This text by María Iovino was published in Nuevas Propuestas: Arte Colombiano 1999–2002, a catalogue of the exhibitions held at the Alliance Française in Bogotá. It voices the curatorial vision underlying the exhibition Íconos (1999) by Colombian-Dutch artist Germán Martínez Cañas held at the gallery of the Alliance Française—an institution dedicated to the spread of French language and culture—in downtown Bogotá. That exhibition was organized by the curatorial team working at the Bogotá Alliance Française, whose members were Iovino herself, José Ignacio Roca, and Carmen María Jaramillo. In her concise text, Iovino describes the political and social implications of the work Íconos (1996?1997), a series of photographs by Martinez Cañas that shows fictional characters commonly seen in advertising like Ronald McDonald (1963) and Juan Valdez (1959) being violently murdered. Iovino underscores the importance of violence as a theme implicit to photographs that, paradoxically, question both the dehumanization of violence in Colombia and the arbitrary nature of reigning conceptions of “the beautiful” and of “wellbeing.” Those formulations—a product of mass media discourses—are the focus of Martinez Cañas’s criticism of a country beset by domestic warfare and traditional models of representation.

This text provides an analysis and interpretation of Íconos (1996?97) by Colombian-Dutch artist Germán Martínez Cañas (b. 1965) on the basis of the visual de-contextualization of violence, misfortune, and terror central to his work. These images formulate a visual criticism of the civil war in Colombia, the socio-political issue consuming the nation at the time. With considerable impact, they expose the most subtle consequences of the civil war: the “de-humanization” and “invisibilization” of death, which takes place on a daily basis in the mass media. María Iovino (b. 1961) addresses how Martínez Cañas’s work critically questions the paradisiacal image that advertising offers the public in a phenomenon she calls “violence that ensues in silence.” Iovino argues that the formulations of advertising arbitrarily determine viewers’ aesthetics of desire and notions of wellbeing while furthering the interests of hegemonic powers and global economies.  

Iovino underscores the use of objects and images related to violence, assault, and helplessness in Martínez Cañas’s work. She cites, for example, Canción de cuna (1992), a light installation that makes use of jars of industrial glue that the impoverished sniff in order to endure hunger. Martínez Cañas’s use of this element, Iovino argues, reveals the imbalance and injustice that undermine the meaning of life and, as such, it is part and parcel of what she calls “good art.” Whether as a protest strategy or as a means of addressing social issues, readings of the sort Iovino voices here evidence the firm stance of Colombian criticism during the nineties.

Colombian-Dutch artist Germán Martínez Cañas has a degree from the Universidad Nacional of Colombia. He participated in the VI Havana Biennial (1997) and the Nuevos Nombres program (1991). His work was awarded at the 16th edition of the Premio Salón Francisco A. Cano (1988). At present (2010), he lives and works in Bogotá.  

Recent projects by Colombian curator Maria Iovino include Volverse aire (2003)—a retrospective exhibition of Óscar Muñoz (b. 1951)—Contratextos (2008), and Video Box (2009). A freelance curator, she is currently involved in a number of projects in Colombia and Latin America as a whole, among them arte-cámara, a project sponsored by the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce for ARTBO, the Bogotá art fair.