Hugo Llanes

During my residency at Saari, I will work on the themes of the diaspora of food & post-colonisation. Food versus making meaning. Offering as a gesture in artistic practice. Rural as a theme in artistic practice. Participatory art. Performance art.

I expect that this residency will help me better understand how humans have created socio-political and economic meaning around food and edibles, how society has developed around food and food security as a societal challenge.

My working methods include artistic research, sketching, journaling, and exploring materials and mediums such as performance, installation and multi-media. My working methods depend a lot on the conceptual qualities of each project, I want to keep producing-developing/experimenting/researching a project to be exhibited at Gerðarsafn Kópavogur Art Museum in Iceland in January 2023. The project called “And the earth gave him love, warmth and fruit” relates to the violation (combustion) and extraction-exploitation of land and bodies, for the production of refined sugar in Veracruz State, Mexico; the relationship it has with my childhood memories; the fandango music culture of the region as an artifact of resistance and resilience, and contextualizing my practice with those which are dealing with the rural as a place of production-thinking and concept.

I will continue my exploration of different food sources; that have implied generational and ecological trauma such as bread (food). The production will be based on the research on how the Bread of the Death (Pan de Muerto) was the result of the colonization of Mexico and how it has been evolving since then. I want to address the existent links between food and community, life and death, procreation and queer intercourse, and the meaning of generosity through offering and making food. I will be experimenting with wheat and corn flour as the main materials and then trying to replicate my drawings, paintings, and pictures using them.

Aside from studio practice, part of my research will complement a thesis project which relates to, how sustainability and ecological narratives in Iceland’s contemporary art scene at curatorial decision and exhibition-making level, are given to the public and if it is a matter of being queer and or women that these topics are brought to the forefront of artistic discourses in the island.

Hugo Llanes is an artist based in Iceland. Has a BA from Universidad Veracruzana and holds a MA in Fine Arts from the Iceland University of the Arts. An active member of AIVAG (Artist in Iceland Action VISA Group). Recently awarded with PECDA (Young Creators fund Veracruz State 2022) and allocated with the Icelandic Visual Arts Fund 2022. Selected for the Cross-Residency Reykjavík, a residency program between Clermont-Ferrand and Reykjavík City, 2023. His work involves the study of social-political cracks and aesthetics that erupts from them. He looks at social circumstances, such as migration food, the abuse of power, and the impact of postcolonialism on Latin America’s new identities. To depict these, he employs artistic research and mediums such as maintenance art, performance, installation, site-specific, participatory art, video art, and extended painting.