Colombian artists transform Pablo Escobar's hippos and excesses into art

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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombian photographer Édgar Jiménez walks around a room exhibiting “Adam and Eve,” his portrait of two of the first hippopotamuses that were brought to Colombia by late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the 1980s.

Jiménez, who once served as Escobar’s personal photographer, recalls taking the picture from only four meters (13 feet) away, without any kind of protection and unaware of the danger they posed. That same pair of hippos later attacked and killed a camel.

“The hippos were bought from a zoo in the United States that buys and captures animals from Africa,” recalls the 75-year-old photographer, who was also tasked with keeping an inventory of all the animals housed at Escobar’s Hacienda Nápoles in the country's northeast.

Escobar continued adding to his hippo collection until his death in 1993. The population has since exploded to more than 160 specimens, which have been declared an invasive species in Colombia.

Jiménez, who considers his photos of Escobar’s life to be documentaries, doesn’t typically exhibit them but he was invited to participate in “Microdoses to Tame the Inner Hippopotamus,” a new exhibition in Bogotá featuring 20 artists who offer a political critique of what the hippos represent.

Santiago Rueda, curator of the exhibition, said the show does not intend to be moralizing but invites people to see how such a paradoxical figure as Escobar's hippos can be the subject of a political critique. The exhibit features everything from oil paintings and graffiti to photographs and a unique cultivation of psychoactive mushrooms grown in hippo dung.

Rueda pointed to a tapestry by artist Carlos Castro as a prime example. Depicting Escobar alongside wild animals descending two by two from a large military aircraft — an allusion to Noah’s Ark — Rueda explained the piece is called “The Great Narco Ark” (“La gran narco arca”).

And “it’s not just Escobar, it’s the narco-madness, the excess, the luxury,” said Rueda, noting that the narco-aesthetic is becoming dominant once again, not only in Colombia but throughout the world.

Another piece features a hippo nicknamed “El Gordo” (The Fat One), offering a reward of up to $264,000 for its capture.

“It’s a parody of the drug cartels of the era… from the time when they were searching for Pablo Escobar and all the drug traffickers,” said artist Manuel Barón.

The figure of the hippo takes a step further in the work of Camilo Restrepo. The artist discovered that hallucinogenic mushrooms, which he cultivates in his laboratory, can grow directly in the dung of the animals.

Restrepo highlighted the irony: “It’s very contradictory that, due to the failure of the war on drugs, so much money accumulates in the hands of drug traffickers that they can bring in an entire zoo, and then the hippos remain living in Colombia.” Paradoxically, he said, their waste is “the substrate where these hallucinogenic mushrooms grow, which dissolve the ego,” unlike cocaine, which “elevates it.”

The exhibit opened Thursday at Casa Échele Cabeza, a project focused on drug regulation and harm reduction, run by the nonprofit Acción Técnica Social.

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