Renske de Jong (Curator)
CBK ZUIDOOST
In Álvaro Aroca Córdova installation Two Powers One Bod; he examines his current double social position: colonized (as a native Chilean) and colonizer (as a national of Spain).
Expanding on power relations, Aroca asks: Can the colonized feel like the colonizer or viceversa? In his exploration, he searches in emblematic paintings of historical facts of Colonization, representations of both positions (winner versus vanquished, superior versus inferior) to understand and identify how these roles are configured.
Positions, postures, ways of confronting one another, which create spaces between them to identify one another and which configure the spaces of power. These forms represent the conflict that exists in this interspace, which the artist identifies and reconstructs through embroidery, as if it were a language.
Now, Colonization as an ideological process shows us one side of the coin where the ways of feeling and living reality are constructed. Ultimately, these roles or being on one side or the other is a construction that is closely linked to racialization, and, in the artist’s case, through his skin.
In the videos, the artist shows his mental and introspective experience in his transformation from colonized to colonizer, shedding his layers (skins) to identify himself as a being. Each screen represents a phase of the four feelings that determine his path: seeking, awakening, denial and despair.
The spaces of power of the colonized and the colonizer are discussed in this installation by means of video and embroidered fabric. It is a spatial and mental reconstruction of who the artist is, wants to be and can be.