Carlos Amorales

Like many artists of his generation, Carlos Amorales has a complicated notion of homeland. He was born in Mexico, currently lives in Amsterdam, and disseminates his art through a variety of global outlets, including the Internet. He is interested in the Mexican popular culture of free wrestling, a world of fantastically costumed, masked wrestlers whose "real" identities are hidden behind superhero costumes. One such figure is Superbarrio, a wrestler and folk hero who leads political demonstrations. Amorales has conducted a number of interviews with him and recorded performances by this character and his creator, Marcos Ramos. Included in Let's Entertain, Amorales Interim (1997) consists of a video monitor placed on the floor, which shows a wrestling match in three rounds between two masked men who try to push each other out of the video frame. Amorales describes his work as "an attempt to discuss and understand how physical and psychological confrontation between "self" and "other" shapes our understanding of personal identity and of social image."