DAVID REIBER OTÁLORA
pendejo, no por ahí, no sea que alguien te vea
Title: pendejo, no por ahí, no sea que alguien te vea
Year: 2020
Material: Spruce, HDF, linseed oil, pins, adhesive tape, paper, wax
Dimensions: 50 x 30 cm
Edition: Unique
Price: sold
Rubber, extracted under inhumane and ecologically destructive conditions in the Amazon, formed the material basis of industrialization in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the resulting global dominance of Europe and North America.
David Reiber Otálora’s Jahresgabe consists of five text panels carved into wood and fitted with waxed leaves. They recount the story of an erotic encounter from the perspective of a cultivated rubber tree, whose white sap oozes through its wounded bark. Through this narrative lens, the passive, motionless tree gains a sense of subjectivity, allowing it to reflect on the world and introduce an ambivalent, sensual dimension to its own suffering.
David Reiber Otálora (*1992 in Münster, raised in Colombia, lives in Berlin) studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg until 2020. He held his first solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Gießen (2019), and has exhibited at Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg (2019), and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt (2017).
i will always remember the first things I heard that night. sounds of a car breaking hard.
corre, que te van a atrapar - said one of the two camouflaged men.
they unwillingly burst into laughter as they reached the safety of my hood.
they both took their camuflaje off, while holding on to one of my branches.
hastily undressing, they broke the tip off of my smallest - leaving an open wound from which i immediately started to bleed.
i have bled and cried many many times before - and i still do.
i cry, i bleed and i cry again - todo sucesivamente, my dear. tbh, that is just who i am.
i intensely remember the smell of the two men that day. their sweat was running
down their necks - droplets forming and falling on a vergonzosa, that had closed its leafs,
embarrassed of the men’s flippancy.
one of the men was resting against my stomp.
i felt his warm butt cheeks grinding on my cortex.
i was frozen and I couldn’t. my latex started to drip on his leg,
creating a stringy stream that ran all the way down to his knee.
both breathing loudly, his hand was holding the other man’s twig.
a loud sound of exaltation, followed by a dense fluid falling on my roots.
he was crying and so was i.
