HERBERT DE PAZ

    The Expatriates series takes as its point of reference the visual records of artifacts from both the Americas and Africa that were removed from their territories of origin. My practice functions as an intimate archaeology of these fragments, looking at objects that carry the cosmologies of worlds that were fractured by history. The reference images for these paintings are taken directly from the catalogs of major international auction houses, where sacred history is converted into a commodity.

In these canvases, I summon the presence of pieces like the classic Maya Maize God, Hun Hunahpu, a symbol of life and cyclical regeneration, alongside Ah Puch (or Kimi), the skeletal Maya lord of death and the underworld. This tension between life and cessation dialogues with the representation of the Incan Kero—a wooden or ceramic ceremonial vessel shaped like a jaguar, originally used for libations, sealing political alliances, and circulating reciprocity within the community. Beside them, the carved forms of Yoruba Gelede and Egungun masks and the ritual expressions of Bantu traditions emerge, bringing faces that once governed ancestral power, social balance, and spiritual protection across the Atlantic.

The series also delves into the syncretism of my own roots, drawing from El Día de la Cruz—a Salvadoran tradition from Kuskatan celebrating harvest abundance, where the Christian cross, carved from jiote wood, subtly conceals the presence of the Nahua deity Xipe Tótec, Our Lord the Flayed One. In this work, the cross is replaced by the image of an original pre-Hispanic artifact from Kuskatan; a sacred piece from a ceremonial center that was recorded, expatriated, and ultimately lost to track in London.

By placing these displaced symbols in dialogue, the work forces a reflection on their current status within the institutions and private collections of the Global North, where they are treated as "luxury antiquities" and become the focus of multimillion-dollar transactions. There is a deep, unsettling paradox at the heart of this market, which prompts a fundamental question: Why are these inanimate artifacts so deeply venerated and valued, while the lives of the people whose cultures of origin created them are so systematically devalued?

This disparity serves as a cruel metaphor for the contemporary migrant experience. While these objects enter the grand halls of northern institutions through the front door, protected by the varnish of high culture and financial value, the living people from the Global South who carry this very same ancestry are turned away at the borders, met with exclusion and barriers. Through Expatriates, painting becomes a space for poetic repatriation—not just to discuss the return of cultural property, but to remind us that the true weight of a culture resides in the dignity, breath, and survival of its people, rather than the pieces left behind in a glass display.


“The masks, scenes, objects, and figures are not merely images. The paintings do not remain static on the surface of the canvas. Their work calls out, evokes, and draws our eyes to the certainty of other, multiple existences that unite and take shape, beyond the linearity of destruction.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Keyna Eleison, Curator.