Colombia Passport

In 2007 the Costa Rican artist Guillermo Vargas, known as Habacuc, captured a dog in the streets of Managua and tied it inside the gallery exhibition. Many sources argued that the animal died of hunger under the astonish contemplation of the visitors. Some persons requested the release of the dog, but the artist refused. ‘It shows how many street dogs live in Managua,’ he answered and it is assumed that the dog died.

The event attracted the fury of many people and organizations for the defense of the rights of animals. There was an attempt to prevent his presence in the Biennale of Art 2008 in Honduras. Others called him a sick-minded man. ‘I ask myself how would be the opinion of Habacuc if we tie him from his neck during some days and without food and we put him in an exposition with a sign of ‘art’, said other of his critics.

The polemic artist will be in Bogotá next October ready for his controversial exhibitions.

The last one was in Milan, Italy. He offered food in the exhibition and the visitors ate pleasantly.

‘People do not know what they eat and many of them do not put attention to the works’ he said in an interview to Caracol Radio.

After a time, the people were invited to see a video of how the food was prepared. It was made with the sweat of an Egyptian cook, a Nigerian prostitute, a Moroccan builder, a Rumanian bricklayer, a Senegalese street vendor and a Peruvian doorkeeper.

´I am studying the theme of immigration in my works and this is one of my last ones, ´ he said referring to the Milan sweet-migrant-food-art exposition.

He used a wet towel, cleaned the face, arms and legs of the migrants, put it inside water and cooked with it, he mentioned to the Colombian journalists. When the video was shown, the people stopped to eat and other persons spat. No one of the migrants who donated their sweat to the Habacuc´s experiment was present in the exhibition.

´It is difficult for a prostitute or a builder to visit an opening of art, especially in a so exclusive circuit like Milan.´

The Costa Rican will be at the International Fair of Art of Bogotá, organized by the Chamber of Commerce between 22 and 26 of October in Corferias.

Vargas, who was born in 1975 in San José, has works of photography, paintings, performance art, installation art, theatrical dance and video.

In the exposition of Managua of August 2007 where he used the dog, he burned also 175 pieces of crack cocaine and an ounce of marijuana while the Sandinista anthem played backwards. He said to the Caracol journalists that he was not going to do so in Colombia next October.

The pictures of the dog of Managua appeared on the Internet and many tried to avoid his participation of the Biennale 2008 of Central America where he went as the Costa Rican representative. Four million signatures were gathered asking to ban his presence in the Biennale. Vargas himself signed, he said after. However, Juanita Bermúdez, the director of Códice Gallery of Managua, said that the animal was fed regularly and was only tied up for three hours on one day before it escaped. But Vargas did not make comments on what happened to the dog.

´The exhibit and the controversy highlight people´s hypocrisy, because no one cares about a dog that starves to death in the street,´ he said to El Tiempo.

The Humane Society of the United States condemned the ´use of live animals in exhibits such as this´, while the World Society for the Protection of Animals followed its own investigation, but the information was found ´inconsistent´ and an agreement was signed to ensure that the Biennale of Honduras was not to use animals in its exhibitions.