DENONCIE SECRETE

DENONCIE SECRETE, solo exhibition by Jhafis Quintero Gonzalez

04/06/2011 at 9 PM

Excerpt from UNCUT no.1, the conversation with Jhafis Quintero Gonzalez

ZM: We exist only when we communicate…

JQG: Definitely…

It’s the only way…communication is very basic, very strong need; I really need to exist and for that communicating is important.

ZM: Do you think art is a very basic, primal form of communication?

JQG: Cave people communicated with art, with images…sounds…I was in a place where communication is very very necessary…and one of the biggest punishments you can get, when you are in jail, is isolation…so, the people get inside very small cell, 4 by 2 meters…23 hours a day inside, without communication…one hour a day they get to go out, see the sun…once they are there, the people who know the tricks, they made a hole with a knife to be able to speak with a neighbor….that means that they are in danger.. because the neighbor…they don’t trust each other…and probably both of them have a knife in their back…and they start to move…if you don’t move you are an easy target…but they prefer to be in danger but at least they are in communication with another….which is weird, because here outside, the first priority for human is to keep yourself alive…the order of this is different inside…that people prefer to exist via communication even if that means their life is in danger…so the self-preservation is in second place…communication is the first priority for the inmates…so it is one of the things I am really working on…with communication…in a very basic, pure form…for me, the experience is filling my work a lot…whatever happens outside, happens in an extremely pure and basic form inside…I go back in my memory and I use some metaphors from this place to get out of that context and put it inside art context…to say what I want…yeah

ZM: I have a quote for you…

JQG: What?

ZM: A quote…it says: no one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built or invented except literally to get out of hell (Antonin Artaud).

JQG: Yeah. I agree.

 

Jhafis Quintero Gonzalez (Panama, Costa Rica) is currently an artist in residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. His exhibitons include (solo) ‘Artista de alquiler’, intervention of the public fountain in the parque de Alajuelita at Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, San José, CR, Instituto Paranaense de Arte, BR, ‘Egresados, Máximas de Seguridad y Hágalo usted mismo’, Itinerancia, Curitba, Sao Pablo, Florinapolis, San josé, CR, ‘In Dubia Tempora’, project of documentary photography, texts and catalogues, Galeria Joaquín García Monge, San José, CR, ‘Kiloarte’, collaboration, (group) Museo de Bispo de Rosario, Rio de Janeiro, BR, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, NL, ‘Rijksakademie OPEN’, Bienal de Pontevedra, Pontevedra, ES, ‘Utrópicos’, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Costa Rica, San José, CR, Muestra International Ventosul, Curutiba, BR, Art Basel, CH, ‘In Dubia Tempora’, (‘Critical Moments’).