March 19 – May 14, 2018
Curated by Elena Mencarelli
When I was a child, I used to spend my vacations in a small town in the Colombian Caribbean coast where my grandparents had a tiny apartment. Everyday my grandparents got my cousins and I ready to go to the beach and covered our bodies in sunblock and insect repellent, knowing that city kids have very fragile skin.
The hot and humid weather and the salty smell of the port and fishery are ingrained in my memory. Under the beating sun, dozens of flies would come and swarm around us, attracted to the sugar in our soda cans and the sweat in our skins. Despite my constant efforts to keep them off me, their conviction always outweighed mine. Whether I was playing in the sand, taking a nap, or having a snack, the constant buzz would disrupt my activities to the point that I was swinging my arms in the air and swatting at my face. It was really unnerving, and I always wondered why my grandfather could just sit there, calm and undisturbed. So one day I got the courage to ask him, “How come you aren’t bothered by the flies?” and he responded, “What flies? There are no flies here!” and continued gazing calmly at the horizon.
Now, more than twenty years later and thousands of miles from home, I still wish I had the same capability to ignore unnerving and persistent botherances. The smartphones in our pockets are constantly buzzing like omnipresent flies. News about massacres, natural disasters, and imminent wars are combined with the FOMO and the need for likes that cause anxiety and depression among a phone-addicted population. So I find myself in the same situation I was in years ago, trying to ignore something that is impossible to ignore, swatting aimlessly at the air, while repeating to myself as if it was a mantra, “¡Aquí no hay moscas!” (‘There are no flies here!’).
– Santiago Insignares
For his first exhibition at the Red Poppy Art House, Santiago Insignares presents an installation that transforms the venue into a battlefield. Human features and limbs sprout from the walls, clumsily swinging amidst the air. “¡Aquí no hay moscas!” the artist tells us, except the flies are there—targets of a yet lost battle.
Insignares gleans from a childhood memory to express a critical metaphor of adult age. Nostalgia for that childhood innocence through which we once believed in our fantasies is now confronted by the reality and disillusion that comes with maturity. As we grow older, we come to understand that simply imagining the flies aren’t there is no longer powerful enough to convince us that the annoying itch is caused by something other than nagging insects. In the same way, ignoring the constant digital inputs that imbue our lives will not spare us from feelings of stress and weariness that we are often left with at the end of the day. Anxiety, depression, insomnia, and irritability are the invisible marks of virtual, omnipresent flies.
¡Aquí no hay moscas! isn’t a statement against technology, but an opportunity to think about our relationship with it. We find ourselves more and more addicted to devices that update us on news, events, facts, and scoops—ingredients of a reality just a click away. The Red Poppy Art House’s reality, however, is made of personal relationships. Pretending what disturbs us simply doesn’t exist, doesn’t actually make disturbances disappear. We believe that checking the news constantly doesn’t make us happier, and that looking at others’ lives doesn’t make us a part of them. We believe in participation, not observation.
Insignares invites you to react to media bombardment and to its superhuman standards through a suggestive artwork. The battle of ¡Aquí no hay moscas! reminds us that it’s time for a brave act: to disconnect or raise consciousness.
https://archive.org/details/AdamAlter_2017
– Elena Mencarelli
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Santiago Insignares (b. 1986, Troy, New York) is a Colombian artist based in San Francisco, California. He received an MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2015 and a BFA in Illustration and Animation from the European Institute of Design of Rome in 2009. His work has been shown throughout Bogotá at Casa Cuadrada, The Bogotá Art Fair Emerging Artists Pavilion, La Residencia Gallery, as well as in San Francisco at Noroof Gallery, Adobe Books Backroom, The Growlery, and the California Academy of Sciences. His work addresses our relationship with memory, considering themes like trauma, nostalgia, social memory, and their importance in identity creation.
ARTIST STATEMENT
In this installation, the artist uses the metaphor of an incessant swarm of flies by making a direct, visual translation of his frustration with the current technology-driven age. The buzz of the flies and the buzz of a smartphone are brought together by a nostalgic memory, inviting the audience to question the relevance of the symbiotic relationship they have with their phones and what measures should be taken to make this relationship healthier and sustainable.
Elena Mencarelli moved to San Francisco after concluding her Master Degree in Visual Arts at the University of Bologna, Italy. Previously, she was the artistic director of the Make Your Mark Art Gallery in Melbourne, Australia. In addition to her artistic practice and curatorial background, she is also engaged in art criticism. Elena is the co-writer of the catalogue of the double exhibition Maria Rebecca Ballestra – Alan Sonfist, a better landscape (Unimedia Modern Contemporary Art, Genova, Italy) and is the author of Maria Rebecca Ballestra, a phenomenology of posthumanism, soon to be published in both Italian and English.