Pararrayo
Abierto Theredoom Gallery, Madrid. 2017
Lighting Rod, lightbulb, poles, ink, cloths, blankets and string
500 x 400 x 180 cm

 

Overall view

Cubano malo
Cloth, ink and needles
120 x 40 cm

 

The artist has developed a new installation based on a testimony heard from a male escort on La Havana´s seawall in 2011. “Lightning killed a policeman while playing soccer, according to some friends, it was a punishment from God, since the policeman prostituted himself with men.” Responding to the testimony and within a popular grammar, Pérez Evans uses poor materials such as blankets, rags and sticks to make a fragile and unstable den, from which a warm light is perceived. It “protects” it from possible new attacks with a lightning rod. On one wall is a paternalistic phrase written on kitchen cloths: Bad Cuban.
The gesture of reviving a testimony allows the artist to give visibility to a story that would be out of circulation, thus adding a new chapter to his personal historiography, where stories from compromised places throw us into the observation of old and new forms of oppression, nebulous places where voices are transported into myths, cataclysms and disasters to come.