Benvenuto Chavajay Ixtetela
Jardin (Garden)
2013
Jardin, 2013
Jardin refers to environmental destruction, specifically the preponderance of disposable plastics, as well as Medellín’s long history of dangerous conflict; it was once considered the most violent city in the world because of the drug trafficking there. This floor sculpture consists of shoes made of river stones, strung with flip-flop straps. Here, Chavajay plays the natural (found stones) against the synthetic (plastic), heavy against light, hard against soft, revealing the irony of their fusion and the impossibility of their alleged function as shoes. By transforming these heavy, clunky rocks into shoes, the artist alludes to the paralysis and weight under which the city of Medellín has long suffered.
Benvenuto Chavajay Ixtetela's body of work includes sculpture, interventions into objects, installation, performance, and painting. The artist rearranges unconventional materials in ways that often appear innocuous at first glance, but are in fact deeply political, based on the cancellation of objects as they relate to the violence that surrounds them. Chavajay draws inspiration from many different contextual realities in order to produce his work. His creative process alludes to the present context not only in Guatemala, but also in Latin America and beyond, in the sense that one part always affects the whole.