Nelson Barrera

In La Casa del Gallinazo, Cuban artist Nelson Barrera presents a dismal scene. A group of over seven vultures, or ‘chulos’ as they are known in Colombia, fly over a banana plantation. The scene focuses on the sky, particularly on the flight of the birds, leaving glimpses of the leaves of banana plants in the lower part of the painting. Black vultures are carrion-eating birds that overfly the place where they find food—usually rotting meat. The bleak scene presented by Barrera results from a research process conducted in the Colombian Department of Magdalena and functions as an allegory of the history of violence and death associated with banana plantations in this region.