Yavheni de León
Guatemala, 1990
Visual artist and graphic designer, interested in creation processes and the pedagogy of graphic design and art. His interests move in relation to form, context and time, and stem from his personal history as well as collective situations. His work is developed through diverse media.
He has participated in the EspIRA residence in Nicaragua in 2013, Luis Camnitzer Residency in Antigua Guatemala in 2009, and the residency program of the Centro Cultural España (Spanish Cultural Center) in Tegucigalpa in 2017. He has participated in exhibitions spaces in Guatemala City, such as the 19th Bienal de Arte Paiz, Galería Extra, Galería Trama, Sótano 1, among others.
RESIDENCY RESEARCH PROCESS
Yavheni De León (Guatemala) has developed his proposal from the study and activation of elements such as weight, rotation, balance, and displacement, aiming at human bodies by linking economic aspects of coffee with sculptural, graphic, and installative elements. The links between the value of the coffee bean’s weight and its transportation are Yavheni’s starting points. When investigating about the working conditions in many of the world’s coffee plantations, he discovers how injustices and inequalities begin to appear.
For example, in Guatemala, his country of origin, boys and girls from low-income families participate in the harvest starting at age 9. Stemming from ideas of weight and balance linked to growth, resistance, and carrying capacity, he studies the possibilities of the transformation of objects related to coffee paraphernalia where the concepts of weight or balance have some sort of relevance. This investigation is translated into metaphorical images of the children’s game of ‘seesaw’, as well as the traditional sack used in the coffee plantations to transport or weigh the coffee cherry, or as a media icon for exportation..
– Adán Vallecillo, tutor –
The project was born from putting the little existing accessibility to statistical data and research, in coexistence and dialogue. I question the idea of assumptions and myths as a defense to child labor in coffee-picking farms in Mexico and Guatemala. The study is based on a 2011 thesis and two documentaries that put it in evidence, however they do not coincide in the exact data of weight. Therefore, the assumption and the importance of weight play essential roles in the project.
The idea of balance and play:
Through the concept of weight, the relationships studied are those that can be seen between coffee weight, monetary value, and the weight of child labor or the worker who cuts the cherry. Within this system, there are themes where the concept of “balance” seems to be a metaphorical resource.
In several of the coffee processes, such as harvesting, roasting, and marketing, the weight is present. At the same time, the concept of resistance and passing tests from loaded weights is present in our own lives as part of the idea of growth.
From there, I was interested in identifying possibilities in objects where weight or balance played an important role.
