Raimond Chaves, The Creole Touch, 2002. Purchased with funds provided by the American Patrons of Tate, courtesy of the Latin American Acquisitions Committee 2009.
9 rooms in Media Networks
What histories are revealed through album covers?
In 2002, Raimond Chaves stumbled across a vinyl record at a flea market in Lima, Peru. An image of his family featured on the record sleeve. The album was produced in the late 1960s by Discos Chaves, a label owned by Chaves’ uncle in the city of Pasto, Colombia. The discovery prompted an ongoing search for second-hand records at markets across Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States. On his choice of albums, Chaves notes that he is ‘more interested in what appears on the covers than in the music they contain’.
In El Toque Criollo, ‘The “Criollo” Touch’, Chaves displays these collected record sleeves together with his own commentaries and excerpts of lyrics and political speeches. Arranged in 19 groupings, the artist creates a narrative that addresses subjects including migration, social inequality, gender politics, drug trafficking, guerrilla conflict, art history and the impact of globalisation. ‘Most of the images don’t explicitly tell these stories’, the artist notes, ‘but still let them be inferred.’