"Pueblo Sacrificio"

"Pueblo Sacrificio". Jaime Carmona. 2026. Acrylic on Canvas. 121 × 91 cm

Pueblo Sacrificio is the second painting in a trilogy exploring the symbolic, cultural, and philosophical dimensions of the bull. Serving as a transition toward a more overtly surreal visual language, the work departs from direct observation and enters a realm where mythology, tradition, memory, and everyday life coexist within the same landscape.

Inspired in part by the atmosphere surrounding the Plaza de Acho in Lima, the painting evokes a distinctly Hispanic world whose geography remains deliberately ambiguous. It could belong to Spain, Mexico, Peru, or to an imagined territory where the cultural threads of the Ibero-American world converge. In this setting, ancestral beliefs, rituals, and magical elements are woven seamlessly into ordinary village life, creating a reality where the sacred and the familiar exist side by side.

At the center of the composition stands the bull, no longer as a participant in conflict but as a presence integrated into both nature and civilization. Humans and animals inhabit the same space in harmony, bound not by domination but by mutual reverence. The relationship depicted is one of coexistence, suggesting an older understanding of the world in which human communities recognized themselves as part of a broader symbolic and natural order.

Through this vision, Carmona explores the idea that bullfighting culture extends beyond the spectacle itself and reflects a deeper way of understanding identity, belonging, and collective memory. Within this cultural universe, social, racial, and political differences are temporarily set aside in favor of a shared symbolic language. The traditions, myths, and rituals associated with the bull become points of connection that unite diverse communities across the Hispanic world.

While the work retains the existential concerns present throughout the trilogy, the relationship between life and death, sacrifice and transcendence, it introduces a more hopeful and communal dimension. Pueblo Sacrificio imagines a world in which ancient traditions and modern life coexist without contradiction, where myth remains alive within everyday experience, and where cultural memory continues to provide meaning in an increasingly fragmented age.

Blending expressionism, symbolism, and elements of magical imagination, the painting invites viewers into a landscape that feels both familiar and dreamlike: a place where history, spirituality, and community endure through shared reverence for the symbols that shape human existence.