Natural History of Colonization 22

In his work, Fernando Sánchez Castillo addresses memory culture and image politics, as reflected in monuments, and develops a complex critique of mechanisms of power and representation. Thus the Spanish artist investigates the traces, still present today, of the visual propaganda of the Franco regime. But he also confronts feudal social systems and the way they are represented in monuments, which frequently draws on ancient models. In his installation “Natural History of Colonization”, he brings together three almost absurd-seeming fragments of real, existing monuments: the horse’s tail only from the equestrian statue of the crusader Godfrey of Bouillon in Brussels; the boots only from the Madrid statue of the soldier Eloy Gonzalo, who fought for Spain in the Cuban War of Independence; and only the feet of one of the two lions in front of the Spanish parliament (cast in bronze recycled from the canons captured in the Spanish-Moroccan war).
Fernando Sánchez Castillo studied philosophy and aesthetics, then fine art in Madrid, and quickly became known internationally for his critically subversive, but always also ironically humorous, installations. His works could be seen, for example, in MoMA PS1 in New York, or at the Biennales in São Paulo and Riga.