Pájaros del Atlántico,

About

Have you ever wondered what it is like to fly? Gliding on air currents over the Atlantic for three thousands of kilometres without ever stopping until you reach your destination? Los Pájaros del Atlántico undertake this exhausting trip each year, they migrate looking for better weather conditions and food. For humans it is much more complicated to just fly away, leave a country and move in search of better living conditions, we have roots, relationships, family and traditions that more or less we feel tied to. Nevertheless, we migrate, as Pájaros del Atlántico, travelling from one place to another as if we had no bounds.

Giorgio Celin, multifaceted artist born in Colombia and relocated to different European cities, says that his art exists thanks to the never-ending migratory journey. If you don’t belong anywhere, you belong to all places. Celin’s paintings embrace the sense of nostalgia that immigrants feel when leaving their country. The artist wants to tell his story, he wants to express the deeply rooted and ancestral melancholy of missing the places that he cannot even remember anymore.

Celin through his art sheds light on the Latinx Diaspora phenomenon, underlining the gloomy sense of not belonging to a specific geographical location and the immigrants' struggle to get accepted and integrated into our society. The impression of suffering visible on the figures depicted by the artist is not solely tied to the theme of migration, but also to homosexuality and the representation of non-objectified queer bodies. Disrupting the traditional representation of muscular, cisgender, sensual, white bodies, Celin’s subjects fight for their place on the canvas as in our society. Vulnerable and limitless they stand and exist for everyone to see.

Text by Cecilia Monteleone