‘Since They Can’t Put Venezuela in Their Suitcase, They Take Mosaic Tiles from the Maiquetía Airport’1

Abstract

In the process of displacement caused by the current political and economic crises in Venezuela, the Caracas airport has become a place of powerful significance. The floor­ of the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía features Additive Colour (1974–1978), a mosaic by Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923−2019). This public work has acquired exceptional symbolic meanings of political migration due to traveller rituals, documented in newspapers and on social media. Migrants are taking tiles of the airport floor as personal memory triggers of the democratic Venezuela that commissioned Kinetic art. This article analyses how these airport tiles, and Kineticism more generally, have come to acquire meanings of collective memory and national identity for Venezuelans and explains how and why Cruz-Diez’s work has become an intrinsic part of Venezuelan culture.