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My name is francisco Zarate, (frank xarate) I was born in Buenaventura, a small island in the Colombian Pacific. I currently live in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I was able to finish my university studies as a visual communication designer, where I work as a freelance and continue my learning.
Recently, I finished a postgraduate course in conceptual design at the UNTREF, which allowed me to have an alternative vision and experiment on the potential of the union of art and design. Currently, I continue my learning focused on woodcut engraving and digital printing on canvas.
As a visual artist I work, on one hand, in the intersection between word and image through the between word and image through visual poetry, and on the other hand, my focus is on the ideas of identity, race and homoeroticism, as well as magic, dreams and how I reconstruct through this my own past-future from my Afro-indigenous perception in the present.
I like to think of my work as similar to the mangrove roots from my childhood, where it branches off into many different paths of experimentation, between drawing, painting, digital, and printmaking, as I explore my ancestral Afro-Indigenous background. My work deals with ideas of identity, race, and homoeroticism, as well as magic, dreams, and how we construct our own future. I see artists as healers, and our work as a way to heal ourselves and others. As I am mostly self-taught, I find that the diversity in my work allows me to explore my memories and feelings more fully. I experienced a fruitful cultural hatching upon moving from my small island hometown to the big city of Buenos Aires, and the new surroundings have intensified the constant process of finding my voice.