Medusa is the name of a French Navy frigate that sank in 1816. The survivors built a raft to abandon the ship from which finally, after a few days adrift, only a few could be rescued. As is well known, Théodore Géricault (Rouen, France, 1791-1824) painted the famous canvas The Raft of the Medusa in 1819. It is a shocking work for the agony of its protagonists and for the metaphor with which the beautiful and terrible Medusa of mythology transcends into the beautiful and dangerous sea. Nadín Ospina explicitly refers to the icon of romanticism to tell us about our tragic reality, with daily shipwrecks of people who only seek a better future for themselves and their families. The fragile raft carrying the shipwrecked is shown immersed in the images of a sinister sea, populated by prodigious creatures, in the tondo-shaped projection, as if it were the vision of a spyglass.
In La medusa (2017) the theme of the alien, its popular and media representation as a symbolic element of displacement and intercultural encounters is also addressed. The Real Academia Española gives the word alien two meanings: extraterrestrial and foreigner. In this installation, as in Room I, both meanings merge once again. The universe of kitsch retro-futurism serves to enunciate, through the pop image, very serious current issues.La Medusa speaks from the image of the alien of the dramatic circumstances of forced displacement and the shock generated by the ominous presence of the stranger, the intruder, the outsider. The monster is the archetype of all those anonymous beings that awaken the most atavistic and prejudiced fears.
