PANGEA EXQUISITA

Exquisite Pangea by Marc Herrero (Barcelona, 1977), presented by Le Violón Bleu/Blue Wind Project (Tunisia and Barcelona)  

Inspired by a post-natural and post-humanist critique, as well as by an ecological critique of the colonial history of Africa, the solo project Exquisite Pangea by Spanish artist Marc Herrero is populated by uncanny creatures that refuse any scientific species classifications, as they blur the boundaries between the human and the non-human, or between natural and artificial beings. By depicting human bodies transformed into animal forms and vice versa, he draws attention to the devastating effects of industrial agriculture, deforestation, and climate change on the natural world. 

His iconography, centred on metamorphic bodies, also explores the complex symbiotic and emotional relationship between humans and non-human species, challenging the capitalist and colonial epistemology of the domination of the former over the latter. Some of the artist's portrayals of deformed creatures —like his overbuilt cow that evokes bodies transformed by anabolic steroids in the work  “Cow” (2023) — reference the pressure contemporary society exerts on bodies, minds, and souls, constantly pushed toward productivity and an idealised perfection.

Especially conceived for Tomorrows/Today, Inhabiting the Wild, a series of drawings point to the very epistemology of hunting as a primordial survival practice that has been perverted during the colonial process and that survives today through the economy of legal and illegal trophy hunting.

Recalling the practice of taxidermy mounting, in “Protein Pillar” (2024), a myriad of small animal paws—including the five great animals that are part of the natural ecosystem of South Africa and that are considered the most desirable hunting trophies—swirl around a column. Culminating with a floral ornament that recalls the South African national flower (the protea), the column references the architectural structure that more than anything else symbolises the very sustainment of what modernity has named civilization. A tribute to the part of the living bodies that primarily support life, that is, the paws as living columns, this work poses questions like: “Who supports whom in the cycle of life?”.

In his “Sinfonia del Desamparo” (2024), Herrero reinterprets the famous 16th-century engraving by the botanical Dutch painter Pieter van der Borcht the Elder, depicting a fantastical animal with the heads of various other animals sprouting from its body, known to be an allegory for the difficulty of ruling over a diverse nation. Here the artist continues his dialogue with the South African original fauna, impacted by the violence of colonial history and that still nourishes the imagery of wildlife as a primordial desire that persists today between the tourist industry and national heritage complex. Herreros’ chimeric beast loses its aggressive appearance, becoming a body-bestiary where the heads of the animals—from elephants and zebras to hippos, seals, lions, and springboks, amongst many other animals from both land and marine environments—coexist symphonically. They indicate a constellation of vital emotions, passions, and impulses, while also containing hidden references to history and myths from South Africa: from the legendary Grootslang, a fantastic creature depicted as a mix between an elephant and a python, to the story of Hippo Huberta, the notorious female hippopotamus who travelled for a large distance across the country, becoming revered by Zulus and Xhosas alike, whose death by the hands of three farmers in 1931 shook the entire nation, so much that her body was re-dignified through taxidermy and exhibited since then in a national museum. Emerging from the stomach of the beast, three rhino heads have their precious horns replaced with human hands communicating in South African sign language: “freedom”, they say. 

In this solo project, Marc Herrero’s multispecies iconography paves a path in which historical, political, and environmental questions are posed to the viewer, who is called to reimagine human-nature relationships through principles of empathy, reciprocity, and responsibility.

Mariella Franzoni, February 2024