$22,000

Artwork Description

“Sarcófagos” tells a new narrative about an ancient practice that relates to both Egypt and an insurance company. In ancient times sarcophagi were linked to the security of high society and their passage to the world beyond. T oday paying for life insurance allows the family of the deceased to move forward on despite death. The Egyptian elite had the certainty and at the same time the freedom to expand their possibilities of action after earthly life. When Rodrigo was doing his ethnographic research in the temples of Dendera and Abydos he asked himself: What happens to all the corpses that did not have that passage to the other world? Their existence is that of a corpse and not of a body with the possibility of action. Some exist and manage to move, according to a compositional narrative, towards something more than our filthy existence, while others decay with the brutality of biological force. Or at least they did. Echeverría changes this limited system and integrates two trades from the periphery (sex workers and fruit sellers) that had not been represented by a status quo. Painting, through the ages, has had the opportunity to revisit these forgotten corpses-but from the folkloric as, for example, Rivera in his work “El Vendedor de Alcatraces.” Echeverría instead of falling into the folkloric, uses painting as a medium that incites a questioning and incorporation of those who, lacking freedom, did not have the possibilities to represent themselves through art to travel beyond their present.