(Cartagena) Bottle after bottle, the smiling face of Colombian Literature Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez is taking shape. This ephemeral installation with the figure of Hispanic literature is the work of artist Eduardo Butron who used glass bottles recovered from nature.
Posted yesterday at 10:17 a.m.
The installation has been on display since Friday at the seat of government in the department of Bolivar, on the outskirts of the city of Cartagena, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, where “Gabo” lived for many years.
This tribute, which coincides with the 40e anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel to the writer, was made from 10,000 bottles of wine, beer or soft drink collected by the inhabitants of a district of Cartagena built on an old dump and donated by restaurants and bars in town.
But Eduardo Butron particularly appreciates those recovered in the mangroves, rivers or on the beaches. It took the 58-year-old artist a month to collect the bottles, some of which were painted white, and three days to complete the installation.
In addition to the tribute to the author of A hundred years of loneliness who died in 2014, the artist also wanted to “send a message through this work”.
“Together we can work to keep our environment healthy, our rivers and seas clean,” he told AFP. “And that’s the power of art, right? Influencing people’s state of mind and inviting them to take more positive actions”.
Collecting the bottles with the inhabitants of the disadvantaged neighborhood of Cartagena “allowed me to reach out to them and encourage them to take action”, he adds. “I believe that art is a powerful tool for social transformation”, says the Colombian artist who has been collecting waste for 35 years to transform it into art “with an ecological message”.
polluted river
Much of the glass comes from the Magdalena River, the largest river in the country of almost 1600 kilometers which appears in the works of Garcia Marquez as Love in the Time of Cholera or the autobiographical Live to tell.
According to Eduardo Butron, Garcia Marquez “recounts these river crossings, these immense beaches where he could see herons, wild ducks, caimans”.
Today, according to university research, more than 70% of the Magdalena is polluted.
“Not only is there contamination from solid waste”, but also from “sewage, illegal fishing and mining which releases too much mercury” and poisons underwater fauna.
The tragic fate of the Magdalena River, in the words of the artist, would today have its own pages in the narrative world of Garcia Marquez where tragedy upsets magical places.