The Last Hovel

Referring to the historical quotation “until firing the last cartridge,” attributed to a colonel commanding outnumbered troops in a battle during the Pacific War in the late nineteenth century, here Salazar uses ironic wordplay [cuartucho means “hovel,” while cartucho means “cartridge”] to focus on the precarious conditions of national housing and its emblematic material: woven thatch matting as a basic structural separation – used mainly in the construction of squatters’ settlements along the Peruvian coast. This “wall” on which the artist realizes a brief and light pictorial gesture is even more precarious than the material it is made on. (TC)