In connection with the exhibition Antología del desarraigo (1992), the curator Katherine Chacón writes about the career of the Venezuelan mixed-media artist, Ángel Vivas Arias. The writer highlights the duality of mysticism and nature evident throughout his creative life. From this perspective, she examines Vivas Arias’s early art experiences, an intermediate period characterized by assemblages made of objets trouvés (found objects), and the last period of his work, in which he explored performance as his principal means of expression. Chacón emphasizes the surrealistic aspect of the artist’s work and the power of the symbol as the conceptual basis for his approaches.

This text written by the curator Katherine Chacón (b. 1964) offers an analytical basis for the artistic beginnings of the Venezuelan painter and mixed-media artist, Ángel Vivas Arias (1949–1986), as well as a retrospective view of his work. It provides important data on his artistic influences that enable the reader to gain a better understanding of his later development. Similarly, the critic Roberto Guevara (1932–1998) considers this text to be “the live documentation of a body of work that was not fully and convincingly presented until this exhibition” (see the article “Ángel y el museo,” El Nacional, Caracas, July 21, 1992). To strengthen the ideas proposed at the Venezuelan level and provide support for some of her research, Chacón bases one of her arguments on fragments of an essay written by the North American writer Susan Sontag (1933–2004), “Notes on Camp,” which was included in her book Against Interpretation.

The exhibition Antología del desarraigo (Maracay: Museo de Arte, 1992) was held by this museum during the months of April and May 1992; subsequently, it was presented at the Galería Los Espacios Cálidos del Ateneo (Caracas, May–June 1992). The exhibitions were held to honor the artist, six years after his untimely death.