The mutilated 'David' of the artist Miguel Ángel Rojas celebrates his 20 years as an icon of violence

The Colombian artist Miguel Ángel Rojas in the La Cometa gallery, in Madrid.Jaime Villanueva

In the beautiful and precise Spanish spoken in Colombia, a “legbreaker” is an anti-personnel mine, a terrifying weapon that, rather than killing, seeks the dismemberment of bodies and the subsequent terror for those who contemplate it.

This is explained by the artist Miguel Ángel Rojas (Bogotá, 77 years old), who these days celebrates the 20th anniversary of his

David

(2005), a plea against violence and war, a world-famous work in which, in the manner of The famous sculpture by Miguel Ángel Buonarroti, Rojas portrays a beautiful young peasant whose right leg has been torn off by a mine.

The photograph is the centerpiece of the exhibition titled

Quiebramales

,

which can be seen at the Madrid gallery La Cometa until April 20.

Miguel Ángel Rojas traveled this March from Bogotá to Madrid to see how his work is displayed, take a tour of Arco, even though he had no work on display this year, and see an exhibition at the Prado and the Reina Sofía, a museum that has acquired pieces of this artist in his annual purchases.

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Two decades after David

's first presentation

, the work retains the same strength and continues to impact in the same way as at the beginning.

For Colombians, Rojas says during a conversation with EL PAÍS, “this work is the image that represents a conflict that lasts more than six decades and in which the civilian population accounts for more than 80% of the deaths.”

The work 'David' by Miguel Ángel Rojas.La Cometa

The boy in the photograph is José Antonio Ramos, a lieutenant who was 15 years old when he agreed to pose naked and mutilated for the artist.

The result is eight black and white photographs measuring two meters by one.

How did the soldier react and what were those sessions like?

“When I asked him to pose like the famous Renaissance sculpture, he had no idea what

David

was .

I thought: how is it possible that this white boy, from an Antioch family, with no school training, has ended up being meat for the army?

On the contrary, there is me, a mestizo of peasant origin but thanks to my parents I was able to go to school.

I concluded that the differences are marked by education.

Knowledge is more important than skin color.”

Rojas' extensive work uses conceptual language to talk about the issues that have marked his life: violence and homosexuality.

“My parents came from Tolima, in the center of the country.

They moved to Bogotá and I was born there, in 1946, two years before the Bogotazo occurred, the conflict unleashed by the assassination of the liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, on April 9, 1948. In just two days the 40 was destroyed. % of city buildings.

We fled from that horror and settled in Girardot, a town in Cundinamarca, until I was 11 years old and they sent me as an intern with the Jesuits to Bogotá.”

Homosexuality

He has no bad memories of the religious order.

“I have a Christian background in the sense that what is important is my own life and that of others.

All my thoughts are expressed through art.

The language of art is my therapy.

I am an emerging class homosexual with concerns very common to all Colombians and all inhabitants of the planet: who is not worried about violence, deforestation, the drug business, discrimination?

We are very served by all of this in Colombia.”

One of the pieces that make up the exhibition 'Quiebramales'.

In the exhibition, very crude in the images, there are proposals for redemption and the generic title of the exhibition could fit there:

Quiebramales

.

The piece titled

Caquetá

(2007) is composed of a single-channel video and two orthopedic prostheses.

Rojas films a young soldier cleaning the camouflage from his face with the stumps left from his forearms.

On the floor there is a 12-letter word formed with graphite pencils, placed so that the viewer thinks of semi-hidden or camouflaged mines with a false appearance.

The word is

Quiebramales

.

A delicate piece titled Read and Multiply

(2013-2019)

is displayed on a large wooden table .

It consists of two mathematics and writing notebooks lined with mambe and silver foil.

The artist once again emphasizes the importance of education as the only legitimate weapon to rescue Colombians and break evil.

Two decades after those photographs, Rojas is still aware of his

David

's life : “We paid him quite well and he invested the money in a piece of land where he built a house and lives with his family.

His wife is a teacher and they have a child who will have no problems getting an education, which makes me infinitely happy.”

Photographic evidence for the work 'David', by Miguel Ángel Rojas.La cometa

To Venice

In addition to the Madrid exhibition, Rojas is very happy because a series of his photographs will be part of the central exhibition of the Venice Biennale, which opens on April 20 and which this year was curated by Adriano Pedrosa.

“The title is

Foreigners Everywhere

and on this occasion works have been chosen, not artists.

Mine are part of series that I did in the eighties and nineties in cinemas and theaters when the lights went out and double projections began on the screens.

A life that could not be seen outside also began in the seats.”

Within these photographs float repressed homosexuality, the excesses of the night and the drug trafficking that has cost Colombia so many lives.

And one way or another, those same issues are not resolved.

Especially that of cocaine.

“In the Escobar years, they were in production and distribution, but they did not stimulate domestic consumption.

When trafficking shifted to Mexico and the United States, the Colombian cartels did not disappear.

They transformed and saw that there was also a market within the country.

“A never-ending drama.”

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