Visual Artist

Ofrenda y vasallaje II

Ofrenda y vasallaje II.
Installation view 

Table of commercial exchanges between Spain and its American colonies, years 1748 to 1753, digital print, enlarged copy of the original document.
144 x 200 cm 

This installation was conceived from an authentic document, from the 18th century inventory that recorded the diverse but unequal imperial trade between Spain and its colonies.

It is an offering that is, at the same time, irony and symbolic reparation: withered potatoes that, however, germinate on that document and that break the gold leaf and the silver leaf that cover them.

Those gold and silver nuggets, converted into an object of desire and the basis of the wealth of the kingdom of Spain, were themselves, over time, the reason for its deterioration.

And the irony consists in realizing that being a vassal is not a lack of resources but a psychosocial system of handicaps: structures of domination whose essential sustenance is the complicity of the victim, his vassalage.

Finally, the potato, developed and trained in our territory since ancient times, is the one that best sums up its value by becoming the gold product of world markets.

Therefore, this offering is also an offering of reparation.

Carmen Reategui

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