Salam tristesse

de Francis Alÿs

Catalogue of the exhibition curated by Taiyana Pimentel, director of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MARCO) in Monterrey, Mexico compriosing a sample of the work that Francis Alÿs (Belgium, 1959, lives and works in Mexico City) developed between the years 2016 and 2020 as a artist in the war in Irak. In this exhibition, Alÿs explores the social collapse, meaninglessness and drama caused by war, while, with great lucidity about his own work, questioning the role and prerogatives of the artist documenting this war confrontation. Indeed, in Alÿs' work the question of what to do in the face of injustice and the pain of others constantly looms. In 2018, two years after the signing of the Peace Agreement in Colombia, sculptor Doris Salcedo and photographer Juan Fernando Castro recorded the process that turned the FARC-EP's 8994 weapons into the metal sheets that make up the new art and memory space called "Fragmentos". This work, commissioned by the Government to commemorate this national pact, stands as a place where contemporary artists will engage in difficult and provocative dialogues with the memories of the conflict.Fragmentos is part of the itinerant exhibition program of the Museo Nacional de Colombia, with which it seeks to present to the public of several cities of the country and abroad some of the works that the Museum houses, to make known part of our cultural heritage. Catalogue of the exhibition curated by Taiyana Pimentel, director of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MARCO) in Monterrey, Mexico compriosing a sample of the work that Francis Alÿs (Belgium, 1959, lives and works in Mexico City) developed between the years 2016 and 2020 as a artist in the war in Irak. In this exhibition, Alÿs explores the social collapse, meaninglessness and drama caused by war, while, with great lucidity about his own work, questioning the role and prerogatives of the artist documenting this war confrontation. Indeed, in Alÿs' work the question of what to do in the face of injustice and the pain of others constantly looms. In 2018, two years after the signing of the Peace Agreement in Colombia, sculptor Doris Salcedo and photographer Juan Fernando Castro recorded the process that turned the FARC-EP's 8994 weapons into the metal sheets that make up the new art and memory space called "Fragmentos". This work, commissioned by the Government to commemorate this national pact, stands as a place where contemporary artists will engage in difficult and provocative dialogues with the memories of the conflict.Fragmentos is part of the itinerant exhibition program of the Museo Nacional de Colombia, with which it seeks to present to the public of several cities of the country and abroad some of the works that the Museum houses, to make known part of our cultural heritage.