Liberated Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia & Panama
2025 graphite on marble, 12 x 12 inches. Glexis Novoa Studio, Miami.
The ideals and principles of a nation disappear when its people search for food in mountains of garbage. The corruption and inefficiency of an obsolete system deconstructs the image of the hero; Simón Bolívar gave his life to—among other noble missions—liberate six countries and spread his ideals throughout Latin America. Ironically, the renting of the horse’s leg from the sculpture erected in Washington, D.C., to install a repeater antenna for a powerful cellular communications company, helps pay for food for hundreds of Venezuelans. Street vendors’ advertisements adorn the nobleman, representing the tangent power of pork fat and corn arepas. The conventional language of the marble drawing captures a history steeped in blood, which fades in the dawn of radical liberalism.