Los Manglares stand along the edges where urban sprawl meets the River Guayas in the industrial city of Guayaquil, Ecuador. An exposed root system, Los Manglares stand with legs in and above polluted waters.
Through the waterways that frame Guayaquil’s concrete hills, Los Manglares shape a network that holds together multiple creatures, plants and materials that are distinct yet co-existing, toxic and lifegiving. As a filter of this diversity, Los Manglares collect stories of contrary elements that both resist and depend on each other.
Ciudad Manglar holds together stories of commonplace encounters that shape public life in Guayaquil. The collection magnifies the multiple, often contradictory, characters of the city – their dress, customs, attitudes, narratives and how their subjective qualities bump up against each other and perform in ironic ways. A series of visual scenarios, the collection inherits and recharacterizes the tensioned socio-political undercurrents of Guayaquil by paying attention to the often overlooked minor details of this place. With bright color and humor, the paintings enliven the contrasting realities that shape Guayaquil through aesthetic situations that are at once playful, perverse and particular.
Process and Installation
FEDERICO AIRAUDO 