Carlos Rolón: Rest In Paradise

Rest In Paradise by Chicago based artist Carlos Rolón is window installation at Listen Hear commissioned by Big Car co-founder Shauta Marsh in response to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. May of 2020 their killings sparked demonstrations across the world and provoked a long over-due reckoning in the United States about systemic racism.

Big Car is headquartered in the south side of Indianapolis, long known to be unwelcome to people of color. Our place, this mural and programming are an effort and proof that the arts can be a tool in overcoming, healing and uniting despite societal ills.

About Carlos Rolón

Known for his multi-disciplinary practice whose work employs a wide range of media to explore themes of craft, ritual, beauty, spirituality, identity and its relationship to art history and the institution. Born to a Puerto-Rican family, Rolón’s background allows the artist to explore personal ideas which directly deal with questions of inclusion, aspiration and cultural identity. Often connecting childhood memories, the artist bore witness to the ways in which households have adapted to new American middle-class lifestyles with homes, walls and furniture adorned with ephemera of color, texture, patterns and items brought into the home to create a sense of longing. It is from here Rolón takes inspiration and transforms these vantage points producing a hybrid language of exuberant flora paintings, sculpture, social practice and site-specific installations composed of diverse materials that offer opportunities for self-reflection, rich symbolism and community engagement, bridging the divide between public and private. Rolón explores how cultivated settings and social barriers operate and its relationship to postcolonial spaces. The work is at once melancholic, excessive and exuberant, poised somewhere between celebration and regret. Inviting the viewer to engage in discourse and discussion.