Claudia Fuentes de Lacayo

  • "Broken memory and gunned down instinct", Mixed media. 133 x 93 cm. 2016. Our memories buried in a collective unconscious that prefers oblivion, but anyway they persist as the pre-Hispanic burials, in which cracked vessels and other goods, lye underground waiting for the light of its discovery. Similarly, endogenous species such as the ocelot, jaguar, puma, some turtles and snakes, iguanas, birds, etc .. are extinguishing before our eyes because the "sport" of hunting, mining and real estate development, another symptom of how identities that could save the materialism of Western culture, disappear in front of our indifference.
  • "Colloquium" mixed media on canvas,100 x 120 x 4 cm. Dialogue in three different but parallel times. These parallel worlds of the Pre-Hispanic, Colonial and Consumer society are the three cultures that intermingle this century in Latin America -
  • Acahualinca Memories, 2, 113 x 93 cm. Mixed media, 2016. Acahualinca's fossilized tracks record the passage of perhaps 10 people – men, coyotes, women and children – as well as of birds, raccoons and deer across the muddy shores of Lago de Managua some 6000 years ago. This ancient testimonial of the aboriginal inhabitants of Nicaragua, lies under the muddy waters of our collective unconscious.
  • "My Neighborhood".Mixed media on canvas, 150 x 120 x 4 cm. The jar, for our aboriginal cultures, is the symbol of the mother, the woman the nutrition. This painting symbolizes the memory of our original unconscious raped by the Eurocentric culture first and then by the consumer society.
  • Acahualinca Memories 1, mixed media 48 x 58 cm. 2016. 2100 year old human footprints preserved in volcanic mud near the lake in Managua, Nicaragua. These are forgotten memories in the same way that we have forgotten our aboriginal unconscious, surrounded by consumers age.
  • "Concave and convex," texturized oil on canvas with trimmed soda cans, 100×80 cm. Broken pottery reveal our memory malleable as clay, but fragmented through the centuries.
  • My Neighborhood 1, mixed media, 135x115 cm. 2016. The three cultures cohabiting Latin America.
  • "Broken Memory", mixed media on canvas, 80 x 120 x 4 cm 2015. The morphological composition in my artwork is involuntarily related to pre-Hispanic cosmogonies. This happens intuitively as the mythic aboriginal tradition considers we artists are shamans, who share perilously the gifts of journeying into the Realm of the Gods or the collective unconscious, and then back again. That is why this jar of memory is broken by the colonial walls and is sorrounded by waste.
  • Persistent Turtle Shell, mixed media, 73 x 46 cm. 2016. Endogenous animals and buried cultures, persist as the shell of the turtle, a sacred aboriginal ancient animal.
  • "I'q" mixed media on canvas, 30 x 36 x 4 cm. 2014. Iq’ is the lightening and the storms. It is the day of the Spirit of the Air. The Heart of the Sky gave the Air, nutrition for life, to all the living beings. The air nourishes our organism. The air is the element which makes our body function ; it is this element which gives us the motion.
  • "Three intermingled worlds II"- oil on canvas and trimmed soda cans- 21 x 32 inches. 2015. My proposal adds to the buried memories of our pre-Hispanic cultures and the colonial walls that raised over them, the new walls of popular culture, symbols of the ephemeral and the disposable, in which the ads, shows and public figures are imposed over our city walls as well as upon our historical memory.
  • "TUN" (mayan stone) mixed media on canvas and trimmed aluminum soda cans. 30 x 30 cm. 2015. I share with archaeology the sensibility for digging into the unknown, approaching history as subject and historical memory as a proposal for exploration, including the viewer in the resolution of the material language of my paintings.
  • "Kajtz'uk Cicle, LA CRUZ MAYA" mixed media on canvas and aluminum cans. 30 x 30 cm. 2015. The Mayan Cross is used as a compass for navigating through life. Its wisdom is inherent in the Mayan sacred calendar which was discerned thousands of years ago. The Maya believe that the wisdom of the calendars was taught by their original prophets from Pleiades.
  • "Three intermingled worlds I"- oil on canvas and trimmed soda cans- 21 x 32 inches. 2015. The symbols I pick to represent this notion start with the monumental colonial stone walls and evolve to the ephemeral objects of our consumer era that populate the urban contemporary landfills: crushed aluminum cans and plastic bottles, graffiti, that frame the images of ancient renewed symbols.
  • "Bottled Wisdom", 30 x36 cm. mixed media on canvas, 2014. It is important to note that those who know and practice daily the sacred mayan calendar Cholq'ij (Tzolkin) are the Ajq'ij, spiritual guides. Its knowledge is like "bottled wisdom" in the midst of colonial colonial vestiges and the trash of consumer era.

I search inside myself the vestiges of ancient cultures that have inhabited our continent, and specifically my country, Nicaragua. The pre-Hispanic pottery was a product of the earth and every vessel, pot, jar or censer, was not only an object of daily use, but also a sacred object with which both rulers and priests were buried, as well as the people of the villages, because ceramic pots were the container of life. I add to the buried memories of our pre-Hispanic cultures and the colonial walls that raised over them, the new walls of popular culture, symbols of the ephemeral and the disposable.
Some critics like curator Marcela Valdeavellano, consider my artwork has entered a ‘post-conceptual’ phase. This means, generally speaking, that there are intentional references to numerous stylistic features and ideas about pre-Columbian and Colonial Art. Currently, I started using topics from popular culture, like graffiti or various forms of printmaking techniques.
Oil painting, textures, trimmed soda cans and graffiti, built our Latin American collective unconscious populated by three cultures intermingled.
Working in tune with tradition and my attention focused on the expressive opportunities inherent in the medium of painting, I dig the unknown dimension that lives within me and all of us, strongly emphasizing the relation between the figurative space and the concept, form and color, writing and gesture.

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  • Artist Info

    • Managua,
      Central America
    • 0050588861200

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