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Rites of Purification and Trascendence, 1994. Installation, 5th Havana Biennial
Toys and oil traces. 400 x 200 cm
A series of objects, which have been soaked with oil are hanging from a wall, leaving on it a black and sticky dripping track. Through this kind of baptism they were subjected to a process of auratization, which forced them out of their daily world, out of a profane and undervalued existence, turning them into objects of an almost sacred veneration (objects of art). The oil, the baptizing fluid, is a substance of greatest economic and political value. As in the process of gilding the black viscosity adheres to the skin of the object. The result may mean its ennoblement, but it implies its inexorable condemnation. The iniciated turns to be the victim, the baptism becomes a sacrifice.

On each thing there is nevertheless a tiny part which remained untouched by the oil. The heel of Achilles, which meant his death is here a glimpse of hope. Spared from the polluting bath, excluded from the iniciating ceremony it is a tiny portion of original substance, of natural innocence: a possible future.

Pat Binder. Catalogue to the exhibition »Havanna/São Paulo - Junge Kunst aus Lateinamerika«,
House of World Cultures, Berlin 1995, S. 145/146
©  Pat Binder