Robert Brandwayn, XXIst century Colombian artist, grandson of Jewish-Polish immigrants from the beginning of the XXth century, since 2014 centers his work in a creative action of search and reconstruction of the process lived by those who in a given moment find themselves trapped between wars.

The nefarious consequences present at the historical time between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second World War

(1919-1939) which directly affected his grandparents and his great-grandparents such as shortages, xenophobia, the economic depression, the instability and the imminent threat of an unknown future, provoked in some individuals, like his paternal grandfather, the need to look for an opportunity in other lands.

Maybe understanding the situations that produce multiple fractures in the known structures of family, society, friends, work, education system, mother tongue, and daily habits, has moulded the sensitivity and the aesthetic experience of Brandwayn. As well as being conscious that those who, like Israel Brandwayn, become immigrants and necessarily initiate a process of cultural hybridization to incorporate into a new society. It is in this part of the research about his family tree where the resilience becomes evident as a determining factor not to lose the sense of his own nature.

For these reasons, there is no doubt that in order to approximate Robert Brandwayn’s artistic work three concepts are essential: fractured genealogy, migrations and resilience, which allow to sensitise and interpret the mobilization processes which change the lives of families in a postwar. Today, a hundred years later, we have again in the world stage multiple displacements, which united to other personal factors, motivate Brandwayn in his creative work and awake the need to propose himself to live an artistic experience of reconversion of the memory with the challenge of vanquishing the mystery that surrounds the life of the families that abandoned their place of origin in search of a promised land with a possible future.

With a B.A in music and international relations from the University of Pennsylvania, and studies in Art and European History from The Ecole du Louvre and Tolbiac Sorbonne in Paris, Robert Brandwayn's work aims at understanding how resilience, solidarity, and the creative spirit, help migrant groups survive and thrive despite the interruption and longing being a migrant entails. Starting with the story of how his grandparents arrived form Poland to South America before the Second World War, Robert has created an imaginary chronology based on letters, photos, documents, permits, stamps, and other memories which he has adhered to memory walls and translated to works of music and art. These explorations have made him understand how the fragility of our geographical permanence is universal and felt by anyone who has had to deal with emotional and physical remoteness, farewells and abandonment. It has also led the artist to explore the mystical implications of an imperfect world, where our actions can lead to its restoration.

Brandwayn's works have been exhibited in salons and galleries in Colombia, Venezuela, China and the United States, and belong to public and private collections in those countries. Selected individual and group exhibitions include: "Vital Memory" at the MACZUL (Museum of Contemporary Art of Zulia) in Maracaibo, Venezuela (2017), "Power of Perception", at Raw Art Space, New York (2013), the Young Artists Salon of the Museum of Antioquia in Medellín (1995); "Artronica" at the Museum of Modern Art of Bogotá (2005); and the Common Ground International Touring Exhibition, Huan Tie Museum in Beijing, China (2008). In 2019 the artist will participate in the exhibition "Spinoza, Marrano of Reason" in Amsterdam, Holland; organized by the Jewish Art Salon, and curated by Janet Heit and Billha Zussman, with assistant curator Goldie Gross; the individual exhibition "Timeline of Non-Time" from July to September at the Contemporary Art Museum of Santa Marta, Colombia; and a permanent exhibit at the Palazzo Rosselli, in Florence, Italy, represented by Studio Abba.

Piedad Casas

International Curator

AICA Member