Greta Alfaro's film Decimocuarta Estación is shown at Fundacíon BBVA 21 (June - 21 July 2019). The exhibition is part of a series that will offer the first public viewing of works selected in the third edition of the MULTIVERSO Grants. From among the numerous artists submitting entries, an evaluation committee independently selected ten projects, based on the author’s innovation record and the originality of the proposal.
This is a phantasmagorical train journey across the scrubland stalked by Cain’s wandering shadow.
Metaphor for a failed idea of progress, emblem and also facilitator of the Industrial Revolution, the train was an agent of colonialism, globalization and environmental destruction, and has helped shape the identity and fate of the world we live in.
In this endless journey we pass through abandoned stations, like Stations of the Cross without hope of salvation. The clattering, swaying train recalls the to and fro of the costaleros bearing on their shoulders a huge but invisible weight.
In the contemporary epic, though, the legends are different. Solitary men battle against nature and other men in a world where everything is permitted. Land, death, violence and greed from now until the end of the world. The tracks stretch ahead and the gunmen advance with them, each clearing the way for the other. Together they lay the foundation stone of the most savage neo‐liberalism. A road of dust, sweat and iron.
