What to do With Narco Art?

Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt at work.
(Photo: Colartes)

During his long life, Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt, one of his era's most accomplished Colombian sculptors, created works for airports, plazas and museums, commemorating themes of religion, liberty and human rights across Colombia and Mexico,where he lived for 25 years.

But Arenas, who lived from 1919 to 1995, also made one sculpture paying tribute to one of the worst people Colombia has produced: narcotrafficker Pablo Escobar. Now, Colombia may have to decide what to about an artwork which represents the intersection of wealth, crime, art and even sexuality.

The sculpture, called La Familia hangs on a wall of Escobar's El Monaco apartment building in Medellin. It isn't one of the artist's most distinguished works: It portrays sexualized figures standing one atop another, the woman a stereotypicaly voluptuous narcotrafficker's fantasy.

Medellin now plans to demolish the Monaco building in an
effort to change its narco-city image. That's a questionable policy in an era when historical memory is gaining importance. After all, the narcos' extravagant lifestyle demonstrates what happens when a sought-after commodity is prohibited: It makes vicious criminals rich.

La Familia, on a wall of the
El Monaco building in Medellin.

Many narcos, altho not known for their appreciation of fine culture, did collect expensive artworks to show off and to launder their millions. After their deaths or arrests, the art was generally seized and auctioned off by authorities as the ill-gotten gains of criminal enterprise. (However, Pablo Escobar's brother Roberto did recently - and incomprehensibly - win a lawsuit against the government for the value of art and other valuables confiscated from his apartment after the Medellin cartel's collapse in the early 1990s.) Those objects have reentered the world's art market carrying little taint from dirty money.

But what about art created as a tribute to a vicious criminal?

There's no word about why Arenas created the work for Escobar. Did he fear him? Did he admire the man's criminal accomplishments, or his pretentions of nationalist politics? Or did Betancourt just need the money?

According to news reports, Arenas' sculpture may go to Medellin's 'Museo de la Memoria,' which is to commemorate the victims of Medellin's violence. But that hardly seems like an appropriate abode for an eroticized tribute to a mass murderer.

Prometheuus Unchained, in the Casa del Museo de Antioquia.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours