Marcos Ávila-Forero France / Colombia, b. 1983
The series Estibas displays several pallets —structures
originally conceived for the transport of merchandises— with poetic images
carved into their surface. These pallets —halfway between the artisanal object
and the industrial object— do not exist anymore as a structure to transport goods,
but as the substrate of historical narrative. The engraved representations illustrate
the Colombian rural context, inspired by photographs and archival material that
relate both to peasant economies, and to historical moments of the armed
conflict that has transformed said peasants into guerrilla-fighters. The object
is transformed into a giant stencil. In front of each pallet, the sawdust
produced while carving it reproduces its own image, as many times as the
available sawdust allows. These stylized representations lay out the account of
a unique story, which repeats itself in a mechanical fashion, diluting little
by little the image and its original reference, as to suggest an alternative
account of their historical roots.