"Art that Weeps for Our Sins: Napoleon Brousseau - BioFeelWell"
2002-08-09 until 2002-10-15
State Capital Building, Santa Fe
Santa Fa, NM, USA United States of America

Internationally acclaimed Canadian Artist Napoleon Brousseau, showing in Santa Fe for the first time, presents us with a bitter-sweet, Catholic-inspired,"Tibetan prayer flag-like" art "that will weep for our sins" in the Biophilia Show. Curated by Santa Fe artist Bobbe Besold the show includes 25 artists displaying a wide array of contemporary art, installation, video, photography, and sculpture on the theme of our interrelationship with the Biosphere   

Brousseau's installation {the 2nd in a series} is comprised of 6 of the artists' charcoal drawings which he has recycled by slathering them in milk chocolate into which he embeds a rock salt tear shaped image. Looking delectable enough to eat, the art piece through the interaction of the chocolate, salt, and atmosphere will weep salty- chocolate tears onto earth on the floor. For what sins?

Brousseau explains, "All the luxury that we in the West consume, has a price to pay in its' impact on humans and the Earth. Chocolate, for example, an affordable little luxury available to anyone here. Do you realize at what real cost that little chocolate bar comes? Forty percent of the worlds Cocoa is harvested mainly from slave labour. Today, there are more children working in slavery than ever before! It's horrendous! The cocoa slaves, can't afford to taste what they work for. Not to mention the pesticides. I came across a quote from an enslaved cocoa worker in the Ivory Coast who said "tell them that when they eat chocolate they are eating my flesh." That was the inspiration for the Bio Feel Well.

"All life on this planet is interdependent. When are we going to wake up from this Denial State?" For more about The Denial State see Brousseau's website www.brewsoul.com

Brousseau's art is brilliant in its' innovative exuberance for showing the naked truth in idiosyncratic ways. Co-founder of the ecological and politically oriented ground breaking art collective called Fastwurms in 1980 in Toronto, their installations, using found mattresses, potatoes, tar, birch bark, crystals etc. garnered them raving accolades in Canada, at Osaka '90, and in Italy. Brousseau has gone solo since 1991.

Brousseau, will talk on his 25 year art career at El Museo on Sunday Aug. 11th at 7:00 pm. Close to being a modern day Da Vinci, Brousseau does erotic, surrealist charcoal drawings, New Media and Digital Portraits, miniature watercolours from travels in India, jaw dropping androgynous oil paintings,even building props for the Pee Wee Herman TV show! Napoleon "says what he has to say and says it hot." Thanks D.H. Lawrence. Napoleon, like his namesake, is one artist whose work you will not forget. Be there.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of New Mexico

Other Important Exhibitions in United States