Excroissances, 2022

“Excroissance” is a new photography series by Iván Argote, continuing the work done in previous series like “Turistas,” in which Argote intervenes on existing monuments tied to figures of power or colonial figures. In this new series, Iván works with statues in Rome, attaching branches or plant elements that seem to emerge from the sculpture or its pedestal, as if they were growing through the hard stone. This series continues the concept he presented at the Venice Biennale with “Descanso,” where Argote showed a statue of Christopher Columbus lying down, eventually overtaken by a garden filled with plants from all over the world, creating a sort of vegetal artwork that swallows up this colonial figure. In “Excroissance,” Iván calls upon the idea of nature growing from the inside out, pushing through the stone, and suggesting that these images could also be overtaken by nature, implying that decoloniality can also be achieved through the agency of nature itself.