Estela funeraria 1998

Curator: Estela Funeraria by Ramirez Villamizar from 1998. An acrylic painting... its stark geometric shapes definitely catch the eye, creating this sort of stoic, even slightly unsettling mood. What's your initial take? Editor: How do you interpret this work through the lens of materials and social context, given its title “Estela Funeraria” – meaning funerary stela or grave marker? Curator: I find it interesting that he is working in 1998, where this interest in modernist aesthetic feels almost like a readymade. To me it feels almost like the aesthetic style is this symbol of... obsolescence or of a previous society in and of itself. And of course we have the reference in the title itself of an artifact, or some kind of grave marker… Why do you think the artist has combined abstraction with such an explicitly funereal title? Editor: So it’s like he's turning an entire aesthetic style into an artifact itself, a marker of a past era, making the style and materials, not just the imagery, the bearers of meaning and memory? Almost like mass produced grave goods, or some critique about art production... Curator: Exactly! Think about how acrylic paint, a product of industrial chemistry, is used here. Does its smooth, almost mass-produced feel enhance or detract from the traditional idea of a unique, handcrafted memorial? Editor: That contrast definitely adds another layer. It makes you think about how even our memorials, even grief, can be commodified or processed. Curator: The labor isn't just the artist's; it is that of factories, of resource extraction, of distribution networks. These elements become as much a part of the work's meaning as the shapes and colours Villamizar chose. This is beyond formalism; this speaks to the socio-economic underpinning of artistic expression. Editor: This definitely broadened my perspective! I hadn't considered the layers of industrial process embedded in such a seemingly simple composition. Curator: It invites a consideration of artistic practice not just as skilled craft but as embedded in larger structures. We often separate those aspects; art like this merges them.