I have been trying for several months to decipher the meaning of “the decolonization of museums” that the Minister of Culture, Urtasun, proposes like a mantra. I’ve asked wise and wealthy people but nothing convincing. However, during my research trip I discovered in Venice, during the last Biennale, number 60, that there is a clue to the possible transmutation of thoughts between Pedro SanchezSandra Gamarra and her “commissioner”.
This artist of Peruvian origin has been living in Spain for 20 years, because I guess in Lima she doesn’t have enough funding to settle down exhibitions against the Spanish Empire or because he may not have as much freedom to express his anti-thoughts. He represents our country in the Spanish pavilion, and it is the first time that a non-national artist has done so. Olé?
“Tropical gardens, ecofeminist quotes, taxonomies of colonial castes”, and the sentences which represent this context of claim to colonial culture are placed on reproductions of works by Frans Hals, Velázquez or Zurbaran. Curious is the interpretation of the still life of the latter author, “Still life with a bucaro”, in which according to the Limanaise there is “restraint, parsimony, but it is a clear symbol of power”.
Various issues such as racism, sexism or “extractivism”, the usual ones, but with a projection that she considers more accessible. These absurdities bring me so close to the typical argumentation of the current PSOE, that I think that either they share an ideologue, or that Pedro Sánchez is also a Western Spanish artist as Sandra Gamarra considers himself. I rule out them sharing a lobotomist because of the pain of imagining it.
This idea according to which the detestable “monolithic notion which was based on the destruction of other forms of social organization” and which wants to help us “get rid of the monotheistic virus” or that of “finding the only truth that they believe to be true ” might be difficult to attribute to one or the other. It’s like asking not to fall into confrontation, but at the same time treat the issues in a clearly self-serving, biased and provocative way. Do you remember- you of “Will I govern with the support of the opposition or will he and I govern even if I do not have the support of the Executive?” Based on ideological reasoning, half-truths and abuse of power, these beliefs and many others try to be imposed on us in any way whatsoever With the aura of truth that an artistic expression offers, and the consideration of the possession of a higher criterion of its authors, the. The stakes are high to create a thought beyond a personal reflection.
Thus, the exhibition includes a pavilion filled with figures who fought for the freedom of their people, such as the case of the Filipino hero Lapu lapu who, with some 1,500 natives, assassinated Magellan and 60 of his sailors, also frustrating the first Ring road. But Magellan was a colonizing man. It is normal that they killed him, because the natives were fed up with him not wanting to pay what they demanded. Besides, I miss the reference to bullfighting. It still doesn’t fit.
These proclamations are based on “the dehierarchization of everything, including history, because now the past is the future and what must be reconverted and the future is based on the previous one”. You understand, don’t you?
