The totemic object has long served as a bridge between the physical and the spiritual, a form explored by post-war figures like Louise Nevelson and more recently re-examined through a decolonial lens by artists like Simone Leigh. In his exhibition *Do Not Be Afraid* at Parent Company, Leonardo Madriz adds a contemporary, gangly chapter to this lineage, presenting a series of \"sentinels\" that stand as knotted, precarious guardians of the modern moment.
Madriz’s sculptures are built from the literal scrap of survival and the psychic weight of the everyday. In \"Sentinel of Lacrimosa Guerrero,\" the artist weaves together a dizzying array of materials: Aqua Resin, barbed wire, camo neck gaiters, and a wrecked hubcap. Most striking are the fragments of two credit cards—one from the first major debt Madriz ever paid off, the other from a debt that still lingers. These are not merely recycled materials; they are artifacts of economic precarity, bound together by a meticulous vocabulary of knots, including the manger’s hitch and the surgeon’s loop.
There is a deliberate tension in these works between the fragility of their components and their designated roles as protectors. By anthropomorphizing street detritus and personal relics, Madriz suggests that our modern monuments cannot be made of marble or bronze. Instead, they are formed through the poetic, often strained relationships between the objects we discard and the systems—of debt, labor, and urban life—that bind us. These sentinels do not offer a sense of permanence, but rather a watchful, resilient presence within the wreckage.
With reporting from [Hyperallergic].
Source · Hyperallergic
