For their project Violaciones, Oscar utilizes modular synths to create immersive soundscapes where voices, cries, and poetry loop, clash, and dissolve, producing an atmosphere of both tension and catharsis.
This project reflects on their family’s migration and departure from El Salvador, examining the intergenerational impact of displacement and liberation. By understanding the sacrifices and realities of their parents’ journey, they craft a bridge of empathy, connecting their own experiences to larger movements for justice and resistance.
In a bold and collaborative spirit, he developed an original half-script, half-wish list, gathering friends, activists, and creatives to join them in exploring collective liberation. For Oscar, the act of personal emancipation is inseparable from the work of liberating others—whether from trauma, societal expectations, capitalism, or systems of oppression.
Oscar’s work continues to challenge conventional storytelling, offering audiences an intricate, visceral experience that redefines what it means to bear witness to transformation and resilience.
The Exhibition, walk through
Featuring work from Oscar Rodriguez, Samuel Lynch, Cam Williamson, Tania Pourashraf, Alex Michailidi, Bella Weerasinghe, and Ashlynn Freeman.
This Is Sweet by Samuel Lynch and Oscar Rodriguez
Assisted by Lily Mansfield and Essy
A collaboration, this recorded performance set to a self-made track delves into the visceral experience of liberation. The piece challenges the enduring grip of capitalist desires, emphasizing that Queer bodies cannot achieve true freedom under existing systems.
Central to the performance is the Indigo plant—an enduring symbol of wealth and protection in Salvadoran history. Its withering serves as a metaphor for the sacrifices required for genuine liberation. True freedom demands more than the relinquishment of physical wealth and security; it requires the dismantling of deep-seated beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.
The exploding rocks echo this theme, embodying the pressure and instability from which liberation is forged. This force is not an isolated event; it leaves behind a destabilization and trauma that persist, shaping the history and future of both land and people. Volcanoes and eruptions are intrinsic to the Salvadoran landscape, embodying both the tension and the destructive force of change.
This Is Sweet asks its audience to confront the uncomfortable truths of liberation—loss, instability, and the necessity of transformation.