Carlos Delgado: Macondo

In the tradition of figurative painting, Delgado stands apart with a marked contemporary aesthetic. In his young career, he has garnered much attention, winning several art awards by the Toronto Arts Foundation, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Canada Arts Council, as well as being an artist in residence at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto. His work has been shown in group and solo shows across Canada and his native Colombia, as well as in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, and Russia; it is also held in private collections in Asia and Australia.

In literature, “Macondo” is a mythical village created by Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author, Gabriel García Márquez. It serves as the setting for the Buendía family saga in One Hundred Years of Solitude, is synonymous with “magical realism,” and is used culturally when describing Colombian heritage. In Delgado’s case, it’s used to capture the merging of his own two-city life — as the rural mountains of Riosucio symbolically meet the urban Canadian metropolis of Toronto.