Venezuelan artist exhibits paintings at Manhattan Arts Center
[This story was originally published on themercury.com. Story written by Kristina Jackson, gallery photos above by Lewis Marien]
Pablo Diaz Carballo saw his neighbor’s beautiful flowers destroyed by a late snowfall last spring. Seeing the flowers destroyed felt symbolic to Diaz.
“The metaphor came to my mind about the beauty and fragility of the flowers like the beauty and fragility of freedom,” he said.
Diaz, who lived most of his life in Venezuela but now lives in St. Marys, spent years trying to upend the system in his home country through art and education. Some of Diaz’s recent work is on display at Manhattan Arts Center. He said creative minds working together can change the world.
Conceptual artist and painter, Pablo Diaz Carballo, greets guests at his artist reception at the Manhattan Arts Center on March 24. Photo credit: Pablo Diaz Carballo staff
“Through the arts, it’s a great way to expand the mind through creativity and transform the system,” he said.
Diaz was a member of an activist movement in Venezuela in the 1980s but left the movement when Neo-Nazis and other extremists infiltrated the group. He founded an organization called Ideo Arte in the 1990s to introduce elementary school students to the arts.
“The students must learn how to be creative, not just repeat and repeat and copy and repeat,” Diaz said.
Diaz said the schools didn’t have good arts education, and he wanted to change that. He said the arts promote divergent thinking. Diaz also studied anthropology and sociology.
“With creativity, you can find multiple solutions to one problem,” he said.
Diaz and his colleagues were working to help people recognize the problems they felt existed in the socialist government in Venezuela.
“At that moment we were seeing how the country was destroyed little by little,” he said. “We were looking for human rights.”
In 2014, Diaz said men with guns from a paramilitary group showed up at his home in Caracas and threatened him. After this experience, Diaz and his family left Venezuela. They lived in Willemstad, a Dutch island in the Caribbean, before coming to the United States in 2019.
“After that, we could not come back,” he said. “I didn’t want to get out of my country.”
Now that Diaz is getting settled in the United States, he is able to refocus on his own art and arts education. He said although there are many digital opportunities to interact with art now, physical spaces are still crucial.
“It will never be the same as when you are in the presence of a painting,” He said.
He said he still believes that art can change communities for the better and creative thinking can build a better future.
“If you want to change something, you must be more creative than the system,” Diaz said.
Diaz’s exhibit is open at Manhattan Arts Center until April 22.