Since the mid-1960s, Miguel Ángel Rojas has worked in various media, such as drawing, printmaking, stitching, and video art. His work addresses diverse issues, including homosexuality and the internal armed conflict in Colombia, with a particular focus on exploring the nuances of experience and the male body. from the time, El Emperador (1973–1980) is named after a movie theatre in the Colombian capital that served as a place for illegal sexual encounters between men during the 1970s. In the black-and-white prints, we see the contour of body parts against a tile wall in the background. The photographs from El Negro (1979) frame the blurry image of a man in a circle. They were taken through a hole in the bathroom door of Teatro Mogador, another cinema in Bogotá’s city centre where clandestine intimate encounters took place. The circumstances of the setting prevented Rojas from capturing the whole body, resulting in anonymised portraits that place viewers in the position of a voyeur. The title of the series points to the subject’s African descent, and it evidences Rojas’s interest in exposing theatregoers from different social spheres. His careful treatment of light and shadow emphasises the ambivalent relation between secrecy and exposure.
This is the first time the work of Miguel Ángel Rojas is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Sebastián Eduardo
