IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 136

This interconnectivity of artistic codes in
works with directly or indirectly
manifested, religious perspective also
evoke a relationship with the fate of
illegal immigration via de Florida
Straits, an activity in which the saints of
the African (Yemaya and Oshun) or
Catholic (Virgin of Regla or the Virgin
of Charity) religious systems were
always involved. They had a great deal
to do with protection from the water or
were guardians of the rickety crafts used
to escape, as an alternative or hope for a
different life, and much yearned
wellbeing, elsewhere. The treatment
afforded this particular topic by most
artists most often resulted due to their
desire, as practitioners of these Afroinspired, religious traditions, or their
interest in using their visual semiotics to
reconstruct new poetics and artistic

discourses that contained formal
elements and content pertaining to these
systems. They incorporated this mode of
personal representation taking advantage
of the rich source of knowledge, cultural
practices, and values, which are
themselves have an expressive value in
their imaginations through fabless,
myths, and legends.
In Altar de San Joseph Beuys or
Plásticos de todas las sectas uníos, by
Lázaro Saavedra, the installation’s broad
scene, chock full of ex-votive offerings,
allows the artists to offer petitions and
gratitude that always allude to the
protective or miraculous shelter of art
and creators’ destinies. This spread of
offerings offers an evaluation useful for
assessing the contributions of this new
artistic exploration, in their own
measure.

Lázaro Saavedra, Plásticos de todas las sectas uníos, installation (1989)

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