Lucro y desman (Profit and loss)

Juan Carlos Batista’s works explore the traces—both symbolic and material—left by war and colonization on the cultures and territories they touch. Drawing on small and medium handcrafted carvings from Africa and other regions, he creates a critical dialogue that unveils the tensions of cultural appropriation and the contradictions of Western legacy.

Many of these wooden figures originate as ritual objects, designed for worship and spiritual mediation within their communities. With colonization, however, they were gradually stripped of their symbolic power and transformed into aesthetic objects, absorbed into museum collections or the circuits of the art market.

Batista’s decisive act is to deconstruct each carving into a multiplicity of fragments and reassemble them into a new sculpture. Through this process of dismantling and reconfiguration, the fragments regain voice, becoming contemporary artworks that provoke reflection on memory, power, and cultural transformation.