Ronald Morán explores impunity in an almost invisible installation featured at Espacio Erre, Guatemala

In Morán’s artistic practice, this concept transcends the sphere of the laws of physical perception and reaches the borders of critical thinking, making visible that which is socially concealed or denied, and opening up the field of social knowledge.

The dematerialization involving spaces and objects with a dense symbolic association, as may be the case of a prison cell, pistols, rifles, knives, machetes or rudimentary elements such as stones and sticks, is complex, since these objects and spaces always retain in their roots the outline of unalterable violence, and hence the direct association with their use.

However, the representation of a prison cell made of white and fragile strings does not suggest an actual dungeon. Irony plays its role and provides the suitable tone for taking the symbol beyond the signifier, frontally pointing out the impunity which, like a protective shield, brutally runs through the weakened justice systems applied in a discriminate way.

Likewise, the series of photographs that accompanies this piece immerses itself in the dematerialization of the object. Through slow shutter speed exposures, coupled with the movement of the subjects, the images recreate an apparent vibration that distorts and decomposes the harshness of the environment, to the point of bringing it close to its disappearance on the paper. The effect on social perception, however, connects us with the notion of bio-politics as a field in which the action of power over life, but also the reaction of life – and of artistic creation – to power, are experienced and represented.