“Mi sto rovinando per voi” - in English: “I ruin myself for you” - is an ongoing series of ceramic sculptures and videos that began in the summer of 2023. Fragments of memories of ancient and modern ruins from various places the artist has visited are appropriated through playful reconstruction. Colorful miniature ceramic building blocks and slip (liquid clay) used as mortar form the basic elements of these miniature construction sites, where the connection between architecture, memory, and identity is explored. In the form of sculptures, ruins that tell of the fall of great civilizations and others that speak of the corruption of the recent past- until now in Italy and Colombia- are integrated into a landscape in which the object becomes the symbol of a personal anecdote. The idea of the monument and the places designated as worthy of that label are put into question by giving equal value to ruins of modernity that are normally perceived as abject or at least irrelevant. Drug-financed unfinished skyscrapers, abandoned half-built bridges, and gems of the cradle of humanity coexist in an equalizing pastel-colored model world.
In the videos, the documentation of the construction process of a miniature wall offers access to the joy of building experienced by the artist, a humorous exploration of childhood nostalgia. As his hand carefully places stone upon stone, the artist hums and sings the repetitive verse “mi sto rovinando per voi”, adding exaggerated sound effects with his mouth. The works in this series result from a back-and-forth between joyful remembrance and melancholy of oblivion.
Gallery of video, animation and video-performance work, 2011-2022
[Translation from the Press Kit in the German]
In collaboration with the Antiquities Collection at the Kunsthalle in Kiel, students from the Free Art and Ceramics department of the Muthesius Art School in Kiel are showcasing their artistic works. The artists in this exhibition are all participants of a research trip to Rome, which has inspired them in unique ways. The abundance of history, buildings, and artworks in this ancient city has fascinated and influenced each of them in their own way. In their individual works, they engage with the impressions and experiences of this trip and bring their personal perspectives into their artistic creations. The works show a strong connection to the aesthetics and materiality of Rome. Some artists reflect on their own experiences and encounters in the city, while others engage with historical places and structures, questioning and reinterpreting them. Themes such as space, transience, eternity, instability, and impermanence can be found in the different works.
[Santiago Insignares’s Project Statement]
My interest in the ruins of old civilizations goes back to my teenage years in Colombia when I attended an Italian school and learned about the classical aesthetic cannon while being too far away from Italy to experience Greek or Roman architecture firsthand. This feeling of longing for the inaccessible eventually pushed me to move to Rome. Living, loving, fucking, creating, growing, eating, partying, tripping, raving, mourning, playing, dancing, sleeping, crying, all while stepping on very old stones. And with every experience, yet another ruin would leave its mark on my memory, becoming another building block to add to the construction of my identity. As if in a way, by living a portion of my life among old rocks and old bricks I made them my old rocks, my old bricks, my ruins.
Nostalgic memories of my time in the eternal city and my first psychedelic macro dose experience within archeological sites led to the production of a series of sculptures, photographs, and video performances titled “Ego Dissolution” and my most recent work “Ruin Complex #1”. In between these two projects came an art commission, requesting me to make a precise ceramic architectural model of a temple made of old rocks I had never stepped on- the “Vesta Temple in Tivoli”. Making a replica of a ruin using only internet-sourced images such as Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s drawings and Antonio Chichi’s crock model’s photographs was somehow contradictory to the process of recreating ruins while trying to remember altered states of consciousness.
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These three projects were shown together with works by Regine Bruhn, Annette Herbers, Nadine Kles, and Yigyeom Sun in the temporary group exhibition ALTE FELSEN NICHTS NEUES at the Antikensammlung of the Kunsthalle in Kiel, Germany. The five artists installed the work in response to the museum's collection of plaster and bronze replicas of Greek and Roman sculptures.
Series of Ceramic Sculptures, Photographies and Video Performance, 2022
To return to where we should return, to walk the same steps, touch the same stones and with each touch allow the explosion of memories to overtake us. That is the only way I travel. This is how I feel every time I return to the eternal city of Rome. Home could also mean a place where we periodically return because we feel good right there, we speak the tongue, we know the dark and bright corners, we know the history and have history with the place and its inhabitants. We feel at home.
Rome, on top of giving me many gifts, was also the place where I first experienced the death of my ego. But not just that, it all happened on top of the magnificent arches of the Palatino. The ruins and I were one, as cheese as it may sound. I lost my ego then, to return 12 years later and try and find it.
Ma c’è qualcuno che vuole comprare la mia rovina?
Ma c’è qualcuno che mi vuole portare alla mia rovina?
Vi faccio pure lo sconto…
Permanent installation for Facebook Artist in Residence, 2020
Photography courtesy of @fbariprogram
This melodic saying in Spanish is used when a person has been running around from one location to another. In a place like my home town Bogotá, it also implies the discomfort of rushing between locations in a large chaotic city. For me that idiom encapsulates a sense of frustration with the impossibility of physically being in two places at the same time. As a dual national part of the Colombian diaspora, with family members spread in five continents, this frustration takes on a totally different meaning. I am constantly being reminded of the distance of my kin and the difficulties I have to face to go and visit loved ones. So, I came up with a poetic solution—or a hopeful failure—to fulfill the impossible dream of being here and there at the same time.
ELONGATION AS A METAPHOR OF A BODY TRAVELING BETWEEN SPACE AND TIME.
Installation composed of around 20 ¨bodies¨ connecting different walls and entangling between them in the process. Each ¨body” consists of two hands and two feet connected by tubes in two different configurations and varies in color and dimension.
Series of poly-foam sculptures, 2019
Have you ever considered how skating makes your feet unique?
'Footwork' is a show that brings attention to the hidden heroes of skateboarding: feet.
By working tightly with the Everyday Skate Shop community Santiago Insignares has created a sculptural installation using the life casted feet of 6 skate athletes that responded to the open call.
Titles and instagram handle in order:
Yohan @som.gai
Liki @sleepyliki
Mango @mangospliffs
Spencer @quancer
Xanubis @xanubis
Yasmeen @yaz.so.mean
Public space temporary installation at the Albany Bulb, 2019
(from press release)
These bendable, interactive sculptures are symbols of the resilience of human condition in the face of adversity. As part of nature, we can resist, regrow and reshape.
Bulbfest 2019 is a two-day festival that will highlight the ruggedly beautiful landscapes of the Albany Bulb with dance performances and new art installations.
The Albany Bulb is a city park at a former construction debris landfill surrounded by spectacular views of San Francisco Bay. The Albany Bulb has long been known for informal sculpture and art. Love the Bulb, a community arts organization is presenting this festival to highlight the value of this endangered and uniquely Bay Area space for the imagination.
The theme of the festival this year is Resilience. The performances and art installations will explore the resilience of nature in the face of climate change and sea level rise as well as human resilience in the face of individual and societal changes. The works have been selected through an open call process, with the help of a jury consisting of local professionals in the fields of arts, education, activism and urban design.
For more info click here.
Installation for the group show Funk ain’t Dead , 2018
Curated by Matt Goldberg at Root Division.
Press Release, click here
Sarah Hotchkiss article for KQED, click here
Series of ceramic sculptures, 2017
Sculpture and sound installation for solo exhibition at Red Poppy Art House, 2018
Curated by Elena Mancarelli
Press Release, click here.
Photography courtesy of Alex Molinari
(text transcript)
When I was a child I used to spend my vacations in a small town in the Colombian Caribbean coast where my grandparents had a tiny apartment. Every day my grandparents got my cousins and I ready to go to the beach, and covered our bodies in sunblock and insect repellent, knowing that city kids have very fragile skin. The hot and humid weather and the salty smell of the port and fishery are engrained in my memory. Under the beating sun dozens of flies would come and swarm around us attracted to the sugar in our soda cans and the sweat in our skins. Despite my constant efforts to keep them off me, their conviction always outweighed mine. Whether I was playing in the sand, taking a nap, or having a snack, the constant buzz would disrupt my activities to the point that I was swinging my arms in the air and swatting at my face. It was really unnerving, and I always wondered why my grandfather could just sit there, calm and undisturbed. So one day I got the courage to ask him, “How come you aren’t bothered by the flies?”
And he responded, “What flies? There are no flies here!” and continued gazing calmly at the horizon. Now, more than twenty years later and thousands of miles from home, I still wish I had the same capability to ignore unnerving and persistent botherances. The smart phones in our pockets are constantly buzzing like omnipresent flies. News about massacres, natural disasters, and imminent wars are combined with the FOMO and the need for likes, that causes anxiety and depression among a phone-addicted population. So I find myself in the same situation I was in years ago, trying to ignore something that is impossible to ignore, swatting aimlessly at the air, while repeating to my self as if it was a mantra “¡Aquí no hay moscas!
Series of plaster sculptures, 2017-2018
Presented at :
California Academy of Sciences, for the NightLife Event curated by Betty Bigas and Cate Van Dyke.
How Weird Street Festival, at the Art Alley, curated by Doug Rhodes.
The Growlery, as part of the Group Show and Magazine Issue ‘Creep’ curated and published by DopeDopeDope.
Series of Ceramic Heads, scale variable.
Ceramic,Glaze.
2016
Mixed media installation, 2015
Created in collaboration with Evan Brounstein and Nolan Sheehan Jankowski for NoRoof Gallery.
Photography courtesy of by Kathryn Barulich.
Series of mixed media sculptures, 2015
Graduation project at SFAI
Mixed media installation, 2014
Temporary Public Sculpture Installation, 2012
Collaboration with the artist Felipe Ruiz.
Stereo Picnic Festival.
Functional sculpture, mural and video installation, 2011
Solo Exhibition at La Residencia, Bogota.
