[working project]
“An Informal Eulogy”


Concurrently, I am currently working on an archival book titled "An Informal Eulogy" that indexes 72 years of my father's life as a self-taught painter and immigrant Colombian who left Bogota in the 1960's for "The American Dream". Positioning myself as the "archivist", I have spent hours organizing slide films and restoring images of his paintings, tracing oral histories of friends and family, and personal anecdotes of my life growing up. In finishing this book, my intention is to create an accessible book and public archive of my father's cataloged work. 

Throughout the last year, it has become part of my practice to archive my father's paintings and journals. These artifacts are extensions of his vulnerability and the spaces where he existed during his phases of isolation. The accompanying journal entries, and other artifacts to these paintings detail his plans for creative execution and the emotions that surfaced from being on a path that he walked alone. This has created a meditative conversation, seeing him not as my father- but as an artist in the purest form and as a beautiful man in a world that taught generations of men of color that they are not beautiful, that they need to be strong through repression, passive through discrimination, dominating in a structure that never allows vulnerability. This project functions as a conversation between my late father and myself, one that examines the relationship between identity and immigration, loneliness and solitude, and grief and generational healing.

As vulnerability is a shared thread in this project, I have also begun to produce a series of cyanotypes that share personal entries from my father's sketchbook,  as the third part of this project. The cyanotype compositions come from different scanned pages that highlight his thoughts, his poetry, drawings, fragments of his favorite song lyrics and book quotes, and his personality. This creates a space where I can use the sun to expose his intimacy as a Colombian man born during 1945 "The Silent Generation", as an artist, as an immigrant who came from a poor family to work an industrial labor industry in the United states. This part of the project allows me to collaborate with my father through photography as his child, instead of positioning myself as the archivist in the book.

 “José M. Cortes (1945-2021) was born in Bogota Colombia, emigrating to New York at 17 as a self-taught artist.
He spent his entire life painting, drawing, photographing, reading, studying the masters, dreaming, and romanticizing. Jose Cortes painted portraits of people who inspired him, portraits of people who commissioned him, and the portraits of strangers that he would curiously offer to paint. Along with portraits he also painted the landscapes of environments he had lived in throughout his life. Jose was never accepted by institutions and had no formal degree in art, but he kept a disciplined artist practice. Not having the formal language for a contemporary art setting, his work was never exhibited. He was employed as an airplane mechanic until retirement and a car mechanic until his last breath.  In his late 60s, José suffered a stroke, leaving his dominant right hand impaired with limited mobility, this led him to re-teach himself to paint and write with his left hand. After living and working in Miami for almost 40 years, José passed away in his home-studio at 76 years.

Here are a few of the selected samples of my father’s oil paintings.
Click on the slideshow to expand view
1. Kiki (I),
2005-06, 29.5” x 23.5”

2. Retrato de Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
2018-21, 29.5” x 23.5”

3.La última Cena,
2000’s, 22.5” x 28.5”

4. La Candelaria (1),
2017-2019, 19.5” x 25”

5. La Candelaria (2),
2017-2021, painted with left hand, 24”x18”