I Am Not Here, But I Am

In November, 2009, I was in Guatemala for sessions of critical dialog with Central American artists. One of these artists was Ángel Poyón, who provided me with a new experience. Poyón is a Native American artist, deeply connected to his community in the Guatemalan town of San Juan Comalapa. In turn, Comalapa is notorious for having developed a pseudo-autochthonous style of art, in the way of Haiti¿s tourism-oriented painting; this is to say, a kind of art that responds to the image of the autochthonous that tourists already bring with them. Such a commercial veneer generates employment for local artists but contributes nothing to the communitarian culture they belong to. I was particularly interested in Poyón because he is one of the few artists bold enough to attempt to break away from this scheme. Fully aware of the problem, he attempts to update his people¿s artistic language in order to better represent it. He opens himself up to the hegemonic repertoire, but puts them to the service of solving the problems confronted by his people in a process of dilution of identity as they struggle to assimilate. All across the continent, under the Nineteenth-Century notion of ¿national integration¿ and the drive to expand and unify the market, local identities are constantly eroded. In particular with his ¿tombstones,¿ Poyón is able to address two publics that are normally in conflict, and to contribute to their greater awareness. This is a task that not many artists assume, and in my conversations with him his position was very clear and forthcoming in that regard. It seemed to me an important position and an undertaking that needed to be shared, and that is what made me ask Poyón to write the text that follows, exclusively for ArtNexus. Luis Camnitzer I Am Not Here, But I Am Ángel Poyón I started to paint alongside my brother. In 1992, at a festival in my town, on the day of San Juan Bautista in honor of the Patron Saint of Comalapa ¿ that is why my town is called San Juan Comalapa¿ the neighbor who painted didn¿t have the time and we painted for half a day, my brother and I. He made a painting of a procession and I painted the Comalapa town fair. The town is 82 kilometers from Guatemala City and is a town with many painters, followers of Andrés Curruchich¿s popular painting. He was the first to paint scenes of Comalapa, and it made Comalapa to be named the Florence of America by the Italian doctors who came to offer humanitarian help after the 1976 earthquake. There was such a boom that later, as part of the Arte Paiz biennial, a special category was created for indigenous artists to participate from communities across Guatemala. We began painting in our free time, still in high school. In 1994 we were part of the Quetzal group, a group of painters formed to promote the work of its members and of other Comalapa painters, who at that time shared experiences with artists from Norway, and we had graphic arts workshops. In 1997 we exhibited at the Alliance Française in Guatemala City, and I found out that three of my colleagues had painted the same street scenes in Antigua, Guatemala, and it made me wonder whether the four painters thought and saw the world in the same way. After rethinking what it is that we are really trying to say in art, with Hugo Pichiyá we decided to change the topics of our work. Hugo paints in one way and I paint in another way, and we questioned each other constantly. At that time I began reflecting about the consequences of the armed conflict in my community. I remember that several older painters told me that the subject was too delicate and that I should be careful with it, even now. I made several canvases showing what I felt and what I saw happening in those years; these were figurative paintings with solitary characters and emptiness in the canvas. In 2002 we were approached by the Fundación Colloquia para el Arte Contemporáneo, headed by Luis González Palma, and I remember that by th...