Claudio Rojas
Detail of Los ladrones de nombres. Los Cerdos (mural), 2012. Oil on canvas, polyptych of 12 pieces, 210 × 400 cm

03/Los Cerdos

13 works | oil on canvas | 2008–2012

Twelve oil paintings that work as independent pieces and, brought together, form a 400 × 210 cm mural. The series was born in 2008, in Edmund Valladares's studio, from a short story written by the artist, “El ladrón de nombres” (The Name Thief), about the last Argentine dictatorship.

The story became a storyboard of twelve drawings; the drawings became twelve collages; and the collages became the painting. The palette, limited to five “negative” colours, was obtained by inverting the colours of the artist's own earlier works: pink, lavender, green, cream and black, colours that describe nothing and force the viewer to look twice at a tangle of bodies devouring one another.

Works

Los ladrones de nombres. Los Cerdos (mural), 2012. Oil on canvas, polyptych of 12 pieces, 210 × 400 cm
Los ladrones de nombres. Los Cerdos (mural)2012 · Oil on canvas, polyptych of 12 pieces · 210 × 400 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición I, 2012. Oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición I2012 · Oil on canvas · 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición II, 2012. Oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición II2012 · Oil on canvas · 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición III, 2012. Oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición III2012 · Oil on canvas · 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición IV, 2012. Oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición IV2012 · Oil on canvas · 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición V, 2012. Oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición V2012 · Oil on canvas · 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición VI, 2012. Oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición VI2012 · Oil on canvas · 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición VII, 2012. Oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición VII2012 · Oil on canvas · 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición VIII, 2012. Oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición VIII2012 · Oil on canvas · 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición IX, 2012. Oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición IX2012 · Oil on canvas · 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición X, 2012. Oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición X2012 · Oil on canvas · 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición XI, 2012. Oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición XI2012 · Oil on canvas · 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición XII, 2012. Oil on canvas, 70 × 100 cm
Los Cerdos. Composición XII2012 · Oil on canvas · 70 × 100 cm

Artist's text

The Name Thief (short story, 18-03-2008)

In the land of the broken electoral promise, where fattened hides swallow “Elcompañero”, where thoughts were sucked out through the barrel of a rifle, where little pink castles are built to house those “oddballs”.

Here, in the land of contradictions. Here, in the Argenshopping of the south, where land is sold for colourful garments and a forest is thrown in for free, the selfish imagination of the head-stompers has engendered a being of a thousand faces, a thousand forms and a thousand speeches, bent on restoring order with no mercy for grandmothers, mothers, children or anyone at all.

Painted face or not, but always with violence, it has struck with an iron fist at the heart of our fears, ridding itself of thoughts and thinkers, forcing the few heads that could to look for a new burrow away from home.

Like a faithful employee, it marks numbers up and puts them out of reach. Inflating basic needs, it keeps pushing us further against the margins of a society that, so as not to see, buries its head deep up its own arse.

It forces us to chew what has already been chewed, to dress in old news, to be the back of a corrugated stage set.

Crawling like a leper, in no hurry, the Name Thief leaves its slime of “don't get involved” soaked into the depths of our fear. That is how it takes away our hopes, our dreams, our ideas and our ideals. That is how it takes away what makes us people… it takes away our identity.