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This painting is inspired by children who are dealing with a chronic degenerative illness or waiting for an organ transplant. The mother of a child living in Michigan who needs a kidney transplant reached out to me. Oakley's story inspired me to create this painting to raise awareness of this need. This painting features a child that is sleeping, covered with a blanket made out of all the dreams these children have. To paint these dreams, I used drawings collected from other parents of these children and the Hildago State Transplant Center in Mexico. It is curious that these drawings are actually the same drawings that every child makes. It is because actually, they are like any other child. The only difference is that they are fighting an illness. All of these dreams are about the future—what they want to be when they grow up or what they want to achieve in their lives. The difference is that if they don't receive an opportunity, they might not be able to make these dreams come true. 

Using elements of the American culture, ¨American Corpus¨ examines the sameness of the human body in relation to the value of life both physically and spiritually. Specifically, the work focuses on the need and power of organ donation. This work is an extention of a project Durán began in Mexico. He began work on this current series in Januray 2014 while living in Detroit.  

Several large scale pieces of the work have been exhibited at the 555 Gallery in Southwest Detroit and was on view at the SDBA for the 2014 National Main Streets conference. The work is scheduled to be exhibited in Artscape 2014 at the Detroit RiverFront Conservancy and Durán is looking forward to participate in the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair, Wyandotte Street Art Fair and Royal Oak´s Art Beats & Eats.

Created in conjunction with the Detroit Institute of Art's “Diego and Frida” exhibition for a concurrent exhibition titled “Windows on Frida,” organized by a group of artists and designers in Detroit.

In these unique portraits of Frida Kahlo, I incorporated the topic of organ donation through the titles and compositions. Frida Kahlo was also very committed in painting about her own anatomic struggles. She painted about her body, her pain, and what it's like to visit the doctor over and over. So I made the connection to my own work and integrated the message of needing good health to live a better life. I used elements from Detroit, such as cars and Detroit landscapes, to link to the fact that Frida Kahlo was living in Detroit with Diego Rivera during the creation of the murals in the Diego Rivera Court in the Detroit Institute of Arts, sponsored by Edsel Ford.

          “CORPUS”, the power of art can bring you into a state of reflection about your own individual existence.

"How strange we are mortals! Each of us is here for a brief stay, for what purpose, we don´t know, though we sometimes think we can feel it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that exists for other people -. Above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many strangers whose fates are bound by the ties of sympathy. Every day I remind to myself hundreds of times that my inner life and outside it is based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must devote myself to give in the same measure as I have received and I am still receiving ... "(Albert Einstein)

CORPUS, el poder del arte puede lograr que entremos en un estado de reflexión con respecto a nuestra propia e individual existencia.

 " Qué raros somos los mortales! Cada uno de nosotros está aquí para una breve estancia; con qué objetivo no sabemos, aunque pensamos a veces que podemos sentirlo. Pero sin una reflexión más profunda uno sabe por su vida diaria que existe para otra gente —antes que nada para aquellos cuyas sonrisas y bienestar sustentan totalmente nuestra propia felicidad, y después para los muchos desconocidos a cuyos destinos se está ligado por los lazos de la simpatía. Todos los días me recuerdo a mi mismo cientos de veces que mi vida interior y exterior está basada en el trabajo de otros hombres, vivos y muertos, y que me debo dedicar yo mismo a dar en la misma medida que he recibido y sigo recibiendo..."  (Albert Einstein)

“ROOTS” is a display of funerary archeology and the revivial of the essence of a people, my people.  It emcompasses small pieces of a past time where roots were underground in the same land that my people lived.  My people, who left their  image in clay and stone, describing a group with myths and traditions, people with a language that walked between the carnal gods became dust.

Between earth and earth-my roots...

RAÍCES, arqueología funeraria que revive la escencia de un pueblo, de mi pueblo, pequeños trozos de un tiempo pasado que cómo reíces bajo la tierra se encuentran, la misma tierra de la que vivió mi gente quien dejó su imagen en barro y piedra describiendo un pueblo con mitos y tradiciones, gente con un propio lenguaje entre la que caminaron dioses carnales que se hicieron polvo. Entre tierra y tierra - mis raíces...

DIBUJO Y GRABADO  -  DRAWING AND PRINTING PRESS