José Vera Matos

José Vera Matos uses drawing to trace the relationship between language, power, and colonial systems in the particular context of Latin America. Selecting pivotal texts in his research, Matos analytically dissects these works, extracting patterns, motifs, and potential visual possibilities. Once this initial stage is complete, Matos begins the durational process of hand transcribing these texts with fountain pens onto bamboo paper. Switching between different coloured inks, and carving abstracted blocks of text onto his surface, a mixture of fluid gestural markings emerge in conversation with quite angular, geometric designs. Sometimes these arrangements echo figures found in pre-Columbian textiles and pottery, whilst other compositions resemble geometric blocks of Incan architecture. What pulses throughout all of these syncopated explorations is a desire to reveal the relationship between colonial structures and language, a need to unearth the written word as a weighty tool and its role in upholding systems of power. Traversing the fields of post-colonial theory, sociology, and semantics in the lens of Conceptual art and mid 1960s Minimalism, Matos continues to make work which is deeply political at its core.