Paradise4Ever
Gulf Photo Plus
Dubai, UAE
2022
Installation views of Paradise4Ever Gulf Photo Plus Dubai, UAE 2022
Curatorial Text
by Raz Hansrod
We begin in the Migrant Heart, a sacred refuge from detachment and displacement, a place to confront an undying yearning. The heart is desire, and out of it flows Augustine Paredes’ reinterpretations of hallowed images and archetypes strewn throughout myth and history, echoing countless human attempts to represent the eternal.
These are Augustine’s investigations into our collective unconscious, grasping for an instruction, a map, a recipe — anything to arrive at a promised Paradise. Through photography, painting, collage, filmmaking, and poetry, he bleeds to visualize this longing and all who strive for it.
Augustine reflects on the myriad ways we create our own idealised images of Paradise, mirages of perfection that waver above mortality. Why do we look toward the heavens for guidance, with stars as our compass? We are inevitably bound by time, so why seek a glimpse of Forever? We yearn for an eternity devoid of want, of hunger, of pain and loss. And yet, what we seek is an oxymoron: without suffering, an eternal life is devoid of living.
By burning images of his body, Augustine prays and repents to cleanse his sins and become a shapeless vapor, rising towards the heavens. He implores you to peer into the Fire and seek the paradise within, your reflection in flames, mirroring the Burning of the Bush.
Left with a mound of ashes, Augustine casts his search toward the heavens, following the smoke. In our naïveté, we create stories, tools and mechanisms to rise above our mortal coil, reversing the Fall. And like Icarus, we fall again, broken and bloodied.
Perhaps not flying, then. Augustine looks to his personal Madonna, his mother, as a window into Paradise, and dancing through the portals of his loves, his losses, his longings — he realises: Paradise lives, breathes, bleeds, and dies with us.
Exhibited Works