Juxtapoz Journal – Diego Moreno: In My Thoughts There may be By no means Silence

In Diego Moreno’s work there’s a tense calm. A form of mutism suffering from murmurs. Every part begins at residence: a home scene, a birthday, a spiritual ceremony. The household area during which many people have grown up. Nonetheless, one thing else is proven in his images, one thing that continues to be hidden in our household albums.

In his photos, in precept on a regular basis, the monsters unfold their mise-en-scène. On a regular basis occasions coexist with one other threshold of actuality: a bit of lady reads a e-book subsequent to a bearded being with an intriguing smile; a bit of lady with the face of an outdated lady poses in her first communion costume; a personality with a watch out of its socket appears melancholically at her birthday cake. Acquainted our bodies mingle with different our bodies, alien and extreme our bodies, our bodies that escape the norm.

These overflowing beings are the panzudos mercedarios, protagonists of a practice that has been celebrated for almost a century within the neighborhood of La Merced, in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas. Diego finds these characters a way to provide voice and presence to a unique corporeality, whereas recalling the reminiscences of a childhood during which love, isolation, and fascination for the anomalous configured a selected imaginative and prescient of the world.

Within the widespread creativeness, the panzudos, with their extreme nature, their strident costumes and their unknown powers, materialize guilt and invisible sins. They’re the scapegoats that carry of their deformity the mark of the evil of a whole genealogical line. In distinction, in Diego’s work these characters are acquainted presences, topics of affection and need. They’re the physique with its fluids, pains and abjection, but additionally with its affections and potencies

Their presence rarefies the area as a result of it exhibits what one needs to cover. The house is then reworked right into a fairytale state of affairs. A story that, to an inattentive eye, might seem to be a horror story, or a recreation of carnival costumes. Nonetheless, whoever takes the time to look by means of the fearful masks of the monster will discover a fantastic fragility. He’ll hear the faint however fixed murmur of one other that doesn’t match into classifications and syntax, that overflows modes of social and bodily inscription. Diego’s monsters play, they don’t disguise nor are they silent, they present themselves in all their monstrosity. They communicate with a number of voices claiming their distinction. Thus, with their ungrammatical language, they refuse to be condemned to silence.

For extra info, go to Blue Sky Gallery.