Avelino Sala

The aesthetic —that also have a strong ethical— raised by Avelino Sala throughout his career articulate a discourse certainly personal, coherent, and yet complex in their readings and their looks.

The diversity of mechanisms employed and expressive languages, which include among others the video, sculpture, photography, neon, drawing or plural world of objects, keeps his (coherent) idea of art but at the same time complex on the diversity of views. 

Unwritten feminist subversive library

This project is linked to both sculpture and resistance and is part of a larger project called "Books for an unwritten history."

Through the use of books, of an object that is a transmitter of knowledge, the end is changed and one works with them in an objective way, that is, the book loses its original function but at the same time gains another.

The title of the book, which is taken from the banners of the 8M demonstrations throughout the world, is engraved on the cover. Then the object is painted in different purple pantones using a gradient that functions as a monochrome that become a sculpture that represents the struggle of women for equality.

The 8M series extracts the slogans of the 8M demonstrations around the world, recovering them to propose these novels/books to be written at a time when changes are taking place, but also at a time when it is necessary to give visibility to the claims from the particular space of Art, a place where freedom and the ability to communicate still exist.

La rebelión consiste en mirar una rosa hasta pulverizarse los ojos 

The relationships between rebellion and poetry, elements typical of the artist's research, mark this project that starts from one of its clearest, most recognizable and direct aspects.
Accustomed to working with messages formalized in neon, Sala here presents a part of a poem by Alejandra Pizarnik, specifically from the Tree of Diana from 1962. 

"A look from the gutter can be a view of the world
rebellion consists in looking at a rose until your eyes are pulverized” 

Here, Avelino Sala uses it from the perspective of ferocious capitalism, from the idea that perhaps apathy or inactivity is the most intense of the ways of rebelling In these neon pieces that mix the poetic with the political, Avelino Sala transforms texts from others into light sculptures to form a very specific body of work, aesthetically and ethically. 

Mirror Stage 

Avelino Sala's work is inscribed in the social context of the crisis fostered by late capitalism, where humanity wanders in search of a balance, any response that can make sense of the current global situation. His works are manifestations of resistance that, ironically, establish how one can adopt a critical stance of questioning and opposition to reality from visual art and its system of thought. 

In Mirror Stage he appeals to the Lacanian conception of the "I" presenting two images facing each other printed in pens. Real images of current disasters face images extracted from De Goya's engravings. In this case, focusing on the Colombian context and its past and current problems, highlighting that identity and conflict are a space of dissent and visual confrontation that lead us to understand the local world as a great timeless reflection. Goya already portrayed the world in his time, this (global) portrait before globalization is still more in force than ever, the local and the global as an exercise of the "global" that highlights the societies in the conflict over land, wealth, the border ... they are very similar in all territories.