Azorado, meaning startled in Spanish, is the all-too-appropriate name for Cazapapeles’ (or Paper Hunters) arresting cardboard production, an immense geometric polar bear that has been relocated to the arid deserts of Mexico. Layered with inherently contradictory ideas, the placement of this arctic creature is meant to evoke questions of transition and adaptation, in particular those pertaining to global warming’s effects on our planet’s resources and the subsequent acclimation of its inhabitants. Equal parts astonishing and ominous, one’s interpretation of this piece could be either positive or negative, hopeful or dismal, much in the same way that the enormity of our planet’s environmental conundrum could also be received. It is not everyday that you see a giant cardboard polar bear standing in the desert, but then again, as environments change, definitions of what is normal are challenged. Based in Monterrey, Mexico, Cazapapeles’ innovative cardboard-based art challenges norms in both the style of their art and the questions they pose.
