the installation is pending the production of 3 latex sculptures that, when inflated with water, are expected to be approximately 1m in diameter each.
These object sculptures are positioned as corporeal entities that, although they represent the same characters depicted through the paintings and VR, are presented from a physical three-dimensionality, while the mixed realities show a virtual three-dimensionality and the paintings a flat physicality, highlighting the tension between the singularity of the physical works and their virtual counterparts.
