HOMENAGE

In the mid 70’s, the Colombian artist Antonio Caro made the artwork Colombia Coca-
Cola, an enamel-over-metal painting in which he used the font traditionally assigned to
the brand of a famous non-alcoholic beverage to write the name of a Latin-American
republic.

In relation to this work there is a broad consensus between critique and public with
respect to its impact on contemporary art in Colombia. In fact, the influence of this work
has been so strong, that during decades there has been a repetition of encounters between
works from young artists and the iconographic repertoir of this particular work.

Manuel Barón, La Guerra de las Cocas, 2010.

Vynil text on wall

After almost 35 years since its appearance, Colombia Coca-Cola has turned out to be one
of the most used works by artists and graphic designers when talking about politics of
drug control, problems of consumption or commercial penetration of multinational
companies. However, its author has frowned upon the fact that his work inspires or serves
as a base for other images. Generally, his reaction is that of devaluing, minimizing, or
annulling the encounters that some visual producers have established with his work,
accusing them of plagiarism, copy or public offense.

Based on what I have said, I present to Unsolicited Proposals the project “Homenage”, a
group exhibition that puts together unseen works as well as works that have already been
exposed in previous exhibitions made by several Colombian artists.

This curatorial project aims at examining the critical fortune of the work Colombia Coca-
Cola in the Colombian artistic field, and at the same time, seeks to identify the particular
tension that has developed between its author and a group of followers. The reunion of
works characterized by citation, appropriation, or reference to the work, will intend to
illustrate the contradiction between the rhetoric of one artist who defends the
appropriation of images as a creative strategy and an attitude that disapproves this
procedure when the images claimed belong to him.
The name “Homenage” tries to propose a play of words between the Spanish “homenaje”
(homage) and “menaje” (tribute, pedagogical material of a school) and the French word
“ménage” (arrangement). In this sense, it is considered that building an exhibition of
objects will work as a memory of a good work of art, the inventory of several types of
relations between artists and the case study of a series of strategies of appropriation and
its challenge.

Some of the works that will be exhibited are the following:

Camilo Turbay,
Colombia-Snow/Nieves Perpetuas, 2005
Digital print on canvas

Wilman Zabala
Presidente, 2010
Acrylic on wood
Julián Santana
Sigue intentando-Juego 1, 2007
Digital Video