From a Giggle to a Gut-Punch: The Potent Works of Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa
I couldn't say exactly what year it was when I first met Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, but I do have a vivid recollection of my first 15 minutes with him. I had been teaching a teen program at an arts institute in Vancouver and for the first class, the students were partnered up, doing an exercise with polaroid cameras as a bit of an ice-breaker. Because of the odd number of students, Naufus was left with me. While other students smiled sheepishly into the camera, awkwardly posing for each other, in minutes, I was ushered outside onto a playground structure and directed to photograph him from a birds-eye view – a tight frame focusing on his expressive face, his hands reaching up in a dramatic re-creation of a scene from a Maria Callas opera.
As a teen he already had a confident vision and flair for the dramatic that was often steeped in the traumatic. Informed by the painful history of Guatemala, the horrors that often surfaced in his paintings & sculptures stood in sharp contrast to his gentle demeanour.
When Naufus expressed an interest in performance art, I immediately thought of Glenn Alteen and grunt gallery – a place that has supported and nurtured so many artists at the early stages of their careers, a place with an established archive of performance art in Vancouver, a place of eclectic exhibitions, performances and happenings, a place where raucous energy could give way to an impromptu musical performance or a spontaneous leg-wrestling contest. There was an unruliness/openness that could accommodate Naufus’ experimentation and multidisplinary practice. There was also no shortage of revered artists hanging out to serve as inspired mentors.
Witnessing Naufus’ performances could evoke a variety of reactions - from a giggle to a gut-punch. He could be comical, vulnerable & fearless, sometimes all at once. In an unforgettable performance for LIVE at Gallery Gachet in 2001, he took on a larger-than-life historical figure in Sodomizing Diego Rivera, a gloriously sloppy and uninhibited display of irreverence, complete with a Mariachi band. Body confidence meets bawdy confidence! At grunt gallery, in his 2002 performance Original Banana Republic, Naufus transformed his legs with bananas and plastic wrap into squishy, lumpen, cartoonish appendages. Using humour to address a political coup in Guatemala, there was an over-riding sense of precariousness as he danced - his body teetering on the verge of collapse with every move. When viewing the installation Children’s Tears Laid Out to Dry (2007), I was reminded of a re-occurring theme Naufus had tackled as a teen: War Babies. The civil war in Guatemala also loomed large in a profoundly moving series of videos - Requiem for Mirrors and Tigers (2018). Images of his ample body literally upholstered, cushioned and bound, laid out in a dreamy, fantastical state were compellingly beautiful. In another moment, images of Naufus in a cemetery, cradling like a child, a dripping block of ice, brought me to tears.
Powerful. Political. Poetic.
From grunt to the Guggenheim and beyond, it is no surprise that Naufus’ evocative body of work continues to garner critical attention and stretch across an ever-expanding international stage.
Fiona Mowatt, 2024
Fiona Mowatt is a visual artist, arts educator and former board member of grunt gallery living on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ/selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her first solo exhibition, The Condom Series, was exhibited at grunt gallery in 1993 and she has been an active supporter of the gallery ever since.
As a teen he already had a confident vision and flair for the dramatic that was often steeped in the traumatic. Informed by the painful history of Guatemala, the horrors that often surfaced in his paintings & sculptures stood in sharp contrast to his gentle demeanour.
When Naufus expressed an interest in performance art, I immediately thought of Glenn Alteen and grunt gallery – a place that has supported and nurtured so many artists at the early stages of their careers, a place with an established archive of performance art in Vancouver, a place of eclectic exhibitions, performances and happenings, a place where raucous energy could give way to an impromptu musical performance or a spontaneous leg-wrestling contest. There was an unruliness/openness that could accommodate Naufus’ experimentation and multidisplinary practice. There was also no shortage of revered artists hanging out to serve as inspired mentors.
Witnessing Naufus’ performances could evoke a variety of reactions - from a giggle to a gut-punch. He could be comical, vulnerable & fearless, sometimes all at once. In an unforgettable performance for LIVE at Gallery Gachet in 2001, he took on a larger-than-life historical figure in Sodomizing Diego Rivera, a gloriously sloppy and uninhibited display of irreverence, complete with a Mariachi band. Body confidence meets bawdy confidence! At grunt gallery, in his 2002 performance Original Banana Republic, Naufus transformed his legs with bananas and plastic wrap into squishy, lumpen, cartoonish appendages. Using humour to address a political coup in Guatemala, there was an over-riding sense of precariousness as he danced - his body teetering on the verge of collapse with every move. When viewing the installation Children’s Tears Laid Out to Dry (2007), I was reminded of a re-occurring theme Naufus had tackled as a teen: War Babies. The civil war in Guatemala also loomed large in a profoundly moving series of videos - Requiem for Mirrors and Tigers (2018). Images of his ample body literally upholstered, cushioned and bound, laid out in a dreamy, fantastical state were compellingly beautiful. In another moment, images of Naufus in a cemetery, cradling like a child, a dripping block of ice, brought me to tears.
Powerful. Political. Poetic.
From grunt to the Guggenheim and beyond, it is no surprise that Naufus’ evocative body of work continues to garner critical attention and stretch across an ever-expanding international stage.
Fiona Mowatt, 2024
Fiona Mowatt is a visual artist, arts educator and former board member of grunt gallery living on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ/selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her first solo exhibition, The Condom Series, was exhibited at grunt gallery in 1993 and she has been an active supporter of the gallery ever since.
