Sara Milkes Espinosa

    Life has led me to being plastically obsessed  with death, and a trip back to my grandmother’s house in the Llanos- a region of plains traditionally used for cattle breeding in Colombia- was the opportunity to see death in a particular situation. In the middle of the main field, a Chontaduro tree, formerly standing 20 meters high, thorny and makestic in the past, had been shrunk into a black mass after a lightning strike and 10 liters of gasoline.

The carbonized tree corpse is, jokes aside, something you would never like to run into while walking in the superstition-rich Llanos region. .It resembles a vegetal versión of Florentino’s Demon, a local Legend about a man challenging and defeating the Devil. Nevertheless, it is amazingly beautiful. The deep black coal, shinning under light, is full of subtle colors. Red and orange traces seem to contain part of the fire that brought the giant to ashes. Amazingly, the tree opened a mouth that insinuates the gesture of a scream frozen in a rictus.

 

With this series of drawings, I try to channel my visual obsession to depict death. By the means of color and shape I try to understand the metaphysical presence of this visually powerful entity, and represent it in something that portrays its paradoxical existence. Through repetition and memory, drawing becomes an act of meditation. Alike the soldier from the Russian folktale, it is my very own attempt to catch death in a sack.