Artworks

WALTON FORD

"Once numerous, the brightly-colored Cuban red macaw is now extinct. Walton Ford’s solitary, splendidly feathered macaw sits on a branch, beset by pesky flies and surrounded by various traps to capture him. The clue to the allegory is in the title, “La historia me absolvera” – “History will absolve me.” This was Fidel Castro’s final statement in a lengthy dec-laration against the abuses and corruption of the Batista government, delivered as his self-defense during a secret trial after the failed attack on an army barracks in Santiago, Cuba, in 1953.

Sentenced to fifteen years in prison, Castro was released two years later under a general amnesty for political prisoners; four years after that, Batista fled as Castro’s forces seized Havana. Attempts to oust Castro by force or assassination in the early 1960s failed; Castro remained president of Cuba until his resignation in 2008. Ford here illus-trates these attempts to unseat Castro as flies and traps, and adds a text about bomb-rigged seashells and a fungus-impregnated diving suit. But only the future will answer Castro’s defiant statement of 1953.”

– David Kiehl