Carl Ariza, Curacao
Lack I, 2014.
About:
Monkey Suit II.
Up.
Timid Like a Cirious Deer.
Lack IV, 2014.
Curaçao visual artist Carl Ariza was born in 1973 in Curaçao where he was raised. From 1994 to 1998 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht, the Netherlands, and in 2007 he returned to Curaçao where he soon became active in the local art scene. His work often refers to pop and mass culture. With a conceptual approach, his paintings form a critical view of society. Ariza interacts with the viewer by creating intense personal moments by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own “cannibal” and “civilized” selves. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, he creates an unprecedented situation with daily, recognizable elements, in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his own perception and has to reconsider his biased position. His works often respond to the surrounding environment and uses everyday experiences from the artist as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context.