The national artist Ricardo Fuentealba-Fabio is a migratory bird, which fruit of this year of pandemic and closed borders, could not realize the return of his journey between Santiago and Palmas de Gran Canarias, Spain. As a good alado emissary, he had to carry from the Chilean capital, with his work, a proposal of similarities and equivalences, to build an imaginary between the two dissimilar latitudes
Among many emails and bad news from the airports, his mission in the Canary Islands, was turning into a new shared adventure in confinement from that archipelago, turning the lockdown into an uprooting of uncertainty.
The mirlo skin, title of the exhibition of the Chilean artist Ricardo Fuentealba, mutó, then, from bird of passage to pilgrim on pagan land. Despite this, the experience has not been more satisfying, productive and successful.
The Francis Naranjo Foundation, in collaboration with the City Council of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, programmed in Room 2 of the Castillo de Mata Museum between October 23 and November 23 its project “El Desvelo del Mirlo”, curated by Carlos Javier Núñez, Chilean independent curator.
A migratory species prevented from closing the return cycle and also witnessing earth’s magnetic field collapse, develops a poetic claim to testify, frustrated longings, and anguish over unfulfilled promises.
The national artist’s exhibition has become these important Hispanic islands, a symbol for this year, where the planet stopped. Fuentealba during these months trotted his Trojan odyssey, in a symbol of the need to be where it cannot, to concrete something impeded by contingency, to finally give birth to a work in the wild, to how of place.
Fuentealba-Fabio has developed a methodical career from Teaching to Bachelor (Chile, Catholic University), from Bachelor to Doctor (Spain, University of Barcelona), from Doctor to Post Doctor (United States, University of California, Davis). He has received wide recognition from peers and profane people.
A flock trip became a captain’s log, with the ship being held in a new port, where fear, love and desvelo turned the artist, once free will, into a Ulysses that takes years to return to Ithaca, for challenging Poseidon in the pandemic year.
The Desvelo del Mirlo – Ricardo Fuentealba-Fabio / Francis Naranjo Foundation
Room 2 Mata Castle Museum from October 23 to November 23
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.
