Fear and Intensity: Using Art as a Form of Catharsis

“The reality [of the Iraq War] is that it’s a bunch of 17 and 18-year old brown kids who just wanted to go to college for free.”

“I came home and realized I needed to do this art thing for real because I had a lot to say about what I just came from.”

So he turned to art, in all formats. From animation and film, to painting and mixed media. The result is a striking portfolio full of emotion and poignant messaging. Marked with symbolism and clearly reflective of his time in Iraq, his attempt to come to terms with what he experienced clearly comes through.

His hope is to show the true face of war, what it was really about and hopefully “help people to speak out more against it.”

“If you don’t see yourself in it, you really don’t get yourself invested in it.” And that’s exactly what his art goes about doing. One of his first pieces, Life Dances On, a six-minute video, tells the story of a hitchhiker that picks a ride with a drunk veteran on the verge of a mental breakdown. The video serves as an analogy for his life both before and after the war. The intensity of the short film cannot be understated.

More recent work includes the 2017/2018 series “Never Mind Your Entangled Mind”, a series of oversized mixed media canvasses that tell the story about boundaries. Here, Barrientos skillfully weaves rope, canvas and paint to create texture and depth. The thirteen ropes line up to signify prison, fences and restrictions. The signs clearly demarcate off-limits and boundaries. But by taking a step back, the thirteen ropes and the signs instead can be viewed as an American flag. The result challenges the viewer to question whether the American flag stands for freedom or in fact limits.

In his 2019 series “Alienation”, Barrientos continues to explore themes of restriction and barriers. The central material again is rope. By setting a limitation on the color choice and only using three ropes per canvass, he successfully conveys a message of limits and rules on society, people, and ideas. In one piece, what can be initially interpreted as a light bulb moment, can be re-understood as a noose when flipped and viewed in reverse.

One of the strengths of Barrientos work is his uncanny ability to draw parallels between people and the surrounding built environment.

The impact of 2020 is reflected in Barrientos’ recent work. In a year marked with COVID-19 stay-at-home orders and quarantines, his recent paintings reflect confinement to his immediate neighborhood.

Here, in his own neighborhood, Barrientos challenges the idea of gentrification. To him, redevelopment isn’t about cleaning up a neighborhood. It is about colonialism – building for outsiders, displacement and not the community.

“Property as people. People as property.” In much the same way, buildings have sentimental emotions and “people can be bought and sold”. Some of his most recent work shows the personification of buildings. Of how a building’s design projects a personality impacting the surrounding community.

When asked about how he creates his art, Barrientos highlights that art is all about the process. It is a process of evolution and “you never quite know where its going.” The biggest challenge is knowing when it is complete.

And like his process creating art, perhaps the biggest take away from Barrientos portfolio is understanding the journey going through Barrientos tangled mind from Iraq to today.