Blue Abstraction
- Artist: Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa
- Date: 2012
- Medium: Video, high definition, colour and sound (stereo)
- Dimensions: duration: 7min, 3sec
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is “Blue Abstraction” by Naufus Ramírez‑Figueroa. The 2012 video runs just over seven minutes in a single continuous take. The scene opens on a young man standing still by a dirt road, the landscape stretching out around him. The artist himself walks in, carrying a can of blue paint and a brush. He then covers the man’s clothing and body with broad strokes of that vivid blue, until the figure is fully saturated. The video ends with the artist walking away and the painted man continuing to stand, frozen in the moment. The use of blue is a deliberate nod to early black‑and‑white cinema, where blue film stock would turn blue objects white, making them seem to vanish. It also carries a personal weight: the figure represents the artist’s uncle, an activist in Guatemala who was murdered when the artist was six. By turning the body into a flat, monochrome silhouette, Ramírez‑Figueroa invites viewers to reflect on absence, memory, and the quiet resilience of trauma.
See it in person
Blue Abstraction is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
