Christian Salablanca Díaz (Guararí, Costa Rica. 1990).

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Christian Salablanca Díaz constructs his aesthetic language from personal memories, shaped by his family tradition and the context from which he thinks and produces, specifically the neighborhood of Guararí, on the outskirts of Heredia, Costa Rica. In the 1990s, Guararí experienced significant demographic changes and a process of gentrification that transformed the rural landscape into a new urban territory. This geopolitical measure aimed to provide housing for poor and racialized families who migrated from peripheral, coastal, and rural areas, with the goal of improving their living conditions in the metropolitan area.

Salablanca's work, which utilizes drawing as a primary tool before expanding into installation, sculpture, video, and sound, offers an expanded view of memory—not just as an archive of recollections but as a field of possibilities for redefining connections with his environment, as well as with nature, animals, and plants. Drawing from the ancestral memory of his family tradition and nourishing itself with the local context of his surroundings, shaped by the sociopolitical and geographical changes of his native Costa Rica, Salablanca's work questions colonial perspectives and the relationship that humans establish with the natural world and non-human living beings. It challenges anthropocentric views and proposes alternative interpretations and possibilities regarding coexistence with the environment and among the beings that inhabit this planet

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Among their most recent exhibitions are TOPALEKUAK (2024) at Tabakalera, Basque Country; Enciclopedia de Río (2023) at CAMPO, Pueblo Garzón, Uruguay; VICEVERSA (2023) at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá; Ya no había más Orilla (2022) at IL POSTO, Chile; Unfinished Camp (2022) at Vitrine Gallery, Pivo Pesquisa, São Paulo; El pasado Adelante (2021) at Casa de América, Madrid; Unfinished Camp (2021) at HEK Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel, and at The Shed, New York; Ko ste v dvomu, pojdite v muzej [In case of doubt, go to a museum] (2021) at the Museum Mestni Muzej, Ljubljana; Mesotrópicos (2021) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Panama; and TBA21 _Avanzar con Paso Leve [How to Tread Lightly] (2020) at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid.

 

Salablanca lives and works in Guararí.