Desaparezco was made for the first Salón Mexicano de Ultramar at the Mexican Embassy in Berlin in 2021. The salon invited Mexican artists living in Germany to work on a 1 m x 80 cm canvas exploring the relationship between nature and culture.
Bela chose the Cozumel raccoon, Procyon pygmaeus, an island species now critically endangered. On the canvas, the animal appears as a low-poly paper head, framed by paper plants and crowned with bright paper flowers. Following the ex-voto tradition, you dress the offering up to make it visible. These flowers act as a small ceremony for a species that is disappearing.
Working between Mexico and Germany, Bela uses paper as a fragile proxy for the animal, much like an ex-voto stands in for an answered prayer. The raccoon is present here and absent there, and the title means I disappear.
