Richard Harrison Bravo Salamanca

Bravo Salamanca uses the baroque style of painting known as vanitas to reflect on the history of violence in Colombia. The brevity of life alluded to in the still-life with skulls of eighteenth-century Catholicism becomes topical in the case of twentieth-century Colombia. A bunch of rotting bananas bearing Chiquita Brands International Inc. labels recalls the 1928 banana-worker massacre whilst a lit candle pays tribute to the hero of the murdered workers, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a lawyer who was later assassinated during his presidential campaign extinguishing the people’s hopes of transformation. The piece is made up of a black and white photo printed with ink on canvas, which depicts the history as a story that becomes hazy with the passage of time.