"These hand-painted multiples are a continuation of a theme that I featured in my exhibition at Subliminal Projects last fall. For that show I released a print called La Santa Muerte. Santa Muerte is a uniquely Mexican character, particularly in Mexico City. People in DF (distrito federal/Mexico City) have independently canonized her as a Catholic Saint. Saint Death.
Obviously the Vatican is horrified by the idea but in parts of Mexico City, like Zocalo where I saw her, there are people who find Saint Death deeply comforting and liberating. In her shrines, a skeleton is erected and dressed in robes like those of a pope or a monk and covered with jewels, money and flowers. They are unbelievably beautiful. I was told that, worshipers will visit these sites and often leave offerings at her feet, both in gratitude and repentance. Things like money, candles, photographs, drugs and weapons." - Ravi Zupa
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Ravi Zupa’s art education started with his family and continued on at his local library. Zupa has spent the last decades studying art from cultures and movements that span history and originate from nearly all geographical regions. He considers books the best way to experience art. Being entirely self-taught, he looks for inspiration in works by German Renaissance print makers, Flemish primitives, abstract expressionists, Japanese woodblock artists, Mughal paintings, religious iconography from Europe, Asia and pre-Columbian Latin America, and revolutionary propaganda the world over. With a distaste for ironic art or the thoughtless appropriation of culture, Zupa seeks to integrate these disparate elements in search of some universal experience that explains, at least in part, what our incredibly fortunate historical position might mean.
Find more by Ravi Zupa at ravizupa.com
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