Biography

Edgar Hernandez was born in Cabañas, El Salvador in the year 1983. His parents were agriculturists who lived in the countryside until 1983. In the year Edgar was born, his father was assassinated. Unable to handle the labor, his mother decided to sell her belongings and move to a small town of Ilobasco. It was here that Edgar was first introduced to art. He was sent to Catholic school where he was taught basic drawing. Ilobasco introduced Edgar to the beauty of ceramics and to the profound Catholic traditions of this region. During this time, there were many restrictions on personal freedoms due to the civil war in which the guerilla fought the republican government. There were often military curfews and the freedom of expression were severely limited. These oppressions led to many incarcerations of the people and to devastating scenes on the streets.

The Influences

I painted a self-portrait because I wanted to show the world the face of a war child. It’s been almost seven years since I fled El Salvador due to the tragedies and  conflicts of the war. I often encountered cadavers on the street after an encounter between the guerrilla and the soldiers.  Soy Yo is a painting that depicts the melancholy I feel towards those memories. I painted a blue background to show the colors of the flag. I dressed myself in red to commemorate those who lost their lives for the cause. The black drape that falls from my left shoulder is that of the dead. In it are the figures of those whose lives were more profoundly marked by the war. In the top portion are my brother and sisters; in the lower half is a single figure representing the other children who, like me, absorbed the horrors of the war through their eyes and ears.  The grotesque leg that originates from my chest is one that represents the inequalities that existed and the absurdity of the war. The hand that appears from the left side is pulling on a string, which pulls the leg of a dead ladybug baby, which later fades into eternity. All of these elements are being sustained by three crutches. One sustains the index finger of the hand; the other two sustain the string as it fades off the painting. These are symbols that show the instability of everyday life in El Salvador from 1980-to the present.

My face is not that I wore during those hard times, but rather it is one that was shaped by what happened in the past. My life would have been another if I had not lived my childhood in fear. Fear of being bombed out of my house; fear of knowing that one day some one in my family could be kidnapped or killed;  fear of knowing that I was losing some of my best friends and relatives; fear of knowing that nothing would ever be the same. Even though I was born after the war had started, I had a picture in my mind of what the past had been. So strong was that vision of the past that I even felt its presence when times got a bit calmer. But I knew this calmness would never come.

On a morning in 1992, after an intense night of bombardment, I walked out of my house to examine the structural damages the attacks had left in the neighborhood.. I was about nine years old. I was eager to get to my aunts house so that I could play with my cousins. As I walked out of my house I found a guerrilla soldier, lying on the unpaved road, his eyes turned backwards and his hand over his forehead with the index and thumb fingers making the sign of the cross. He had been shot vertically down the left side of his torso. I stood there in amazement and wondered if this had been the way my father had been killed.

I was not even half way up the street when I saw a shoe hanging from the electrical wires, and to my surprise a leg was attached to it. I looked down the road and saw the remains of the soldier’s body. His head and chest were still bleeding, but he was already dead. I painted Soldado Mutulado to remind people of the ugliness that war brings. I can only hope that this nation will never lead itself into the hands of the evil I call “war.”