Los Angeles June 2020  

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I remember that in the 80s, for our mothers, there was nothing more desirable and aspirational than having a mink fur coat, I always wondered how they would tear the skin off of those poor animals and make coats, my mother would tell me back then not to think about those weird things because animals didn't suffer, Curro, "animals don't have feelings they don't suffer, eat your lentils."

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Years later PETA threw blood at models at a fashion show featuring this type of clothing and the world began to ask questions. Today there is nothing more uncool than wearing a genuine mink fur coat.  The same happened with bullfighting, as well as safari-hunting in Africa. The same goes for intensive cattle breeding, the Mezcal Margarita straws that get stuck in turtles’ noses in Ecuador. Today there is nothing more uncool than mistreating an animal. Time eventually makes it right, correcting the excesses of the consumer society. A few months ago flying by private jet was the coolest, until Joaquin Phoenix in his speech at the Golden Globes, crucified this industry by saying that actors should follow the advice and stop using this type of mega- polluting transportation to go on a weekend to Palm Springs (three hours drive from Los Angeles).

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Curiously, we have not seen any private jets on the Instagram posts of our beloved celebrities, either Kanye, Travis Scott, Maluma, or Justin Bieber. Flying by private jet today is already uncool. As were fur coats, bullfights, and African elephant horns on the wall. The world is correcting the senselessness of the past. The capitalist fury reaches the most extreme absurdity when it makes us ashamed to post that we donated 1,000 dollars to UNICEF (donating has to be done in secret, it is uncool to say that one helps, that, one keeps to oneself). But it is allowed and celebrated when we publish that we have bought a 1,000 dollar Louise Vuitton bag. It is a meaninglessness that the world will correct sooner or later. Super-luxury brands will be the new Uncool, icons that serve to separate us rather than to unite us. In the era of Greta Thunberg, in no time, wearing the pattern of Louis Vuitton, Chanel or Dior will mean the same as proudly posting a selfie with a newly hunted rhinoceros in the Mombassa plains.

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Marked is a visual reflection on this phenomenon that will arrive sooner or later. Our characters are alone, vulnerable, stigmatized and somehow branded by what they once were and are no longer. As were the last mothers who wore mink coats. The last elephant hunters in Kenya, the last users of private jets in Los Angeles. The last bullfighters, the last new Uncool.