The Volta Show NY: Luis González Palma

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Born 1957 in Guatemala

The physiognomy of this anonymous countenance, its facial gesture and the political and social construction of its gaze (and of our gaze), are elements that interest me to explore the cultural construction of the masculine countenance and the way we face it. How do we see it? How does it see us? Who distorts whom by gazing? These are essential questions in the construction of this project. Through these questions I try to understand how the forms of representation, culture and the family affect the way in which we see and the way in which we feel seen, an experience that becomes amplified when we feel invigilated or protected.

In this project there is a desire to exchange images that are determined by historical hierarchies and cultural structures. These portraits evince a visual paradox, a social and historical gap. They constitute a cultural hybrid in which I attempt to exchange assigned and assumed roles. I am interested in showing “the protector” (the one that risks life) as “the protected” (the one that gets has life protected) revealing the former (the bodyguard), bringing him to light from an anonymous invisibility, in order to assign him a value in relation to power and hierarchy, thus disclosing a paradox that is difficult to disentangle: the countenance of fear is also the countenance of power, and vice versa.