DIOSES DE BARRIO - ALFONZO ZARATE
DIOSES DE BARRIO | ALFONZO ZARATE
4/24 - 6/24, 2021
The Dab Art Co. is please to present DIOSES DE BARRIO, a solo exhibition of works by Alfonzo Zarate. Zarate is also a featured artist in the ImPosible group exhibition. Curated by Micheal Swank, ImPosible is currently on display at our Mexico City location Proyectos Galería (PRPG.MX).
Dioses de Barrio represents the essence of an artist focussed on creating from their environment and investing in their community. The pandemic has been particularly difficult for the poor populations of the world and for Alfonso Zarate’s community Tepito in Mexico City, Mexico. ‘The inhabitants of Mexico City live their daily lives with uncertainty, facing socioeconomic instability that tends to produce high levels of anguish and distress. These conditions contribute to the reproduction of marginal life, in which one of the cultural elements of survival in the face of precariousness tends to be religious beliefs, which offer symbolic elements that provide them with strategies to resist in the face of adversity.’ This survival strategy becomes more evident in the most disadvantaged, segregated, and discriminated places, places known as barrios bravos. Zarate uses the materials readily available to him in the barrio using discarded drug paraphernalia and collaborating with his neighbors to turn their survival into beautiful art.
At present, the inhabitants of Mexico City live their daily lives with uncertainty, facing socioeconomic instability that tends to produce high levels of anguish and distress. These conditions contribute to the reproduction of marginal life, in which one of the cultural elements of survival in the face of precariousness tends to be religious beliefs, which offer symbolic elements that provide them with strategies to resist in the face of adversity.
Religion as a survival strategy becomes more evident in the most disadvantaged, segregated and discriminated places, places known as barrios bravos, which are of great importance and interest for anthropologists and sociologists -and in general for all those who study man, society and culture- because of what is produced socially and culturally in them. Neighborhoods such as Tepito or those of Colonia Guerrero have survived for many years to exclusion due to social stratification and vulnerability.
Alfonso Zarate is living and working in the barrio of Tepito in el Centro de la Ciudad de Mexico. He produced some of the work included in the show as part of the residency Art Lab Project with a concurrent group exhibition presented featured in the Zona Maco International Art Fair.
Social life cannot be conceived without a religious dimension, since through it it is possible to analyze the moral status that governs a society, as well as the worldview that is kept around it, which provides a unique identity to the inhabitants that reside in it.
- G. Tunal
View this exhibition and works available for purchase on ARTSY.
