Nicholas Arroyave-Portela, a British artist of Colombian heritage, explores his roots and the concepts of identity and geography through a ceramic body of work titled “Todo Sobre Mi Padre,” (Everything to do with my father) which will exhibit in London this summer.
In Arroyave’s series of eleven ceramic pieces, he draws on the ideas of satellite imagery and tectonic plates to depict the earth “with a layer of skin, a living tissue” and uses clay to create a three dimensional work, which references his father’s migrational journey from Spain to Argentina to Colombian and back to Europe.
Arroyave told Colombia Reports that what started off as a reflection on his own identity and cultural heritage “led me in an interesting direction and became quite political. In Britain at the moment there is quite a lot of debate as to what makes you British. I wanted to make a political statement” through the artwork.
While Arroyave himself is British born, his Spanish-Colombian father and Colombian mother met in the Andean nation in 1960s. They moved to England in 1967 and the artist says he feels ” a real passion” for Colombia. “I would always say that [Colombia] is a part of my heritage. An identity that is very multiple is good… It gives you access to many groups,” he says.
Arroyave’s father died when he was 15-years-old. The artist says he chose to focus to focus on his late father in his latest work “as a metaphor, a genealogy thing, thinking about what my life could have been if I had lived in Colombia or Spain.”
In his work, Arroyave references relationships to places and how they create a sense of identity, which he calls “interesting in the context of now… a reflection of the identity of self and how that is reflected in the world.”
“Ultimately I felt that by exploiting the qualities of clay and drawing on those literal associations with the earth I could start to tap into the ‘Psycho-geography’ of place to express our primal and often overlooked intuitive relationship to the land of our birth and or ancestors. After all, geography is destiny,” Arroyave says.
Arroyave says that while growing him kids teased him with Colombia-cocaine stereotypes, he thinks that Europe has “a renewed interest in and respect of Latin America. Friends don’t have the attitude they had twenty years ago to Colombia. There’s more curiosity now, more and more positive stories.”
Arroyave did a specialized degree in ceramics at Bath College of Higher Education, graduating in 1994. For the last three years he has been developing Todo Sobre Mi Padre, which he likens to undertaking a Masters or a PhD.
“I’ve been very secluded in working on this, it’s just been the last few months that I’ve peeped my head above the parapet,” Arroyave says.
Todo Sobre Mi Padre will exhibit at London’s Contemporary Applied Arts from July 23 to August 21. The event is supported by Journey Latin America and the Colombian Tourist Board.
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