+ About the Work

This piece is born from my own interest in exploring the relationship between language and culture, as well as my drive to address social issues form my native country, Colombia. This project is intended to criticize the linguistic relationship between crime and religion in the context of the Colombian conflict, and ultimately show how the use of Catholic metaphors distort the way in which society perceive violence and war.

The work is composed by five different pieces: a large wood panel, which represents the point of view of perpetrators and victimizers, and four praying cards, each based on a particular war atrocity.

+ About the Work

Originally from Columbia, Eduardo Palma’s work and practice primarily concerns itself with the role of language within culture. His piece “Es Mejor Ser Riche Que Poor” offers its audience a moment of self-reflection and is in and of itself self-reflexive. As in interactive poster, it plays upon the absurdities of common phrases and the socially ingrained ideas behind specific cultural imagery. As he states

“By recurring to a considerably famous expression (‘Es mejor ser rico que pobre’/ ‘It's better to be rich than poor’) I intend to criticize the ever growing ‘anything goes’ culture. Commonly attributed to a famous Colombian boxer Antonio Cervantes 'Kid Pambelé', this sentence is often ridiculed and overlooked for its apparent obviousness. However, it is my purpose to make evident how over time it has become a slogan for corruption, impacting Colombia's notions of national identity and society.

As the layers of postcards that piece together a distorted image of Colombia are removed by participants, the underlying image of Pablo Escobarand Donald Trump are revealed as both a figural representation of the aforementioned phrase and the notion of social progress by Americanization. Eduardo’s treatment of images serves, not only, as a translation of the visual economy that comes to function as symbolic of socio-cultural phenomenons but unpacks the language behind the visual cues at the same time.