Continually varying his formats and supports, Caro used appropriation and repetition to bring attention to iconic images. Here, he reproduces the signature of the Indigenous revolutionary and self-taught lawyer Manuel Quintín Lame (1883–1967), who was imprisoned by the Colombian government for eighteen years. Quintín Lame closed his groundbreaking writings about Indigenous sovereignty with a signature that combined his Spanish name with an ornate pictogram. Caro’s pigment is made from the red-orange seeds of an achiote, a tree native to Colombia, which became a valuable commodity in transatlantic trade routes starting in the sixteenth century, when Spanish colonizers arrived in Colombia.

Gallery label from

2024

Medium Achiote on paper
Dimensions 18 7/8 × 26 9/16" (48 × 67.5 cm)
Credit Latin American and Caribbean Fund and partial gift of Camilo Vasquez Caro
Object number 190.2023
Department Drawings and Prints

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