ART "MUSEUM" OF THE TIRED, POOR & REJECTED
San Diego - Liberty Station
Roberta Marroquin
FEBRUARY 10 -MARCH 15
Photographs she took in Africa over 3 years. They were sold to raise money for schools in the Congo.
ROBERTA MARROQUIN
WILDISH GAMBIT SERIES
2017-2021
In 2016, Roberta Marroquin and Sylvia van den Brink met in Monterrey, Mexico. Roberta is an artist-photographer and Sylvia is the founder and president of the En Classe Foundation. Moved and impressed by the great mission of En Classe, Roberta, with the help of Sylvia, began to create a project which would greatly aid the foundation. In March 2018, Roberta joined Sylvia on a trip to Kinshasa to document the projects organized by En Classe with her photography. Roberta felt so touched by the local students that she curated and organized this exhibition in honor of her wonderful memories in Kinshasa and her collaboration with Sylvia. With the exhibition, Roberta does not only want to raise funds but also aims to create awareness. She also would like to acknowledge and showcase all the joy and hope seen among the children of Kinshasa thanks to the efforts of En Classe.
The ability to imagine an ideal world is intrinsic to the cognitive capacity of each human being. However, what for some may be a pleasant journey, to others becomes a way to escape a harrowing reality.
En Classe began in 2007 and established a presence in the Congo; one of the poorest countries in the world. Goal is being meet with a quality of education for children, to date more than 16,000 students have attended class, 4,700 have learned to read and 111 classrooms have undergone renovation. All of these children can continue to dream and believe that dreams can become reality.
ART Statement: What is reality? What truly exists? With these fundamental two questions as a point of entry, we can travel to the parallel universe that Roberta Marroquin has conveyed with each image in WILDISH GAMBIT. Venturing far from logic and reality as we know it, the journey to a distant world is the fundamental narrative in this series of images. A daring juxtaposition of individual elements confined to one space creates physical environments beyond human understanding and challenges our reasoning. Overturning, reimagining, and reinterpreting the mundane is precisely where Roberta wants to lead us. Each image acts as a bold invitation, daring us to slip into a surreal world—with a nod to Henri Rousseau’s paintings—a universe dominated by splendid and luxuriant flora and fauna whose beauty is immutable before human presence. Children act as the centerpiece and major element in WILDISH GAMBIT. Their honest and magnetic gaze is so engaging that their line of vision draws the viewer into another dimension. The children’s presence, sometimes august and majestic, at times barely noticeable, interweaves with the image. We finally arrive at the point where the spectator and the image are deeply and intricately connected. This link between the beholder and the beheld is like that between human innocence and curiosity in a magical tale, two interwoven threads inseparable from each other. Each photograph is a tribute to the creative capability of children. Furthermore, this series applauds the immeasurable enthusiasm among youngsters and their eagerness to explore and discover meaning in a constantly changing world.
All the photographs were taken in the Congo and Serengeti in 2017-21 by Roberta and later collaged by her. The project was funded by EnClasse (NGO) and has been exhibited in DRC in the Congo, Barcelona and Madrid.
Different sizes of these photographs maybe purchased from Roberta Marroquin.