The creation of this museum is based on love with a dash of irreverence for convention. First, there is no museum; we just said there was, and you do not need to send money to fund anything. I am not really an international artist, and the poets represented had very little to do with this exhibition. It is all a farce. Yet, the paintings are real. They exist in my basement and were all done at different moments in time, inspired by the verses of the featured poets, all of whom I admire for their constant belief in the power of words to change the world. 

I did not paint portraits to please anyone. I am not a painter. I am an academic who likes to play with colors. In my profession, I stay on top of hundreds of details daily, but when I play with colors, I do not think or plan. I do not have goals. I simply enjoy watching the paint make images for me.

Recently, while listening to poetry and painting the tiles of my ceiling, the paint showed me Gaby Sambuccetti’s face, so I went with it. I tried to make her as magical as I perceive her ‘good/bad’ poet nature to be. For whatever reason, perhaps too much wine, I decided it would be nice to send her a note of appreciation with the painting, which may have been a mistake because Gaby’s next words were: “I have an idea!” and thus the idea for a ‘virtual museum’ for an ‘international artist’ exhibit  was born.

In this somewhat haphazard collection we have put together for you, you will see the concept of the poet as rendered by my brush as well as three to four verses from each poet that have been chosen by others. With the authors’ agency removed (after all nobody is in charge of their own images or words), we can offer a fictional museum of real people and texts filtered through levels of subjective interpretation that mimic the way poetry functions when consumed. In so doing, we hope to emphasize the reciprocity of art: i.e. the reader/viewer is as necessary as the poet/artist for poetry/art to take place.

As a collective, we hope to amuse you, by asking you to attend a fake exposition with no other aim than to make you look at notion of art and poetry under a different light. Who are these artists? Why were they painted? Why these verses and not others? Is there any logic at all? Possibly. But only if you create your own museum of meaning with all you have been provided.

The Poets Museum

Poet: Sofía Sánchez

“It was not a poem
it was a flower,
and time
an apple man”*

*From the event: we are not poets. ‘Es tampoco es una pipa”

Poet: Enrique Bernales Albites

“The oven was giving birth to the ashes,
and there was a pain
produced by gently stabbing
with ignorance”*

*8 essays of Peruvian Reality’s Interpretation
(from the unpublished book Between home and the sea)

Poet: Gaby Sambuccetti

“I will tell you the secret
about your idols:
they are not worthy of your time” *

*The Good, the Bad & the Poet (Bilingual Edition). “Idols”
El Ojo de la Cultura, London (2020).

Poet: Florentino Díaz

“I sing with Bach & Dietrich,
Benjamin & Artaud,
with the flights of the soul,
while you sing this endless dazzling gleam”*

*Florentino Díaz, Berlin Ode (2015)

Poet: Carolina Sánchez

“The distant shouts
by the birds
are a unique
unit of time”*

*From the book Voyage/Viaje (Ultramarina Cartonera & Digital, 2020),
that is an intermedial translation from Tarkovsky´s film Stalker 
into poetry.

Poet: Iván Vergara

“Feeling uneasy
we open our eyes
and we look at each other
knowing that
we’ll never know”

*From the unpublished book Evocaciones, mascotas y miedos. “06:08 hrs.”