Eric del Castillo was born in Mexico City in 1962. After studying film and painting began a career as an art director and visual artist. He received fellowship from the National Fund for Arts and Culture (FONCA), Mexico, and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), USA, and was resident artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito Ca. Up till now he has exhibit in numerous group and solo shows in Mexico City, Split, Zagreb, Omiš, San Antonio, Madrid, Vienna, Berlin… In 2018, he donated a documentary collection: El Sindicato del Terror/Eric del Castillo Found. Performance archive of the 80´s and 90´s in
Mexico about performance groups El Sindicato del Terror, LosEscombros de la Ruptura and La Sociedad Mexicana Protectora del Espectador de Performance and the Mexican performance scene in general to Arkheia Documentation Center. MUAC, University Museum of Contemporary Art, UNAM. Works and lives in Split.
THE VOICE OF SILENCE.
Eric del Castillo is work The Voice of Silence tackles the problematics of violence as an ever-present complex social phenomenon. Our intention here is not to encroach on other areas of expertise, but to open a conversation about violence that is registered and then mostly ignored, thereby contributing to its unconscious acceptance and normalisation. In fact, this is an artistic platform where people are invited to share their experiences, in an attempt to break the overwhelming silence and all too casual treatment of expressions of aggression and the unsanctioned and unauthorised invasion of other people is personal space. Using his own contacts and available internet sources, Eric has collected moving stories that bear witness to the many faces of violence. We thus encounter testimonies of people suffering from anxiety disorders caused by some form of experienced violence, statistics published by non-governmental and civil society organisations, but also newspaper reports about violence with a fatal outcome, largely femicide. The artist has transformed all this material into video stories that unfold on screens set-up in the premises of the faculty building. Furthermore, the artist connects these stories by means of a QR code with the representations of sign language applied to the glass walls of various faculty offices, interlinking them with black tape, suggesting a kind of symbolic network of causes and effects. Specifically, hand movements signal to us gender-based violence, primarily violence against women and persons of lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer identity. We will also find among the signals a simple hand gesture created to alert others of the existence of violence – it involves a person holding their palm up, before tucking their thumb inward, and folding their remaining fingers on top to make a fist – which was used during the pandemic when confinement to the family home became an imperative. But there is a fairly large number of dysfunctional families and homes that have become the scene of aggressive outbursts and direct threats to life, so unfortunately this signal was often sent from a window. Curbing violence is actually the leitmotif of the entire exhibition, which is clearly presented at the faculty entrance, with the application of a stopped fist sign. It calls for reflection of our daily life and abusive behaviours, but also invites us to question the dysfunctional protection system for victims of violence and the proper and timely implementation of all available legal frameworks.
Dalibor Prančević
