Simón Vega

The Return of Prospero: Tales of the Crypto-Colonized

Ocober 15 - December 30, 2022

featuring Bleached by Adam Knoche

Liliana Bloch Gallery is pleased to present its last exhibition of 2022 featuring the work of Salvadorian artist Simón Vega in his second solo exhibition in Texas. 

The arrival of the strange, tall, technologically superior white man on the paradisiacal island of the small, savage and monstrous brown native: the encounter of the primitive and the advanced is the departing point for the artist’s recent body of work which comprises ephemeral sculpture, painting, animation and objects.

Drawing inspiration from the conquest and colonization of Central America, William Shakespeare’s theatrical play “The Tempest”, as well as Postcolonial and Decolonization theories, the artist develops a non-linear narrative in which the past and the future, the primitive and the developed, the native and the foreign collide. 

In contemporary El Salvador, a tropical, troubled country better known for gang violence, a huge tourism and real state project is under construction along the coastal area where, until now, fertile mountains and beautiful beaches suitable for surfing remained ‘underdeveloped’.  

Now, unsustainable tourist colonialism, gentrification, the imposition of a digital currency and popular demagogue policies are deeply threatening the ecosystem, the local communities, cultural identity and citizen’s rights, but just as it tragically happens in Shakespeare’s play, it is the natives, the local Calibans, the ones that, mistified by this new magic contained within digital technologies and cliched lifestyles surrender themselves and their land to serve the new masters.

This ageless narrative exemplifies today’s colonialism, the politics of power in ‘developing’ countries, the paradoxes involved in tourism, the dominance of neo liberalist policies, the persistence of racism and xenofobia, and the prejudices between different cultures and communities; however it also hints at the possibility a healthy transcultural mix, a new ‘mestizo’, a different way to understand time and at the importance of questioning what is sold to us as prosperity.

Simón Vega creates drawings, objects, sculptural installations, and happenings inspired by local markets, self-made architecture, and vendor carts found on the streets and beaches of Central America. His sculptures are Third World replicas of the sophisticated capsules and satellites developed by NASA and the Soviet Space Program during the Space Race, however, they are assembled with found materials that include transmutable elements, colored lights, and live plants. This series, titled Tropical Space Proyectos comments on the effects of the Cold War in contemporary El Salvador and Central America. In other works the artist parodies Mayan pyramids, Modernism’s iconic buildings, and contemporary surveillance systems, creating an ironic and humorous fusion between the first and third worlds.  

Born in El Salvador in 1972, Simón Vega graduated in Fine Arts at the University of Veracruz in Mexico in 2000 and received a Master’s degree in Contemporary Arts from the Complutense University in Madrid in 2006. 

He has exhibited his work extensively in Europe, the United States, and Latin America, including the 55th Venice Biennial in Italy (2013), the IX Havana Biennial, in Cuba (2006), at the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California (2018), at the Bronx Museum in New York (2019) and most recently at the Centre Pompidou, Paris for the exhibition Cosmópolis #2. His solo exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Costa Rica, Locust Projects, in Miami, and the Hilger Next Gallery in Vienna amongst others. 

Vega’s work is included in important public and private collections such as the Pérez Art Museum of Miami, Museo de la Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain, Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo de Costa Rica, the Sanziany Collection at Rasumofsky Palace in Vienna and El Museo del Barrio in New York. 

Simón Vega lives and works in La Libertad, El Salvador. 

This exhibtion was made possible by the generosity of our patrons  

Steve Kinder 

1808 Lofts 

and Airyck Cundiff.