Fernando Arias

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Has worked between Colombia and Britain for twenty years. Through video, photography, installation and performance he reveals the human condition, from physical and mental states to cultural and social conditioning. Socially driven themes are presented through his work. Often involving marginalised people and groups, Arias encourages them to express what matters to them. Audiences are then stimulated to confront these cultures and their concerns.
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GERENTE Magazine is the equivalent to Bussines Week in Latinamerica. For the December 2009 issue, Arias has been included within the 100 leaders in Colombia.

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See GERENTE magazine

PAIS PARA QUIEN

Is a play on words: 'PARA' means FOR but in this case PARA is also short for PARAMILITARY. Without the question mark it is associated more with the latter.

Living outside Colombia for many years broadened my points of reference and gave me a new objectivity when considering what I had left behind. Distance helped me to focus on aspects of Colombia’s identity whilst simultaneously returning frequently to the place that inspired these reflections. Colombia's national emblems, its religious influences, the drug trade, violence, its macho sexuality and the repression of minority perspectives were themes I began to explore.
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See 'El Espectador' review

MORE ART MORE ACTION

Led by Fernando Arias and Jonathan Colin, Más Arte Más Acción generates inspirational art in Colombia and Latin America that gives a voice to people from communities silenced by lack of opportunities. Our projects raise awareness of people from remote regions to deprived urban settings, revealing their worlds, expressing their concerns and sharing their wisdom.
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Go to www.masartemasacción.org

MICROmacro

13 Salón Regional de Artistas

Fernando Arias and Jonathan Colin won a Ministry of Culture Award to co-curate the XIII Regional Salon 2009/10. Through open submission and direct invitation eighteen projects were selected.

Starting with a talk given by a bacteriologist in laboratories across the region, this theoretical and practical session focussed on the principles of life seen through the microscope. This interaction between art and science created a space for new dialogues to enrich the arts across the region.
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MORE ON THE PROCESS

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Photos of the exhibition

Download catalogue on pdf

El Espectador Newspaper

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DONOR WANTED

For two decades and from various perspectives Fernando Arias has reflected upon the human condition, throughout which Colombia's conflict has been an important context.

Now at the end of a series of works that have considered kidnapping and disappearances, the quality of information offered by our mass media, the power and the vulnerability of men and women, Fernando invites those who may be in the final stages of their life, due to various circumstances, to offer their own cremated ashes for an "artistic cause".

The donated ashes will be used to complete an image that shows the inverse catholic action of "making the sign of the cross" and serves as a base for public reflection. See the artist's interview about this theme in order to reach deeper into the motivations behind the work and its objectives.

Olga Lucia Lozano (Translated from La Silla Vacia)

TO SEE REQUIREMENTS...
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go to www.lasillavacia.com

Plan B

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HUMANOS DERECHOS

ISRAEL - PALESTINE
A Prince Claus Fund award enabled Arias to travel to Israel and Palestine in March 2009. His aim was to produce a work based on the same principles as Humanos Derechos in Colombia.

The three-week visit led to complex and unsettling findings, challenging Arias' initial aim to reveal each side's common humanity. On this visit he interviewed people involved in the conflict and also intervened in Israel using graffiti, documenting it and producing a series of photographs that question the idea of state and territory. Arias will return to the region to extend this project.

HUMANOS DERECHOS
COLOMBIA Humanos Derechos focuses on the human aspects of people directly involved in conflicts and wars. It also looks at how our social environment and the circumstances within which we are raised lead to hatred and intolerance. "Realising how complex the issues in Colombia's conflict have become made me want to strip away these layers of complexities and touch base once more with our common humanity" says Arias. READ MORE Humanos Derechos Colombia involves one member from the frontline of each group involved: the army, the guerrilla, the paramilitaries and land workers. "I filmed each person stripping off their uniforms and firearms, to show that beneath it all we are humans. This might sound superficial at first, but for these young adults to reveal themselves naked was a difficult test of self-confrontation. For me, it was an enduring task of persuasion. Getting these individuals to 'act' out in front of the camera involves certain levels of risk. "The process involved interacting with every participant. Each provokes extreme hatred from one side in the conflict or another. By making each side perform the same task created a unifying level. It has also been a challenging opportunity to be intimate with the layers of this reality that seem so impossible to unveil. Instead I physically reveal their bodies that symbolise oppression. "Each person was filmed individually but is seen to undress at the same time as I set the timing for each step. A metaphor for the different steps - in reverse order, that people have taken to liberate themselves by force through the creation of militias and ideologies or by being recruited with or without choice. In the case of civilians forced to abandon their land and belongings, the metaphor acts in the same order as the removal of their clothes.
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RE-ERECCION

In 2006 Colombia's first Presidential re-elections took place. The popular right-wing president Alvaro Uribe initiated constitutional changes that allowed him to stand for a second term, despite human rights groups accusing him of being linked to paramilitary operations.

On May 28th Colombians living in the United Kingdom could cast their votes at their consulate. To coincide with this historic moment, Arias arranged for a group of four friends to stand outside the consulate holding placards with the silhouette of a crouching armed man and the word RE-ERRECCION emerging from his groin. An armband with the initials AUV identified him as the President. AUC are the initials of the country's paramilitary and most Colombians could make an association.
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GOD DOES NOT EXIST
In this video, Arias encounters a young missionary on the streets of Bogota from the Raeliana sect - the protagonists of a controversial and ethical affair relating to a cloned girl. The sect mixes various quasi-scientific, biblical and science fiction writings to form their beliefs. The video draws out some of the contradictions during the discussion.

FOR LOVE AND MONEY
For Love and Money was a radio project for Frieze Art Fair 2006. Artists and cultural workers at the thin end of the financial wedge were invited to react to the notion of an art fair, moving the agenda away from profit and towards a greater sympathy concerning the purpose of art in society. The shows were broadcast from the Resonance FM booth at the Frieze Art Fair 2006. Arias' contribution looked at the art market through the eyes and experiences of people far removed from the glitz of one of the world's most profitable art fairs. Enriching and enabling the commercial art world to exist, the average artist's income in London in 2005 was below the minimum wage. However the 2005 Freeze Art Fair had a turnover of £33 million. Arias recorded the views of various people to create a three dimensional audio work about this.
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INFIDELIDAD

- Why are you writing on this board?
Asked one of the guards at the Pabellón Cuba.
I stopped painting and asked him:
- Writing what?
He pointed at the wooden platform I was standing on and replied:
-That.
-Writing what?
I insisted again, inviting him to pronounce the word I was writing.
After a few failed attempts, he turned to his female colleague, also Cuban, and asked her to read it out to me.
- You read it, I can't. I'm getting out of here.
His female colleague now alone read the word in a low voice as if trying to guess something.
INFIDELIDAD
Then she started again and read the first two letters. After a pause she continued with the third, fourth, fifth and sixth and stopped. She looked at me with a nervous smile, then turned away to search for her colleague, leaving me with the answer to my question: They were afraid to say this word out loud.

THE STORY OF ARIAS

To coincide with his solo exhibition at London Printworks Trust in Brixton, Arias was commissioned to create a multiple artwork, La Historia de Arias. All twelve copies with an 'appendix' containing the artist's own work from 1991 to 1998 were simultaneously exhibited in the following galleries and libraries around Britain:

Whitechapel Art Gallery, Camden Arts Centre, Royal College of Art library, Guildhall University Library, Chelsea School of Art library, Bluecoat Gallery Liverpool, Glasgow School of Art Library, Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow, Edinburgh School of Art Library.

Click on link below to see Arias’ work from 1991 to 1998

LEGO COFFIN
Homage to the children of the war on drugs.

NECESSARY JOURNEYS

UMBILICAL CHORD TRYPTICH

SNAPSHOT VIDEO STILLS
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MORE PHOTOGRAPHY

SESIONES EXTRAORDINARIAS
A series of unexpected actions captured with a snapshot camera. They include Arias passing through an x-ray at Bogota airport; wearing a ‘Lets pretend life is beautiful jacket’ at an arranged wedding in London; wearing the t-shirt ‘If one is disappeared then what? ONE LESS’ at peace marches and demonstrations in Bogota.

LET'S PRETEND LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

HALF-TRUTHS
Half-truths was an action based on an editorial published jointly by 31 Colombian papers and journals on 18th February 2008. It denounced censorship by the State that not only violated their right to tell the truth but also the rights of common citizens to be told the truth. "From the point of view of a Colombian citizen, my concern was how much damage censorship causes and how it contributes to ignorance, blindness and uncertainty. This type of censorship adds to a climate of fear and is used as a form of political control. "For half-truths I became the personification of a country that lives in a fictitious time and space. I acted as a transmitter between the press and the people, in this case from the daily newspapers El Tiempo (The Time) and El Espacio (The Space). Each day for a week I wore that day's front-page news, printed on the back, and walked the streets. The front of the t-shirts read: 'Neither time nor space can erase what you made me dream' â€“ Kylie Mynogue b. 1968. 'Time and space are just an illusion' - Berkeley 1685 - 1753 "For those seven days I walked the streets of Bogotá in order to remind myself and other Colombians about the reality of living in a society where the news is based on half-truths".
Download Editorial (spanish)

LOCOMBIA
A project conceived by Fernando Arias that presented work by four other Colombian artists in London through residencies, exhibitions, performances and a final event. Supported by Arts Council England. In collaboration with Gasworks and Space Studios

CONFORM TO SURVIVE
A video-project to coincide with the Protest to Survive exhibition, Whitechapel Gallery London. Arias interviewed young people from the local Bangladeshi community living near the Whitechapel about their survival tactics. The video was shown at the gallery during the exhibition. He also produced stickers with the words 'Conform to Survive' and plastered them around the neighbourhood during the exhibition.
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SPIRIT LEVEL
On my second day at Big River 2, I was presented with one of the most enigmatic human conditions: M had a manic-depressive crisis. The experience was intense and affected me and everyone else around. M left the workshop for a psychiatric hospital and from that moment I had the strange feeling that I was him. At the time, I was working with an idea of finding balance within myself. I stared at the sea for hours. I saw the line of the horizon swinging like a spirit level, which never reached total equilibrium. The line was the edge between life and death. READ MORE I visited M at the hospital and asked for his permission to use his voice that I had recorded during his crisis. We sat on a bench and talked a little. He was very lucid. We looked at the void. I wanted to go back and swim into the open sea to reach the line of the horizon. I swam for almost an hour. It was only when I got back to the beach and seeing the preoccupation I had caused my colleagues -some thought I had drowned- that I realised the meaning of this action: I wanted to live but at the same time die, I was standing on my own line. With the sea, unwanted energies went and I became myself again. By then, Mario was recovering somewhere far away and it was time for us to evoke him. Eventually, M's voice and the video of the swinging line became one piece: Spirit Level. I presented it as a video/sound installation during the Open Day of the workshops. Finally, I decided that 'Spirit Level' should be left alone and I had to think of a new idea, which was to become art when installed at CCA. A piece of Formica resembling wood found somewhere in the forest of Grand Riviera where I wrote the words 'CONTENTPORARY ART' did it. I thank life for letting M exist next to me during that time and Natalia for her understanding."
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online magazine
Special Edition published by El Andariego Productions.

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© COPYRIGHT BY DACS
The Design and Artists Copyright Society protects Fernando Arias' art work. To learn more click on the link below

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DACS