The South of Things
Nicolás Rodríguez

“My work is a free exploration between daily practices, uses and habits of language, imaginaries, roles and assumed historical places that put into question the idea of ​​culture together with the intersubjective, the bonds and material relationships, thus shaping the world system of which we are part and from which a series of symbolic articulations of meaning and power unfolds. I am interested in observing the relationships between ways of doing, ways of thinking and the possibility of constructing meaning in doing.” Nicolás Rodríguez.

El sur de las cosas (The South of Things)
180 x 110 x 100 cm
Ceramic, wood, fabric and fishing line
2017

“Decolonization means that I cease to be the colony of a foreign culture that I believe is mine and that is false, it is not mine, but that of others and I believe it is mine”. E. DUSSEL

El Sur de las cosas (The South of Things) is born as a point mark on that part by which the totality of a body is supported.

The work presents a tea table for four people where all the elements lack its lower part, and therefore it falls apart. The suspension suggests a fall in pause, which invites the viewer to go through it having a different encounter with space-time in the face of the uncertainty of the scene.

The choice of tea, as a daily practice, refers to a particular custom brought from Europe and initially appropriated by the upper social classes of our region. One more of the many that were deployed from the beginning of the formation of an independent and sovereign territory and that, in their accession, gave a sense of belonging to the hegemonic historical and cultural line.

Over time, the idea of ​​ownership and belonging reinforced a model of cultural dependency in which the South provides resources to the North in exchange for history.