Paintings as Protest

A red line runs down the canvas dividing it in two. On both sides, the artist has mixed oil paint and cold wax to create a rich surface of texture and corporeality. Tacla often creates incisions in his paintings and leaves parts of the canvas exposed to mirror the tension of his subjects. He compares the paint and wax on the surface to a skin. In May 25, 2020, the "seams" suggest not only cuts in this skin, but also the entrenched polarity of the United States. The pieces have pulled so far apart as to be strained at the edges--any further and they might rip in half.

Jorge Tacla's personal history has given him a unique perspective on how quickly power can shift hands. Although born in Santiago, his grandparents immigrated to Chile around 1910 from Syria and Palestine to escape oppression and political turmoil. As a teenager, he came of age in Chile during the rise of the Communist party, youth-led popular protests and the U.S.-assisted overthrow of Salvador Allende's government, followed by Pinochet's dictatorship. Tacla moved to downtown Manhattan in 1981, just as the Wall Street boom was taking off. He was also in New York City in 2001, when the North and South towers of the World Trade Center fell due to terrorist attacks by Al-Qaeda.