Carlos Castro

The Bogotá he shows us may be read as a violent city, extremely poor and with an element of uprootedness typical of a noman’s- land. Thus, in a clear reflection on urban violence, Castro creates two musical instruments with knives confiscated in the streets of the city, which are tied to a central axis and organized in such a way that when they rotate they hit a series of keys that play melodies from the 1st century of the Roman Empire, an interesting parallel if one considers that these knives are the weapons of the anonymous gang that dominates the city streets.

Another piece featured is his ironic representation of the famous sculpture of Romulus and Remus nurtured by a shewolf, exhibited at Rome’s Capitoline Museums, in which he replaces the she-wolf with a stuffed creole bitch: This animal that is present in every street in the city is the product of the crossings between all the races in its species, something that is very characteristic of our Latin American society, in turn the product of brutal conquests and permanent crossbreeding, a symbol of our cultural reality.

Two installations close the exhibit: the first is composed of two aqueduct sections without their lids, which instead of containing
a water meter for measuring consumption, contain two trout that appear to be in the process of being cultivated there; the second is a series of watercolors featuring renditions of the street occupations currently seen in the city: a womanstatue or a man who hits the tires with a piece of wood form part of this group, and they are illustrated and illumined in the manner of Ramón Torres Méndez, one of the first nineteenth century Colombian costumbrist painters.