This month we bring you Federico Airaudo’s ‘Bordes Costeros’ a series of small vignettes from Ecuador’s coastal towns.

‘BORDES COSTEROS’, in English ‘Coastal Edges’, compiles multiple overlapping stories and protagonists of Ecuador’s coast within the borders of the canvas. Thinking of these borders as thresholds, rather than barriers, the work is figured around the concept of ‘edges’. Painting the edges of Ecuador’s coastal towns proposes a charged visual scenario that is energized by diverse and co-existing cultural realities and temporalities. The main piece of the exhibit, ‘Valle del Encanto’ (Enchanted Valley), presences the small fishing town of Santa Marianita as it endures flows of multi-species gatherings and commercialization. This is accompanied by a series of micro-focused scenes that characterize the idiosyncrasies of Ecuador’s coast. Together, this small collection playfully stories the uncanny happenings and unreserved intersections that unfold on the edge - where land meets water, South meets North, ancient meets contemporary.

Federico Airaudo is an Ecuadorian artist currently based in Vancouver, Canada. Federico’s paintings story common-place encounters that shape public life in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s bustling industrial port-city. His work seeks to magnify the multiple, often contradictory, characters of this city- their dress, customs, attitudes, narratives and how their subjective qualities perform in ironic ways. Federico’s visual stories inherit and recharacterize the tensioned socio-political undercurrents of Guayaquil with bright color and humor. Using animals, tropical plants and familiar everyday objects in lively scenarios, Federico’s paintings are at once playful, perverse and particular to this place.

Show runs April 5th – 30th.