Arturo Araujo
You keep the door slightly open. Nevermore than an invitation.
Mantén la Puerta semi-abierta. Nunca más que una invitación.
17” x 42”
Impresión digital, madera hueca, tinta.
Archival digital print, woodblock, ink drawing.
2019
Mordido Desde Adentro
Bitten from Within
17” x 42”
Impresión digital, madera hueca, tinta.
Archival digital print, woodblock, ink drawing.
2019
…the Word is in the disguise of something more deep, deft, muted…
17” x 42”
Impresión digital, madera hueca, estampado, tinta.
Archival digital print, woodblock, stamping, ink drawing.
2019
…En la Tierra, Como en el Cielo
…On Earth as it is in Heaven…
17” x 42”
Impresión digital, madera hueca, tinta.
Archival digital print, woodblock, ink drawing.
2019
Canción Para Enamorados en Medio de un Campo de Batalla.
Song for lovers in the middle of a war Camp-Fire.
17” x 42”
Impresión digital, madera hueca, tinta.
Archival digital print, woodblock, ink drawing.
2019
Singing to the Sun as Cicadas…as Survivor That Return From War…
17” x 42”
Impresión digital, madera hueca, tinta.
Archival digital print, woodblock, ink drawing.
2019
Memory and Forgetting
My current work reflects on memory and forgetting; in this duality, I found two different directions: two different dynamics that generated two different sets of images that correspond to remembering and forgetting. Later on, I combine the two sets of images in my artistic process, negotiating the current artwork intuitively.
I do not intend to finalize reflection about conflict and reconciliation in Colombia; neither I want to capture the main events of the process of truce and reconciliation through images. This show is an honest unsettled emotional response of an artist that cares about his country's destiny. It is an exercise of memory that may serve as well as an exercise for forgetting. Because of these two dynamics, we will be able to move forward in the process of rebuilding our lives and our nation.
Some of the images are more of a visual interpretation of the Christian experience of reconciliation; some others have a more of an abstract feeling; others have more of a personal touch about my own existential experience of reconciliation within the limit of life -that ultimate test that hunts us ones in a while in different periods of our lives -. These work titles are lines of poetry I borrow from the poets Sujit Prasad, María Elena Walsh, and Adelia Prado. I chose those lines because I feel identified with those poets' lyric images whose lines open my work on a singing universe of rhythms and emotions.
Arturo Araujo, MFA, Joined Seattle University as an associate professor of Visual Arts. Originally from Colombia, Araujo joined the Jesuits in 1986, earned his bachelor's degree in Philosophy and a master's in divinity from Javeriana University in Bogotá. He came to Seattle University to study Visual Arts, and he receives a BA from SU before going on a study at Cornish College of the Arts and then to the University of New Mexico. He returned to Seattle most recently from teaching at the University of San Francisco. Inspired by nature and by the Work of Rembrandt, Käthe Kollwitz, and Thavor Ko-udomvit, Araujo creates work that expresses a contemporary spirituality combining etching and lithography silkscreen, relief, and digital media. His work has been known in Colombia, the USA, Mexico, and Canada. Araujo's work is a visual meditation that seeks reconciliation and identity.
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