HERBERT DE PAZ
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Bio
Herbert De Paz (Santa Tecla, El Salvador, 1991) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro since 2013. Herbert was born and raised during the salvadoran postwar decade and started taking art lessons at age of 16 at a highscool technical course in Architecture at Instituto Emiliani; then he enrolled into drawing lessons at Palacio Tecleño de la Cultura y las Artes. At age of 21 he learned portuguese and moved to Brazil to study at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro after being accepted in a cultural exchange program offered by the Brazilian Goverment. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Arts (2018) and a Master’s Degree in Art History from the same institution (2024) in which he studied pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican Art and Mural Painting. During his student years, he won a scholarship to join the research group led by artist and professor Cristina Salgado (2013-2015) and after that period he worked as an Art Educator for several exhibition projects in institutions such as Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio (MAM), Casa Museu Eva Klabin and Centro Municipal de Artes Hélio Oiticica (CMAHO); also he studied at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (EAV) in the Fundamentação (2013-2014); Formação e Deformação (2019) led by curators Keyna Eleison and Ulisses Carrilho, ending the course with a collective exhibition. Also was a voluenteer for the project Lanchonete Lanchonete working with drawing and painting lessons for children from the Pequena África region in the city. In 2021 shows his first solo exhibition Ibirapema: paintings by Herbert De Paz, curated by Aldones Nino at A Gentil Carioca Gallery and in 2023 his second one La Sangre Nunca Muere at Cassia Bomeny Gallery curated by Keyna Eleison, both in Rio de Janeiro. In 2022 he was nominated for the Cisneros Fontanals Foundation (CIFO) Grants and Commissions Program Award. His first residency was at La Fábrica in El Salvador (2024), sponsored by YES Contemporary.
Herbert's works are part of the collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami (ICA), the Rio Art Museum (MAR) and the Inhotim Institute and have been exhibited in El Salvador, Brazil, the United States and Mexico.
Artist Statement
My work is a practice that aims to question the hegemonic perspective of some of the facts about the colonization processes in the Americas and highlights ancestral practices, knowledge and culture. When we think about the colonial history of the territories in the American continent, we are induced to think that the “conquest” took place because of the superiority and generosity of the Europeans for bringing civility, bureaucracies, and progress, but it also was a process of erasure. It seems that our Mesoamerican and African roots and ways of living are part of the past and will have a smaller place in the future. My paintings evoke stories, characters and a sense of celebration through color as a form of resistance.
As an artist, I believe in the power of images and I like to think that there are other possibilities to think about the past that we have been taught; in my practice I collect symbols and images from archeological records and archive images that can suggest other narratives in response to acculturation processes. I see my work as a practice of image archaeology that serves to think about other possibilities for the past, modifying the present and the future in the collective imagination using allegorical elements. Figuration is important in my practice because of its narrative power and this reinforces my interest in “excavate” stories. I am driven by a desire to think about a less colonized future and believe that the production of new images can help prefigure this different history.