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Likewise, Eduardo Abaroa’s complex, fanciful sculptures also play with subversion. Transforming non-traditional art materials such as plastic drinking straws and ear swabs into organic-like forms and complex planetary shapes, respectively, Abaroa’s works are suggestive of the tension existing between the artificial and natural. Body Cavity Inspection Network (2005) is one in a series of works in which Abaroa attaches the tips of cotton swabs to form segmented compositions resembling chemical compounds or intergalactic entities. These works are reminiscent of the complex and referential relationships between the World Wide Web, certain scientific practices like genetic engineering, and many intricate human networks that are psychological, biological, chemical, and physical in nature. Rather than consider technology and craft as opposites or mutually exclusive, Abaroa posits that the strict division between the natural and machine-made may in fact be a cultural exaggeration.2
Abaroa’s work is further informed by his experiences in his native Mexico during the early 1990s, a period during which the Mexican economy and social landscape were transformed by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).3 As a message of defiance, Abaroa utilizes “poor” lo-tech materials to critique this rapid societal change. Affording his essentially disposable materials with a technologically-sophisticated vernacular is a subversive way by which Abaroa has negotiated the cultural, social, and economic concerns of our times.