Death feeds us all. From a mushroom to a chicken, they are all victims of the sacrifice that nourishes humans. Although empathy may make us forget, and lead us to feel sorrow based on the degree of similarity —with the death of a hare hurting us more than that of a potato—let us remember that the duck, in turn, eats insects, and the insects eat other insects. And that those insects eat the lettuce that accompanies the duck on our plate.

In a scene that blends a picnic, a grill, a cave, hunting weapons, and animal remains, Nicolás Wills explores the relationship between humans and their food. The humor in the act of sacrificing his ceramic prey (which, rather than resisting, are being born) is, in some strange and redundant way, reminiscent of the man who emerges from the clay and the woman who emerges from his rib, only to die again at the will of their creator, as the artist himself acknowledges.

It’s funny, aside from its creator-destroyer paradox, because at this point, few of us in the city know what a freshly slaughtered animal looks like. We buy the meat in expanded polyurethane trays; we go to the supermarket and choose a shapeless, refrigerated, segmented, and pale piece. We laugh blindly at a joke that the artist knows well because of his ancestors, hunters on the Bogota savanna, and his upbringing in the countryside.

Perhaps because of industrial processes, mass production, or the virtualization of life, in cities we’ve confined death to a separate space. It may be an attempt to forget, even if only in our food, that constant companion, which makes prominent appearances throughout our lives, until we suffer —or cease to suffer— the final one.

Death has many facets —though all are equally forceful— and the one intended to give rise to another life is the one exposed in ‘Matar el hambre,’ highlighting the inevitable absurdity of the transformation of the same energy, for life and death (if they are two different things at all) are unstoppable forces that break through despite any attempt at sterility.

- Andrea Domínguez Ramírez