Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo characterizes his creative process as “quite intuitive”. The El Salvador-born visual artist addresses collective memory, the psychological effects of trauma on the body, re-growth, and healing.
“Drawing has always given me that immediate, quick access to ideas,” Ramirez Castillo tells Pancouver over Zoom. “But my practice extends to other things like installation and stop-motion animation.”
The Vancouver creator also engages in traditional printmaking. And over the past year, he has ventured into three-dimensional collages.
However, Ramirez Castillo doesn’t only summon what emerges from within. The Emily Carr University of Art + Design sessional instructor also researches the impact and legacy of the Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980s. This horrific conflict spurred Ramirez Castillo’s family to immigrate to Montreal when he was 11 years old.
“My work aligns with the struggle for justice, for fairness,” Ramirez Castillo says. “And I’ve been influenced by the social movements—the Chicano movement in the States, for sure.”
Ramirez Castillo makes unconscious choices
His new piece, Regiment, was partially inspired by a left-wing insurgency against ruthless U.S.-backed Salvadoran despots whose death squads terrorized the population. It is among three Ramirez Castillo works in The Chromophiliacs exhibition at the Richmond Art Gallery.
The masked rebel holds an assault rifle with vegetation growing out of his torso in place of legs. When asked about this greenery, Ramirez Castillo says that it was an “unconscious choice”.
“It made sense for me to do it,” he adds. “And usually when people ask me that, I have to look for explanations as to why.”
Ramirez Castillo is highly conscious, however, of the trauma that human bodies endure during a civil war.
“Plant life protruding out of these uniforms speaks to a process of healing,” the artist says. “I just want to mirror injustice and how it’s portrayed through the symbolic imagery of the soldier.”
On his website, Ramirez Castillo declares that his “body of work brings a confluence of motifs found in pre-Hispanic mythology, Salvadoran popular folklore, Roman Catholic iconography with styles sourced from Western art history to merge a hybridized aesthetic of historical, cultural and personal experience”.
The Chomophiliacs exhibition embraces colour
The curator of The Chromophiliacs, Zoë Chan, told Pancouver last month that this exhibition features Metro Vancouver artists working across artistic and craft-based mediums.
“Their use of colour is often linked to cultures and artistic traditions that embrace colour rather than reject it,” Chan stated. “There’s an idea that to talk about serious issues that you have to use muted colours—this exhibition rejects that idea. The featured artists are exploring all kinds of questions related to mental health, death, the impacts of colonisation, war, et cetera.”
Ramirez Castillo points out that he grew up in a tropical environment with Indigenous ancestry. His colour palette is embedded in Salvadoran and Indigenous cultures.
“If anything, my main influence has been my upbringing,” he maintains.
Yet he also admires Kashmir-raised artist Raqib Shaw, who paints vibrantly coloured jewelled surfaces. Ramirez Castillo adds that he balances that with an appreciation for Francisco Goya. The influential Spaniard bridged the Old Masters with dark and psychologically layered modernist works.
Like Goya, many of Ramirez Castillo’s pieces tell raw and intense stories about the effects of violence. And he’s adamant about not wanting his work to be reduced to propaganda.
“I just trust the process,” Ramirez Castillo says. “It’s not like I have a preconceived notion of how it’s going to look at the end. I don’t think any artist does that, to be honest. It would defeat…enjoying the process.”
To learn more about Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo, visit his website or follow him on Instagram @osvaldoramirezcastillo. The Richmond Art Gallery presents The Chromophiliacs until April 5. For more information, visit the Richmond Art Gallery website. Follow Pancouver on X @PancouverMedia, Bluesky @pancouver.bsky.social, and Instagram @PancouverMedia.
