Gonzalo Fuenmayor
Bio
Miami-based Gonzalo Fuenmayor studied for a master's degree at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), where he was known as “the banana man” because he drew bananas. He had grown tired of making works that explored drugs, violence and other social problems that Americans associated with their homeland, and in bananas he found a gold mine. The SMFA awarded Fuenmayor a travel grant in 2013. Drawing inspiration from the cultural sources he has collected throughout his own life experience, Fuenmayor has posed, through a masterful use of drawing, reflections revolving around identity, socio-political markers, conceptions about development, idiosyncrasies of the tropics and imaginaries about the global south that emanate from northern geographies.
Statement
Gonzalo Fenmayor manifests the contacts, oppositions, crossings and tensions that originate within his world, characterized by the polysemic experience of migration from his native Barranquilla and the Ciénaga Grande del Magdalena, where his ancestors lived and worked in the banana plantations. Assuming his place amidst the web of human displacements that has been drawn across the Caribbean, Fuenmayor uses paper and char-coal as fundamental elements for the convergence of symbols and allegorical images that allude to the exoti-cizations, syncretisms, appropriations, affinities, and cultural alienations that he has experienced in his own life.
Additional information
Procedencia: Taller del artista, Miami
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
