The real Colombia of his childhood, recalls artist Pedro Gomez-Egana, was a fantastic world.
His parents had built their dream home on an island full of scorpions and his father would bring home all kinds of creatures, snakes in particular. “He thought it was rally funny to do so,” says the artist.
“I left Columbia more than 20 years ago, and when I critically look back at it now, it all looks absurd. But the fact is that when you think of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s works, it’s not fantasy. There’s very little fiction in the world he created in the real sense of the word. All these things [used to] happen in Columbia. But at the same time, one realises that there’s something magical about them,” says Mr. Gomez-Egana, who is one of the first 25 artists announced for the upcoming edition of the Kochi Muziris Biennale.
ADVERTISEMENT
A resident of Norway, Mr. Gomez-Egana, on his first visit to India, told The Hindu during an interaction that Malayalees’ connect with Marquez would put him at an advantage in building a rapport with his audience as he presents his ‘temporal’ installation at the art event.
Trained as a violinist, he turned a musician until a nagging injury caused him to turn to art. He might have left music performances, but the process of composing music, its structure and temporal arrangement — the sheer physicality of music — stayed with Mr. Gomez-Egana.
ADVERTISEMENT
In Kochi, specifically, as he went around the diminutive port town, visiting the abandoned warehouses-turned-venues of the Biennale, he was instantly elated to have a brush with its history. “This is something I’m interested in. I was looking at the geographical alignment of the venues, the sea, the rivers that flow into it, the doors and windows of these ramshackle structures. It’s important to my work,” he says.
Mr. Gomez-Egana’s works are about organising an event in time, the temporality allowing itself for physical engagement. He uses the process of film screening, where the audience is in rapt attention in a purpose-built space – its seduction, he says – to build a sense of attention and suspense which is the subject and aim of his works.
Suspense element
There was a mechanical installation that he did sometime ago, which worked just once in a day, for instance. “This meant that there was anticipation and suspense and people waited for that moment. Here, too, I am curious to see how people interact with my work.
While the obvious disadvantage of the scheme is that it will only have a limited audience, the artist is happy that they get to sense the moment.