Luisa Palacios Prize at the 2025 Elsa Morales National Art Salon

Honys Torres presents Chronicles of Mercy Reloaded, winner of the Luisa Palacios Prize at the 2025 Elsa Morales National Art Salon

Zurich / Caracas, 2025. Venezuelan artist Honys Torres has been awarded the Luisa Palacios Prize at the 2025 Elsa Morales National Art Salon for her series Chronicles of Mercy Reloaded, a collection of 20 works that function as a contemporary visual archive—irreverent, incisive, and deeply critical of the events that have shaped the world in recent decades.

The collection, conceived as a pop diary of humanity, blends digital collage, global iconography, mass culture, and political symbolism to construct a unique visual language: sharp, vibrant, uncomfortable, and lucid. Each piece operates as a chronicle that dismantles official narratives, exposes contradictions, and reveals the theatricality of power, culture, and society.

A collection that documents the world through excess, irony, and memory

The 20 works that make up Chronicles of Mercy Reloaded explore themes ranging from geopolitics to pop culture, from spirituality to media manipulation. Highlights include:

Political conflict and power narratives

• NO —The clash between Uribe and Santos and the 2016 Colombian referendum, transformed into a political comic about impunity and spectacle.

• Capital Flight —Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez in satirical form, denouncing populism, corruption, and the economic collapse of 21st‑century socialism.

• The Successor —Mao and Ronald McDonald as symbols of the Chinese and American markets, locked in a commercial war of copies, e‑commerce, and legal loopholes.

Identity, the body, and media spectacle

• Vanity Fair —Caitlyn Jenner carrying her former self, a reflection on gender transition between media visibility and real‑world inequality.

• +100? —Stephen Hawking as a pop oracle, surrounded by warnings about AI, climate collapse, and an uncertain future.

Global culture, spirituality, and symbolic collision

• All‑Inclusive —Ganesha and the sacred cow in a psychedelic carnival that questions Western interpretations of Indian spirituality in the world’s most populous nation.

• India / All‑Inclusive variations —A look at India’s demographic rise and its growing cultural influence beyond its borders.

Social critique, consumption, and emotional capitalism

• The Successor, Genuine Fake, Fresh Product, Red Alert, Sweet, Te lo tengo, Boom, The Bear, NEIN, Enough, The King Is Naked, among others, complete a visual map where the following intersect:

  • culture wars

  • migration

  • media manipulation

  • state violence

  • celebrity culture

  • global icons

  • climate crisis

  • technology and surveillance

  • economic inequality

  • the aestheticization of disaster

Each work functions simultaneously as a visual document, a historical commentary, and an act of memory.

Cultural value: art as an archive of the present

Chronicles of Mercy Reloaded stands as a series that documents the world through art, transforming images, headlines, symbols, and characters into a critical atlas of the 21st century. Its cultural value lies in:

• Documenting global events through an independent artistic lens

• Questioning official narratives through humor, irony, and pop aesthetics

• Transforming contemporary visual saturation into critical thought

• Connecting the intimate with the political, the local with the global

• Creating visual memory in an era of hyperconsumption and accelerated forgetting

The Luisa Palacios Prize recognizes not only the aesthetic power of the series, but its ability to think the world through image, satire, and contemporary sensibility. 

Premio de Artes Gráficas Luisa Palacios 2025

 

Honys Torres presenta Crónicas de la Piedad Reloaded, serie ganadora del Premio de Artes Gráficas Luisa Palacios del Salón Nacional de Arte Elsa Morales 2025

Zúrich / Caracas, 2025. La artista venezolana Honys Torres ha sido galardonada con el Premio Luisa Palacios en el Salón Nacional de Arte Elsa Morales 2025 por su serie Crónicas de la Piedad Reloaded, un conjunto de 20 obras que funcionan como un archivo visual contemporáneo, irreverente y profundamente crítico de los acontecimientos que han marcado al mundo en las últimas décadas.

La colección, concebida como un diario pop de la humanidad, combina collage digital, iconografía global, cultura de masas y símbolos políticos para construir un lenguaje visual propio: ácido, vibrante, incómodo y lúcido. Cada pieza opera como una crónica que desmonta discursos oficiales, expone contradicciones y revela la teatralidad del poder, la cultura y la sociedad.

Una colección que registra el mundo desde el exceso, la ironía y la memoria

Las 20 obras que conforman Crónicas de la Piedad Reloaded recorren temas que van desde la geopolítica hasta la cultura pop, desde la espiritualidad hasta la manipulación mediática. Entre ellas destacan:

Conflictos políticos y narrativas del poder

• NO —El choque entre Uribe y Santos y el referéndum colombiano de 2016, convertido en cómic político sobre impunidad y espectáculo.

• Capital Flight —Fidel Castro y Hugo Chávez en clave satírica, denunciando populismo, corrupción y el colapso económico del socialismo del siglo XXI.

• El Sucesor —Mao y Ronald McDonald como símbolos del mercado chino y estadounidense, enfrentados en una guerra comercial de copias, e-commerce y vacíos legales.

Identidad, cuerpo y espectáculo mediático

• Vanity Fair —Caitlyn Jenner cargando a su yo anterior, una reflexión sobre la transición de género entre la visibilidad mediática y la desigualdad real.

• +100? —Stephen Hawking como oráculo pop, rodeado de advertencias sobre IA, colapso climático y futuro incierto.

Cultura global, espiritualidad y choque simbólico

• Todo Incluido —Ganesha y la vaca sagrada en un carnaval psicodélico que cuestiona la comprensión occidental de la espiritualidad india en un país hoy más poblado que China.

• All-Inclusive / India —Una mirada al crecimiento demográfico y la expansión cultural de India como potencia simbólica del siglo XXI.

Crítica social, consumo y capitalismo emocional

• The Successor, Genuine Fake, Fresh Product, Red Alert, Sweet, Te lo tengo, Boom, The Bear, NEIN, Enough, The King Is Naked, entre otras, completan un mapa visual donde se cruzan:

  • guerras culturales

  • migración

  • manipulación mediática

  • violencia estatal

  • celebridades

  • iconos globales

  • crisis climática

  • tecnología y vigilancia

  • desigualdad económica

  • y la estetización del desastre

Cada obra funciona como un documento visual, un comentario histórico y un acto de memoria.

Un valor cultural: arte como archivo del presente

Crónicas de la Piedad Reloaded se consolida como una serie que registra el mundo desde el arte, convirtiendo imágenes, titulares, símbolos y personajes en un atlas crítico del siglo XXI. Su valor cultural radica en:

• Documentar acontecimientos globales desde una mirada artística independiente.

• Cuestionar narrativas oficiales mediante humor, ironía y estética pop.

• Transformar la saturación visual contemporánea en pensamiento crítico.

• Conectar lo íntimo con lo político, lo local con lo global.

• Crear memoria visual en tiempos de hiperconsumo y olvido acelerado.

El premio Luisa Palacios reconoce no solo la potencia estética de la serie, sino su capacidad para pensar el mundo desde la imagen, la sátira y la sensibilidad contemporánea.

All-Inclusive

All-Inclusive Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

All-Inclusive features the Hindu goddess Ganesha carrying a sacred cow, in a scene that blends devotion, irony, and visual chaos. In India, cows are not eaten—they symbolize life, motherhood, and divinity. The piece reminds us that India is not just a country, but a spiritual ministry, a symbolic universe that defies Western logic.

Explaining that there are temples dedicated to rat worship—like the Karni Mata Temple in Rajasthan, home to over 25,000 sacred rodents—is as bewildering as saying Mickey Mouse is the world’s most famous rat. Yet both are icons: one of faith, the other of commerce.

Since 2023, India has surpassed China as the most populous country on Earth, with over 1.4 billion people. This demographic expansion also means cultural expansion. Its worldview, rituals, aesthetics, and spirituality are crossing borders, and the world must prepare to avoid cultural clashes.

The artwork, saturated with colors, psychedelic creatures, and phrases like “DON’T FORGET TO SUPER-VITAMINIZE” and “TRIP TO INDIA”, turns mysticism into spectacle. All-Inclusive is a pop warning: not everything exotic is comprehensible, and not everything exported comes with instructions.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-Todo-Incluido/1368215/13472985/view

The Successor

The Successor Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

The Successor stages a face-off between two global market giants: Mao as the symbol of the Chinese model, and Ronald McDonald as the emblem of American capitalism. The artwork portrays a fierce competition between two systems that, far from being opposites, intertwine in a war of consumption, imitation, and legal evasion.

China—ironically represented by a crowned Mao surrounded by pop symbols—has mastered the art of replication: cloned brands, near-identical products, and a commercial strategy that exploits international legal loopholes. Platforms like Temu and Shein have grown exponentially by leveraging the U.S. “de minimis loophole,” a policy that allows imports under $800 to enter tax-free and without inspection.

• In 2024, Temu and Shein shipped over 1 million packages daily to the U.S.

• After partial closure of the loophole in 2025, Temu lost 52% of its daily active users in the U.S. within two months

• This policy, introduced in 2016, supercharged Chinese exports, reshaping the commercial relationship between the two countries

The artwork features winged dollar bills, diamonds, emojis, and a CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape as witnesses to legalized plunder. The panda with a handbag and the “MADE IN CHINA” stamped on Ronald McDonald denounce the paradox: the successor of communism is now the king of global e-commerce.

The Successor doesn’t celebrate China’s rise—it interrogates it. Who wins when everything can be copied? What remains of the original in a world of tax-free replicas?

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-El-sucesor/1368215/13472911/view

Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

Vanity Fair portrays Caitlyn Jenner cradling her former self, William Bruce Jenner, in a scene that blends tenderness, spectacle, and contradiction. The piece draws inspiration from the iconic Vanity Fair cover published on June 1, 2015, where Caitlyn introduced herself to the world as a transgender woman—marking a media milestone in trans visibility.

The image, saturated with pop characters and consumer symbols, ironizes the contrast between a transition supported by reality shows, surgeries, stylists, and marketing, versus the realities faced by those who undergo gender transition amid poverty, stigma, and exclusion. The athlete wearing a USA jersey and number 935 evokes Jenner’s Olympic achievements, while phrases like “TIN MARIN DE DO PINQUE” and “VANITY FAIR” turn identity into spectacle.

Vanity Fair denounces the illusion that “anything is possible” when fame, money, and cameras are involved. It critiques the emotional capitalism that turns pain into a cover story and transition into a product.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-Vanity-fair/1368215/13472821/view

Capital Flight

Capital Flight Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

Capital Flight is a fierce parody of Latin American populism. The artwork features Fidel Castro—the self-proclaimed king of communism—and Hugo Chávez dressed as the Chapulín Colorado, both seated on a toilet, symbolizing the political “disasters” that marked their regimes. The gesture is grotesque yet precise: a direct critique of mismanagement of state resources, ideological manipulation, and the systematic impoverishment of their populations.

The CLAP food box, emblem of the Venezuelan regime, appears as a symbol of hunger and control. Created in 2016, the program was widely denounced for corruption, clientelism, and political exploitation. The piece also references the Cuba–Venezuela alliance, which since 1999 forged a revolutionary axis built on grandiose rhetoric and collapsing economies.

Diamonds, winged dollar bills, and a CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape slash across the image as witnesses to the looting. Ronald McDonald with a hammer and sickle, and Darth Vader with dollar-sign glasses, complete the ideological carnival where 21st-century socialism masquerades as spectacle.

Capital Flight is not just a critique—it’s a pop-style autopsy of revolutionary failure.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-Capital-flight/1368215/13472543/view

NO

Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

NO portrays the symbolic clash between two Colombian presidents: Álvaro Uribe and Juan Manuel Santos, opposing figures in the debate over the peace agreement with the FARC. On October 2, 2016, Colombia held a national referendum, and the NO vote narrowly won, rejecting the agreement negotiated by Santos. Nevertheless, the president did not acknowledge the popular result and instead modified the text and passed it through Congress.

The piece turns this episode into political comic art: Santos wears a Batman tie, Uribe appears bloodied, and they’re surrounded by onomatopoeias like “POW!”, “OUCH!”, “CRASH!”, alongside phrases such as “IMPUNITY” and “NO NEGOTIATION”. A wounded dove, pierced by bullets and blood, ironically references the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Santos on October 7, 2016—for a peace many consider incomplete or imposed.

NO is a fierce critique of political spectacle, negotiated impunity, and the theatricalization of peace. A work that reminds us the conflict also plays out in language, gestures, and headlines.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-NO/1368215/13472471/view

 

+100?

+100? Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

+100? depicts Stephen Hawking seated on the lap of Queen Victoria’s statue at the University of Cambridge, a scene taken from the biopic The Theory of Everything. The gesture—tender yet provocative—becomes a symbol of a scientific monarchy observing collapse from its pedestal.

The piece evokes Hawking’s warnings about humanity’s future: the dangers of unchecked artificial intelligence, global warming as an existential threat, the need to leave Earth to survive as a species, and the risk that technology may outpace our ability to control it. In the image, a winged brain labeled IA, a meteor, a green virus, and a microwave marked CALENTAMIENTO GLOBAL orbit the central figure like visual omens.

The question +100? doesn’t celebrate longevity—it challenges us: How many years do we have left? What kind of humanity are we building? What part of what was mortal still belongs to us?

+100? is a pop elegy, a warning wrapped in color, humor, and science fiction. A piece that transforms Hawking’s memory into a visual oracle.

 

The King Is Naked

The King Is Naked Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

The King Is Naked portrays Spain’s former monarch at one of the most disgraceful moments of his public life: when international media exposed him for paying €50,000 to hunt an elephant in Botswana in 2012, while Spain was facing a deep economic crisis. The scandal was so severe that Juan Carlos I eventually abdicated in favor of his son, Felipe VI, in 2014.

The artwork shows him crowned, armed, and wearing a WWF vest—an organization ironically dedicated to wildlife protection—surrounded by symbolic animals like rhinos, bulls, and leopards. Phrases such as “YO NO FUI” (“It wasn’t me”), “CHASCO” (“Disappointment”), “BREAKING NEWS”, and “el REY está desnudo!” (“The King is naked!”) turn the scandal into a media spectacle, while cities like Sanxenxo, Abu Dhabi, and Geneva mark his golden exile.

The King Is Naked is a biting parody of power, impunity, and institutional hypocrisy. A critique of royal spectacle, where the crown teeters between safari, scandal, and headlines.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-El-Rey-esta-desnudo/1368215/13472209/view

Enough

Enough Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

Enough is a visual outcry against the cyclical repetition of institutional racism in the United States. The piece draws from the 2015 killing of Freddie Gray, who died from spinal injuries after being arrested and transported by Baltimore police. His death sparked massive protests, fires, and a wave of outrage that fueled the Black Lives Matter movement, demanding justice and police reform.

But Enough doesn’t stop there—it portrays the pattern. Before and after Gray, there were other names, other marches, other hashtags. Justice appears as a clown dressed in the word JUSTICE, while the phrase “EL BRAZO LARGO de la LEY” (“The Long Arm of the Law”) becomes a grotesquely oversized hand that oppresses racialized bodies. It’s a media spectacle with new slogans, new birthdays of indignation, but no resolution.

The artwork incorporates phrases like “NO JUSTICE NO PEACE”, “BLACK LIVES MATTER”, “TIME for Change”, and “ENOUGH”, surrounded by vibrant colors, cartoonish figures, and protest symbols. It’s a bitter parody of political theater, where justice dances in disguise and racism continues under new branding.

Enough denounces institutional hypocrisy, systemic impunity, and the theatricalization of pain. It’s a piece that doesn’t ask—it demands memory, truth, and rupture.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-Enough/1368215/13472137/view

NEIN

NEIN Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

NEIN is a fierce satire about corporate deception and historical memory. The artwork portrays Adolf Hitler with green skin and horns, holding a psychedelic Volkswagen Beetle—an icon of peace for the hippie movement, yet originally conceived as a propaganda tool of the Third Reich. The car, promoted by Hitler and designed by Ferdinand Porsche, was part of Nazi industrial strategy as early as 1936.

Decades later, the same brand—Volkswagen—was at the center of the Dieselgate scandal (2008–2015), manipulating emissions data in the U.S., nearly collapsing financially and tarnishing the prestige of Made in Germany. The piece ironizes this double standard: the Beetle, painted with flowers, hides a dark origin and an industry that continues to deceive under new disguises.

With phrases like “AUF WIEDER SEHEN”, “NEIN #1”, and the Volkswagen logo embedded in the dictator’s uniform, NEIN turns the automotive icon into infernal parody. It’s a critique of media power, symbolic whitewashing, and the fragility of collective memory.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-Nein/1368215/13471289/view

Sweet

Sweet Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

Sweet portrays Mick Jagger, frontman of the Rolling Stones, as a pop icon sweetened by new generations. Since the band proclaimed themselves Their Satanic Majesties in the 1960s, Jagger has embodied provocation, spectacle, and rebellion. His voice, feline moves, and provocative style turned the stage into ritual and his figure into symbol.

Here, he appears as a glam devil with heart-shaped glasses, surrounded by flames, ice creams, cupcakes, and cherubs. Hell becomes sweet, and desire wears tenderness. The piece doesn’t debate whether he’s satanic—that’s not the point—but rather how media power turns transgression into fashion and legend into meme.

Sweet is an ironic critique of today’s idol worship: where rock merges with marketing, and the devil dances among hearts and likes.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-Sweet/1368215/13471207/view

Te lo tengo

Te lo tengo Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

Te lo tengo exposes the toxic alliance between the fast food industry and Big Pharma. Ronald McDonald, cast as a paternal figure, feeds a smiling child with burgers and fries while the background explodes with calories, sugar, and promises of happiness. Above them, a syringe labeled Ozempic injection 0.5 mg announces the miracle fix—the treatment offered once the damage is done.

Phrases like “MI GORDO”, “NUEVA DIETA”, and “TE LO TENGO” turn the child’s body into a future market. Miss Piggy, Homer Simpson, and Fred Flintstone join the scene as pop icons of obesity, while a scale reads 403 and hearts decorate the excess.

Te lo tengo is a fierce satire of how illness is manufactured in childhood only to be sold a cure in adulthood. A collage that denounces, with biting humor, the perverse cycle of consumption and medicalization.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-Te-lo-tengo/1368215/13471181/view 

Fresh Product

 

Fresh Product Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

Inspired by a chilling urban legend, Fresh Product turns Barbie into a femme fatale: she seduces Ken, drugs him, and transforms him into merchandise. His body appears opened, labeled “FRESH PRODUCT”, while smiling hearts, kidneys, and livers are displayed “FOR SALE” with supermarket-style discounts and price tags.

Pop and commercial aesthetics—phrases like “100% ORGANIC”, “50% OFF”, and a shopping cart filled with organs—turn horror into spectacle. The glamorous nurse, the green dollar bills, and the slogan “CON MI RIÑÓN NO TE METAS” (“Don’t mess with my kidney”) denounce the commodification of the body and the black market organ trade.

Fresh Product is a fierce critique of underground commerce, medical fetishism, and the commercialization of health, where desire becomes a trap and the body a product.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-Fresh-Product/1368215/13471137/view

Boom

Boom Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

Boom is a pop explosion that denounces the constant nuclear threat posed by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. With an exaggerated grin and cartoonish green hair, the leader holds a blast marked with a nuclear symbol, as if destruction were a game. The phrase “Let the game begin!!” sets the tone: grotesque, childish, and dangerous.

Elements like the tank, the nuclear missile, the military cap with a red star, and the Saw character under the slogan “LIVE OR DIE” reinforce the aesthetics of a macabre spectacle. Pink hearts, cupcakes with legs, and words like “READY, AIM, FIRE” turn war into performance and threat into collage.

Boom is a visual satire of totalitarianism disguised as entertainment, where power plays with the planet as if it were a toy board.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-Boom/1368215/13471103/view

The Bear

The Bear Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

The Bear is a fierce critique of Vladimir Putin’s expansionist power. From Russia’s military intervention in Syria, launched on September 30, 2015, to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the piece denounces a ruthless policy disguised as geopolitical strategy.

The bear—symbol of Russia—appears as a dominant figure, surrounded by blood, violence, and cartoonish characters. A mourning female figure, a sinking ship, a faucet pouring red, and the warning: “Don’t bother the bear.” But here, the bear doesn’t dance to anyone’s tune—it imposes its own rhythm, its war, its macabre choreography.

The Bear turns propaganda into satire, and fear into image. It’s a collage that screams through absurdity, where every star, every creature, every red drop becomes part of a visual indictment.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-The-bear/1368215/13470089/view

Genuine Fake

Genuine Fake Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

In Genuine Fake, authenticity becomes merchandise and identity turns into spectacle. The central figure is Mao Zedong, the historic leader of Chinese communism, now transformed into a curator of capitalist icons: he holds Mickey Mouse and Superman as trophies of a culture colonized by the market. It is a powerful visual irony: China, communist on the inside, capitalist on the outside.

Logos from Levi’s, Nike, iPhone, and AliExpress blend with dragons, stars, and phrases like “Made in China” and “Genuine Fake”, blurring the boundaries between the original and the manufactured. The piece is a critical carnival where power disguises itself as a brand, and the copy becomes more iconic than the original. It is a portrait of the contemporary simulacrum, where truth is mass‑produced and irony dresses itself in pop.

 

Red Alert

Red Alert Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

From owner of the Miss Universe pageant to President of the United States, Red Alert portrays Donald Trump’s media‑driven rise and his immigration policy as a grotesque spectacle. The piece bursts with color and symbolism: protests for immigrant rights, flying dollar bills, and even Donald Duck himself outraged at sharing a name with someone who tarnishes his animated legacy.

The figure crowned with the word BEYOND embodies a hope that refuses to fade, while the signs shout: “Immigrants make America GREAT.” Red Alert is a pop satire that turns political chaos into collage, and art into a megaphone.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-Red-Alert/1368215/13463497/view

Faltan 43

Faltan 43 Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

On September 26, 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College were forcibly disappeared in Iguala, Mexico. Faltan 43 transforms that collective pain into a visual act of remembrance—a cry that refuses oblivion: “They were taken alive, we want them back alive.”

The central figure, inspired by Frida Kahlo, embodies Mexican resistance and the transformation of grief into art. With the number 43 marked on her forehead, she holds a fallen body in a composition that evokes The Pietà, though here there is no divine redemption—only denunciation, rage, and political tenderness. The gesture is maternal, but also militant.

The vibrant background and pop elements contrast with the gravity of the message, creating tension between the aesthetic and the ethical. Faltan 43 does not seek consolation; it demands justice. It is a visual offering that turns the icon into a witness, and art into a trench.

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Mixed-Media-Faltan-43/1368215/13461003/view

 

Satisfaction

Satisfaction Digital collage, 2025 – Honys Torres

Satisfaction is a fierce satire of the diplomatic spectacle surrounding the U.S.–Cuba rapprochement under President Barack Obama. In 2016, after easing sanctions without demanding accountability for crimes against humanity committed by the Cuban regime, high-profile events took place—such as the historic free concert by the Rolling Stones in Havana and a Chanel fashion show led by Karl Lagerfeld—in a country where much of the population lacks access to basic food and political rights.

The artwork features a blue-skinned Captain America holding a dying communist leader, surrounded by vultures, pop icons, and symbols of global capitalism. The phrase “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” echoes as an ironic anthem for a citizenry watching its pain negotiated between Coca-Colas, golden statuettes, and empty promises.

Satisfaction denounces the diplomatic and media cynicism that turns repression into decorative background for spectacle. It’s a visual critique of forgetfulness, political marketing, and the trivialization of suffering disguised as cultural

If you would like to purchase a reproduction of the image presented, you can do so directly through the available link. There you will find format and size options to add this piece to your collection.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Digital-Satisfaction/1368215/13469255/view