Idolo con Muñeca

Nadín Ospina

1960

2000

Idol with Doll

limestone

height: 42cm
width: 24cm
depth: 19cm

Sculpture

Donated by Nadín Ospina 2000

15-2000

Idolo con Muñeca shows the development of ideas generated by a series of ceramics that Ospina started working on in the 1980s. At that time the artist was particularly concerned with the idea of the 'American Dream' and its effect on Latin American culture. Since then his work has revolved around the idea of authenticity. Idolo con Muñeca is a stone figure that imitates the sculpture of the pre-Columbian culture of San Agustín in Colombia. The direct descendants of the Indians who made original San Agustín figures carved this new idol, and used the same techniques as their ancestors. But it is, evidently, a fake; Mickey Mouse has replaced the pre-Columbian deity that an authentic figure would represent, and he is holding (almost strangling) a pre-Columbian figurine. Among the neo-colonial dynamics that affect Colombian and Latin American culture today this hybrid figure has many implications. According to the artist, new colonisers have arrived in a very innocent way, as mass media characters and cartoons, invading homes without their occupiers noticing. Although Ospina wants to point out that the arrival of such characters is not as innocent as it may seem, the artist does not aspire to an untainted culture. For him, to look for identity in the pre-Columbian is as absurd as looking for it in symbols from a foreign culture.

Maria Clara Bernal