José Antonio Hernández-Díez

José Antonio Hernández-Díez was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1964, and lives and works between that city and Barcelona. He studied at the Centro de Formación Cinematográfica, in Caracas, and belongs to a generation of Venezuelan artists that came to prominence in the 1980s. Hernández-Díez emerged in the international arena at a time when the idea of contemporary art as a global language was being proposed, and the dominance of artists from Europe and the United States was being questioned. Using a wide variety of media and a young urban aesthetics he creates works full of sarcasm and social critique that question the authoritarianism, marginality and paradoxes of globalisation. One of his main focuses of interest is the relationship between the religious and the profane. Hernández-Díez’s installations and videos incorporate everyday objects from mass culture, sport and consumerism, as well as scientific material and organic elements such as animals and their organs.