PERRO NAHUAL

Sometimes, the augurs of ancient Rome predicted the disasters while painting, and precisely there, among the symbols, people knew how to distinguish the signs of barbarousness, war, decandence and corruption.
(In Mexico, the nahual, human-animal that feeds himself with the reflection of the soul, is a primitive augur that knows what will occur because he lives incorporating dreams and predictions…just like dogs still do).
What we see in this series of terrible images corresponds to a certain kind of magical metempsychosis, where the photographer’s gaze is already an apocalyptical reminder. Through the way he approaches these “beloved” animals called dogs (the same ones that are characters of Victor Hugo, Anton Chekhov, Jack London, Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Nabokov and many others) he is capable of effectively creating “altars of horror”, with all the pathos and sublimation possible only by artists with such a powerful sensitivity. (extract)

Hugo Argüelles

Seoul, Korea, 2002

Mexico City, 2002

Museums & Galleries

Perro-nahual
Roman Forum (Mercati di Trajano)
FotoGrafia, Festival Internazionale di Roma
Curator: Marco Delogu
Rome, 2002

No Money No Honey
Arèa -contenitore d’arte contemporanea-
Curator: Antonio Arévalo
Palermo, 2003

European Festival of Photography
La Station  – with the support of the Municipality of Nice & Villa Arson
Curator: Cédric Teisseire
Nice, 2007

“The nahual or animal alterego represents the strongest bond between man and nature surrounding him; a kind of insurance against the human forces not capable of giving satisfaction to the constraints of the natural world where he lives and acts, over which the cultivated man has risen but is still attached to…”

“… It is a disjunction from the ‘Me’ that we are (or think we are) towards the other that we also are, and who is always different from us. Disjunction: apparition; experience of the oddity of being human.”

Octavio Paz