Welcome to a dark world of images. There are men who cling to an open Waggontür, in the faces of hope and fear. Two copulating frogs, one wearing a U.S. Army Uniform, on the Sleeve the Logo of the Bayer group, and the other has a much too big of a Waffen-SS cap on the head. A Jaguar is stuck in a shirt and tie, Tie, and jacket skulls emblazoned. A polar bear in Mexico as the advertising mascot for Coca-Cola – fill a dark suit, his tie the case to detect the end of the bombs.
the motives of The Black-and-White paintings of Roberto Arámbula are the stuff of nightmares. The fate of the people from Guatemala or El Salvador who are fleeing drug gangs in the direction of the North, protection money, extortion, rape and kidnapping, has the from the Guadalajara, Mexico born artist for many years. Even in its current adopted home city of Hamburg.
The exhibition “La Bestia” is a view into a dynamic, dangerous world. The people are fleeing, mostly on foot. Because if you want to buy a bus ticket, you will be taken often, and deported. So they migrate from Central America through the drug war wore down in Mexico and if you are going to Places where the long freight trains, their speed must reduce, jump they risk their lives in open containers or freight wagons, or on open-load areas. La Bestia you call the train the beast. La Bestia stands for the devil to sell his soul in order to fulfill a desire. A better life, for example, in the United States.
hope for a better life
along the way, the threat of violence is unimaginable. People can fall from the train, or to invalids are going to die. Prostitution, kidnapping, torture and murder in front of the camera, or evisceration by organ hunters forced threaten. This brutal experience, which is also reminiscent of the fate of the people going across the Mediterranean sea towards Europe, the exhibition vividly tangible. Arámbula is not showing the violence directly. But he shows a lot more than the surface of human suffering. He refers in his symbol-Laden images on the structural causes of exploitation by multi-national corporations, super power politics and unilateral trade rules. The System is also a beast, the forces of people to desperate wandering.
hope donates the statue of liberty on the horizon, or cross, of the Faith. If the Deal with La Bestia, the devil, is not risen, perhaps the Belief in God on the perilous journey to the promised Land.
Fullscreen
the owner of The bakery is fled. His family, he had to go back
©Roberto Arámbula/ photo: Tim Oehler Fullscreen
with refugees Packed the Van drives through the night
©Roberto Arámbula/ photo: Tim Oehler Fullscreen
hope for a good end of the trip gives the Faith
©Roberto Arámbula/ photo: Tim Oehler
The exhibition “La Bestia” by Roberto Arámbula with photography, painting and Video runs of 25. – 28.4. 2019 in the gallery Barlach Halle K, Klosterwall 13, in the vicinity of Hamburg’s main train station. The admission is free. The Vernissage with concert and Party starts at 25.4. at 19:00.
