INDIVIDUALISMOS

Some works are created to decorate a wall. Others are created to provoke discomfort.

Individualisms was conceived specifically for the Solstice Art Festival 2026 as an ephemeral work destined from the outset to undergo its own transformation through fire. Presented and consumed during the solstice bonfire ceremony on June 21, the piece proposed a reflection on the historical trajectory of art: from the affirmation of the individual and the mastery of technique to the progressive dematerialization of the artwork within conceptual art.

The work was exhibited in an environment surrounded by contemporary, conceptual, and experimental artists. Yet the first reactions were not directed toward Venus, the circle inspired by Shiva Nataraja, the fragmentation into four panels, or the dialogue between destruction and reconstruction. What many people questioned first was the sink placed at the center of the composition.

And it was then that I understood the work had arrived exactly where it needed to.

Because the sink was never merely an object.

It was the ego.

During my journey through India, I visited Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi. There, I encountered an energy associated with Shiva that remained with me long after I returned home. Among his many manifestations, the figure that affected me most profoundly was Shiva Nataraja, the Lord of the Cosmic Dance.

Its symbolism lies not only in destruction, but in the transformation that follows it.Destruction as a necessary condition for reconstruction.

That idea stayed with me for months until it eventually became this work.

In my reinterpretation, Shiva disappears and is replaced by Botticelli's Venus, a symbol of the birth of Western beauty. Both figures are united within the same temporal circle, where creation and destruction cease to be opposites and become inseparable parts of a single process.

Beneath her stands an overflowing Rococo style sink filled with flowers. A beautiful, excessive, decorative, and superficial object that functions as a representation of the contemporary ego a symbol of artistic identity transformed into appearance, branding, or discourse.

The work also questions a recurring tension within contemporary art: the separation between technique and concept. We live in an era in which an idea can acquire greater significance than its material realization, while technical skill is often considered secondary. Individualisms does not reject conceptual art; rather, it reflects on the extreme degree to which individualism has permeated the art system, where the explanation frequently becomes more important than the direct experience of the work itself.

Divided into four panels, the piece represents both the elements and the contemporary fragmentation of art. The figurative and the conceptual appear as opposing positions when, in reality, they belong to the same cycle.

For this reason, the burning of Individualisms did not represent an ending, but an act of passage.

Through ritual destruction, the work proposed that every cultural construction contains within itself the seed of its own renewal. Fire acted as an agent of transformation, returning the piece to a state of possibility and creating space for new forms of expression.

The bonfire became a collective ceremony of gratitude, dance, and celebration of the solstice. The gathered community accompanied the transformation of the work through movement and shared presence, culminating in an evocation of Shiva Nataraja's dance—a symbol of creative destruction and the eternal cycle of death, regeneration, and rebirth.

In this way, Individualisms ceased to be merely an artwork and became a ritual gesture: a reflection on art, the ego, and the necessity of destroying certain structures in order to allow others to emerge.

Because perhaps the real problem with contemporary art is neither a lack of technique nor a lack of concept.

Perhaps the problem is that we have forgotten that every creation, like life itself, must disappear one day in order to begin again.