ARCA DE LA VIDA
"Ark of Life" has been performed using the basis of a boat recovered in the summer of 1994 off the coast of Jaimanitas, Havana (where I was living at that time), during the “Crisis de los Balceros” after what appeared to be a wreck of one of the many outputs made by a lot of Cubans trying to cross the Straits of Florida in the direction of USA.
This period marked my work that had obviously anthropological and philosophical inclinations since I was an art student to make a turning point with a political and social distinctly.
The idea of the work was born immediately to acquire the vessel, but its production was delayed more than a decade. Just got to finish it only in 2010.
I think the drama of the theme and the required respect with which I assumed the work were demanding that carefully chose each symbol used in it. My concern was that its speech was not only reduced to the political issue. This work refer the specific issue of boat people in Cuba but also proposes a cultural reflection about human migrations... Even more: this work intends to reflect on human displacements and proposes a reflection about the theme of intercultural dialogue.
This is as sculptoric-installative piece that has been conceived from my own body size and my own physical characteristics (I could say it is made to my measure). The recovered boat was modified following these premises and it has been made with materials such as ideological components. That is part of the many personal data I include subverted in my works.
As in all my work in general, this piece, that borns of my daily personal experiences has autobiographical character and proposes various discursive levels (with political, philosophical and social content) but is common in my practice that those conceptual budgets that characterise my poetic as an artist, many times takes me to use them veiled, subverted, arcane in works. So that the metaphorical movement of transit that " ark of life" evoques, as ontological symbol of the journey (the life, the existence), do not refers to mere translation in space, but gives greater connotation to the tension of change and experience derived from thereof.
There are some different conceptual projections emanated from the same visual code in my work. "Arc of Life” in that spiritual sense also proposes a speech about the advance from a natural state to an ethical state of conscience through stages that involve a self-improvement as human being and learning that goes with it ...
Arc of Life, ultimately refers or tries to build a metaphor of the existence that describes and lasts the brief span of a human existence

Ernesto Benitez
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Boat recovered off the coast of Havana in a shipwreck during the crisis balceros (1993), modified and become a coffin. Different materials: wood, bronze and textiles. Produced between 1993-2010