Untitled

Like many artists of Mexico’s Oaxacan School, Santiago Avendaño has explored the metaphorical and aesthetic possibilities of the animal form. In Untitled, a plethora of dogs, birds, rabbits, goats, and other, more visually ambiguous species are scattered about the picture plane.  Their placement offers no unified narrative of the animal or its role in either human or ecological society. The work's anonymous multiplicity of forms suggests violence—animals seize and collide with each other—but also the redemptive possibilities of symbiosis, hinted at in the mouths that appear to kiss, joining their bodies in transformation.