Mario Opazo

The jury of the Fifth Luis Caballero Prize, conformed by Juan Fernando Herrán, José Ignacio Roca, and Víctor Laignelet, chose Mario Opazo as this year¿s winner for his work entitled Expulsión del Paraiso (Expulsion from Paradise). The artist will receive an award of 50,000,000.00 Colombian pesos. Mario Opazo became the third artist to exhibit at the Santa Fe Gallery during 2009. His work Expulsion del Paraíso is connected to a series of personal and cultural memory fragments that contain audio, visual, sculptural, and performatic elements. Through them, he reflects on the idea of a mobile, fluctuating, and ephemeral territory that is influenced by the demands brought about by the displacement that the times and its conflicts impose on modern human beings. The jury chose Opazo because his work "proposes a non-linear itinerary with sections that evoke poetic images originating in the artist's personal memories of exile and uprooting and that reflect other similar culturally shared experiences. Likewise, each section constructs various levels of meaning in relation to the whole. By the end of the journey, a surprising presence is revealed that reconfigures the experience and content of the work." The award ceremony was attended by the City Mayor of Bogotá, the Minister of Culture, the director of the Gilberto Alzate-Avedaño Foundation, and personalities from Bogotá¿s art world. Mario Opazo is a Chilean artist who lives in Bogotá. He studied at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University of Fine Arts. His artistic work reflects upon the image in motion, and on art as it relates to contemporary problems across various artistic practices, such as installation, performance, video art, and film. He currently teaches at the National University.