Marcelo Amorim, ‘Untitled 2’ (Army), 2017 – oil on canvas - 60 x 60 cm

By investigating the military institution and war, artist Marcelo Amorim asks us: do people, or perhaps just males, have an evolved predisposition to kill members of other groups? ​ 

War is social, with groups organized to kill people from other groups. Armed conflict has only emerged over recent millennia, as changing social conditions provided the motivation and organization to collectively kill. And the military has historically imposed the duty to orchestrate and deploy ultimate act of generalised violence and death to the male gender. ​ 

But are men truly and instinctively wired to warlike tendencies, as warlike tendencies can be detected in male chimpanzees? ​Does human nature lean toward collective killing of outsiders, and are males naturally prone to acts of dominance, prevarication, brutality, and mass destruction? Or are societal impositions responsible for the emergence of the male figure as a war machine fuelled by greed for power and conquer? ​ 

In his canvases and works on paper, Amorim explores the social constructs that have imposed the capacity and the training to kill to males. His art asks us if it is true that males have an innate propensity to take up arms, tilting societies toward the utmost and universal act of violence, that is: war.