Maturín is a city in Venezuela, the capital of the Venezuelan state of Monagas, and a center for instrumental exploration and development of the petroleum industry in Venezuela.
Maturín is also a busy regional transportation hub, connecting routes from the northeastern coast to the Orinoco Delta and the Gran Sabana.
The Orinoco Belt is a territory in the southern strip of the eastern Orinoco River Basin in Venezuela which overlies the world’s largest deposits of petroleum. Its local Spanish name is Faja Petrolífera del Orinoco.
The painting support is a window blind from a house belonging to a family that left Venezuela as part of the country’s diaspora. The red symbolizes the current exploitation by foreign powers of the oil deposits in the region as the country suffers an unprecedented gasoline shortage.
While the work was conceived horizontally as a city landscape, it is hung vertically much like cattle carcasses are hung for their processing for human consumption.
