Brooke Alfaro

Born in Panama City, 1949. Alfaro graduated as an architect in 1976, and between 1980 and 1983 studied painting at The Arts Students League, New York. He lives and works in Panama. The main source of Alfaro's work is found in the marginal people of Panama, especially those from the neighborhood of San Felipe, where he lived for many years, and where he still goes almost daily to interact and work. Alfaro tries to expose the vital core of this popular urban sector, in all its pathos, beauty and repulsion, packed with countless ambiguities and contradictions. He employs a biting and deceitful sense of humor that destabilizes any possible interpretation of his paintings and video.

Buscando. Yuri is presented frontally and partially covered by a white sheet that makes us aware of her nudity and the marks on her skin. She starts speaking without looking directly at the camera, describing the manner in which she would like to die and creating a fantasy around the idea of searching for someone who could kill her in a cruel manner. She suggests that she could be taken to the outskirts of town, stabbed and cut up into pieces, an impressive and grotesque image that would be published in the newspapers on the following day, in such a way that everyone would know she had existed. In her fantasy, this lonely alcoholic prostitute who lives and sleeps on the streets, describes her death as an apotheosis, her one and only moment of fame.

Exhibition at Lennox Contemporary Gallery, Toronto, Canada; in the framework of aluCine Festival.