"Numina" exhibition at the Santa Clara Museum that is presented in Bogotá between June 16 and July 24, 2022.

This exhibition is financed by the Research and Creation Center of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the Universidad de los Andes.

Curatorial text.

"Numina by Juan Alonso"

Juan Alonso combines one of the determining elements in contemporary photography. The one who links his conceptual interests with a photography of a performative nature. What does this mean? In the Numina series, Alonso is interested in addressing Latin American identity in his production, expressed in the mix between cultural syncretism, the religious sphere and his own identity. His photographs resort to images of saints, historical or popular characters in which he blends the "surreal" with the profane at the same time. Making use of photosculpture, a technique resulting from multiple captures made of a subject using digital cameras that are the basis for the creation of three-dimensional pieces, Alonso makes use of his own body to re-create these characters, sculpted thanks to the use of a 3D printer. In terms of space, these pieces allude to other forms of subjection, those that refer us to the small copies in ceramic, resin or plaster arranged in the windows of religious stores, or in popular markets, places where they are exhibited to the general public and offered to new forms of worship. And this is precisely the intention that the artist proposes by linking his works this time to a once sacred space, that of the Santa Clara Church Museum, a space in which the sacred and the profane are mixed. The now desecrated space contributes to emphasizing the syncretic nature of the works, their origin and provenance, as well as highlighting their fictional character. In this way, “My little book of prayers” consigns the prayers and novenas to the saints, in which the attributes or petitions are mixed with Hail Marys and other elements of Catholic prayers. The Cacique Guaicaipuro, or the Ekeko, a sacred being of the Andean region, is a sign and example of the syncretism of the colonial period in which the beliefs and traditions of the Catholic religion merge with the indigenous and pagan religions. The images of the heroes, of the saints, declared as such from popular culture and here personified by the artist, are mixed constituting an idealized image of himself, an identity that in terms of our contemporaneity is changing, dynamic, malleable. An identity that no longer responds to a univocal sense of what a nation was considered to be, but rather responds to the diverse character and cultural richness of a people.

Carlos A. García Galvis, PhD.