Andrés Mario was born into two Cuban families and grew up in Miami as a first generation Cuban-American. The death of his mother helped him galvanized his need to know more about himself and what he is capable of expressing. After graduating, Andrés moved to New Mexico. Since living in the desert, his obsession with death morphed into an obsession for life, and he became eager to learn what it truly means to connect with others. He’s had to ask himself why he is attracted to illness and intensity. Andres Mario believes his own sense of loss and unfairness has made him want to see other people who have experienced profound loss, or who are going through a painful change in themselves
‘Trials’ streamlines all of our individual narratives into a visual record which all collaborators (including the artist) are depicted as a living memorial, meaning we are enacting and becoming testimonies to events that once happened in our past lives. By viewing ourselves as a living memorial, we acknowledge a person’s history, what they are going through now, and how they will be moving into their future. Our bodies serve as personal monuments – representing our dedication to time spent healing, accepting and transforming. This visual record is a tool to enter the collective human experience, in which art is used as a celebration within the midst of intense life changes, and acknowledged as a victory against the harsh realities of living’, according to the creator.
* As a recipent of the 2024 Imagemaker Award from the Society for Photographic Education (SPE), Andrés will be giving a presentation titled: ‘The Heat of Life in a Handful of Dust‘, at the 61st annual conference: New Realities.
