User:CambiaRte

CARLOS JOSE ROJAS NARVAEZ (CambiaRte)

I began taking painting classes in 1996 in a community art school for children and youth with limited economic resources in Leon, Nicaragua. This school taught me to appreciate community, to have courage and pride for what I represent, and to have a creative method to express the reality that I find myself in and am a part of.

In the beginning of 2005, a group of young artists, including me, all... of whom studied in the school I mentioned, decided to give back to our community by creating the “Taller Artistico Xuchialt” (the “Xuchialt” Art Workshop), whose ideology is simply to help new generations to have their own way of expressing themselves within a discouraging society.

Generally, I began painting in the “primitivist” style (also known as the “ingenous,” “figurative” or “Naif” style). My topics involved representing the “typical life” of the campesino (small rural farmers and agricultural workers), which is depicted as happy and routine. This style, and my early work, contains many details, even though they aren’t meant to be perfect, brilliant colors and many things are representations of the reality that the artist sees (but not necessarily realist). In Nicaragua, this style of art became popular during the revolution (1970s) as a form of community and popular art that was accessible to anyone. This is the history that causes my art to have a strong community basis.

In 2005, I came to live in Minnesota. The nostalgia from having left my family and my country stirred up my emotions when I immigrated to this country with a different culture and language. It helped me to understand the affliction that immigrants feel all over the world.

My current works reflect on and questions the discrimination and criminalization of immigrants and the belief that Latinos are all the same. These new experiences have demanded that my art develop so that now my style is a combination of strong colors and the importance of nature, characteristics of the “primitivist” style, with protagonists and symbols that don’t idealize, but rather expose, the realities of the immigrant. On the other hand, I present the new generations of Latinos, born in the USA, with an identity created by two cultures which are completely different and not being fully accepted by either.

I feel that I am a gatherer of real and truthful stories, which affect my consciousness and ask me to express them in the most sincere way. This is the intent of my art, to make the public aware and to hit them with a reality that demands that action be taken to change it.