But despite their globetrotting and a complex relationship with their chosen hometown, Guerra de la Paz is by no means invisible here in Miami. ArtCenter/South Florida premiered their work Nine in No Need to Touch exhibition in 2007, and more importantly, they will create an installation for the main branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library downtown in the Fall.
The intensity and momentum in the career of Guerra de la Paz reflects a growing complexity in their work. Both artists acknowledge that their compositions are becoming more involved and greater in size and scope. The humanism that propels them on a fundamental level has elicited a deeper realism in their figurative installations.
The camouflage series in particular has exposed a raw, more passionate set of emotions for their narrative, replacing some of the fantasy, childhood, and nature-oriented work in recent years. “It’s never been frivolous work,” comments Neraldo. Like Voodoo dolls or puppets, we are invited to project onto these figures our unresolved emotions and desires. “The garments aren’t even dry cleaned. It would strip them of their essence, sanitize them,” he emphasizes. Alain cites a return to classical and religious themes as an influence. In particular, the elongation of the figure, which has occurred in several pieces is inspired by El Greco’s work. Martyr from 2008, composed of layers of camouflage fatigues arranged to suggest a crucifixion, makes use of that dramatic elongation.
According to Alain, Green Zone describes a “perfect environment, peaceful, uninhibited, enchanted” disrupted by a horrific act or scenario which explodes that tranquility. The camouflage works recall effigy figures, paraded or publicly burned in protest. Emanating from these figures is a very powerful sense of soldiers martyred for dubious causes. Faceless, extremities lopped off, utterly devoid of robustness, the uniform is all that remains. “It’s all very personal,” confirms Neraldo.
“It’s a sign of the times, a subject that you address.” He points out that even the festive mounds can be perceived as symbols of oppression, associated with the macabre piles of victims’ belongings gathered at concentration camps during the Holocaust. By working with threatening imagery, they are creating art as an act of resistance. These works have a connection to early passion plays staged by the church in Europe, in which a familiar, instructive story of suffering is related through dramatic tableaux. Realism and protest are fused in recent painted works by Guerra de la Paz. Painting is performed as an additive, collaborative process by the two, just like their work with found objects. Their subject? A series of hands of friends and family members each giving the finger - the ultimate gesture of protest.
Unraveling the source of the devastation borne of war, Guerra de la Paz has turned to the corporate footsoldier in recent works. Nooses and snakes constructed out of “power ties” insinuate the treachery of “the deal”. The “power ties” series is about suffering caused by the manipulations of powerful entities. In Money Makes the Man, a suit custom tailored from cloth patterned with dollar bills rests on a wooden valet with a Latin inscription “Wealth Makes the Man”. The power of appearances and costume to deceive, to deliver precise subliminal messages, to represent powerful forces, this is the level at which these works conspire. Speaking of the work in Green Zone, Alain remarks, “Not everything is beautiful. Not everything is dark. There are both. We’re two different personalities. Our names are war and peace. Our work explores what brings tranquility and what brings unrest.”
