soon www.nayaricastillo.com will be ready!!!! you can visit now for a sneak-preview
exhibitions...
this year/coming soon:
*Bicentenary:10 Latinamerican sights/Bicentenario:10 miradas latinoamericanas.09.11-28.03.10.Museo Mural Diego Rivera.Balderas y Colón, s/n Centro Histórico.DF.2010. México.
*Reverberations. ESC im Labor. 20.10 - 20-11.2010.Jakomministraße 16.8020.Graz,Austria
*Venezuela: the best kept secret of the caribbean/Venezuela: el secreto mejor guardado del caribe. 23.09- 24.10.10. Faría +Fábregas.Calle Choroní. Qta.Los Cuatro#2.Urb.Chuao.Caracas 1060.Venezuela.
*Modern Negative/ Negativa Moderna.July 8- August 13/Henrique Faria Fine Arts. 35 East 67th Street.NY.USA
*I know what you did last summer/ Sé lo que hicistes el verano pasado.Saint Cecilia’s Convent. 21 Monitor Street, Brooklyn, NY.USA
http://iknowwhatyoudid.wordpress.com/
* Inside and being outside...8 photographic proposals / Dentro y estando fuera. 8 Propuestas Fotográficas. stand #1. FIA 2010. Caracas. Venezuela.
Ongoing:
*Passerby/Itinerante.GBG Arts. Caracas. Venezuela
*Free Zone. New Art/ Zona Libre. Arte Emergente.Galería Universitaria Braulio Salazar. Valencia. Venezuela
*Smuggling to Paradise / Contrabando al paraíso. Oficina #1. Centro Cultural Los Galpones. Caracas. Venezuela
*Bicentenary:10 Latinamerican sights/Bicentenario:10 miradas latinoamericanas.09.11-28.03.10.Museo Mural Diego Rivera.Balderas y Colón, s/n Centro Histórico.DF.2010. México.
*Reverberations. ESC im Labor. 20.10 - 20-11.2010.Jakomministraße 16.8020.Graz,Austria
*Venezuela: the best kept secret of the caribbean/Venezuela: el secreto mejor guardado del caribe. 23.09- 24.10.10. Faría +Fábregas.Calle Choroní. Qta.Los Cuatro#2.Urb.Chuao.Caracas 1060.Venezuela.
*Modern Negative/ Negativa Moderna.July 8- August 13/Henrique Faria Fine Arts. 35 East 67th Street.NY.USA
*I know what you did last summer/ Sé lo que hicistes el verano pasado.Saint Cecilia’s Convent. 21 Monitor Street, Brooklyn, NY.USA
http://iknowwhatyoudid.wordpress.com/
* Inside and being outside...8 photographic proposals / Dentro y estando fuera. 8 Propuestas Fotográficas. stand #1. FIA 2010. Caracas. Venezuela.
Ongoing:
*Passerby/Itinerante.GBG Arts. Caracas. Venezuela
*Free Zone. New Art/ Zona Libre. Arte Emergente.Galería Universitaria Braulio Salazar. Valencia. Venezuela
*Smuggling to Paradise / Contrabando al paraíso. Oficina #1. Centro Cultural Los Galpones. Caracas. Venezuela
Smuggling to Paradise/Press release
Solo exhibition.
In the 1980’s, Pablo Escobar, the Colombian mafia capo, constructed a thematic park for his endeavors. 200 exotic animals where hidden in the eccentric place. After his assassination by the police, his animals were left behind to die. The hippos survived and after 17 years they are wandering free in the Magdalena river. This exhibition is a fantastic trip around a surrealistic archive of the facts.
Nota de prensa: (just Spanish)
Bajo las aguas del río Magdalena en Colombia se esconde un extraño misterio. Todo comenzó en los años ochenta, cuando Pablo Escobar, uno de los máximos cabecillas del cartel de las drogas de aquel país, hizo construir un parque recreativo en localidad de Puerto Triunfo, a 165 Km. al sur-este de Medellín. Lo llamó “Hacienda Nápoles”; lugar que sirvió de refugio, casa de familia, santuario y oficina de negocios a Escobar.
El excéntrico lugar estaba lleno de unos 200 animales exóticos ,entre los que se contaba una pareja de hipopótamos. A la muerte del capo en diciembre de 1993, Nápoles quedó en el abandono y con una larga disputa legal. Los hipopótamos, prácticamente sin enemigos naturales y contando con un medio ambiente favorable, se dedicaron a la reproducción. En la actualidad se presume la existencia de unos veintinueve ejemplares, pero su número exacto se desconoce. El año pasado, a raíz del avistamiento de una pareja de hipopótamos con su cría en el río Magdalena, las autoridades decidieron abrir cacería para evitar una invasión masiva. La muerte de Pepe, uno de los animales, produjo una gran controversia ambientalista en el país, provocando una discusión sobre el futuro de los hipopótamos de Escobar y su paradero final.
En su primera muestra en Oficina #1, Nayarí Castillo nos presenta una colección de imágenes que comentan esta disparatada historia. Diferentes instalaciones conforman una suerte de archivo extraordinario que devela, con una narrativa particular, una estructuración de la identidad impredecible de nuestras latitudes. Mapas que trazan la trayectoria de los hipopótamos, muestras recolectadas in-situ, escritos, anotaciones, fotografías y videos constituyen una serie de elementos para este inusual archivo científico, que llama la atención e invita a la reflexión sobre este interesante y desatinado suceso.
more in:
http://oficina1.multiply.com/photos/album/136/136
EL NACIONAL · VIERNES 14 DE MAYO DE 2010 · ESCENAS/1
Nayarí Castillo
escribe identidad con H de hipopótamo
MARJORIE DELGADO AGUIRRE
La historia parece sacada de un libreto del teatro del absurdo, de uno que se escribe en América Latina o, mínimo, del programa Ocurrió Así. Hace 27 años, cuando Álvaro Uribe era alcalde de Medellín, Pablo Escobar Gaviria intentó pasar un contrabando. La mercancía no era en polvo, era en carne y hueso. Se trataba de una NarcoArca de animales exóticos, entre ellos una pareja de hipopótamos que el capo del narcotráfico quería liberar en la Hacienda Nápoles, un lugar idílico en Puerto Triunfo, en las riberas del río Magdalena, donde vivía y cocinaba sus negocios turbios.
Las autoridades llevaron los animales al zoológico, pero Escobar compró a los vigilantes y logró trasladar a los mamíferos a su destino inicial. Los hipopótamos se reprodujeron y el año pasado el Gobierno dio luz verde para cazarlos. Mientras unos llamaban a matarlos, otros defendían a los animales como suyos.
La controversia ambientalista que generó el hecho fue registrada en una nota breve de un periódico español que la artista visual Nayarí Castillo leyó en un avión. El hecho, en el que los límites entre ficción y realidad son intercambiables, casi de realismo mágico, se convirtió en el detonante de una exposición que puede verse en la Oficina #1 del Centro de Arte Los Galpones.
Castillo, con toda la seriedad del investigador que sabe usar el humor y la ironía, encontró en la historia de hipopótamos un animal tangencialmente cercano a la memoria de las personas (H de hipopótamo, dicen los abecedarios) la excusa para asomarse a la psiquis del latinoamericano, a la conformación de su identidad poscolonial, tema que, junto con el paisaje, ha convocado su investigación visual desde hace unos años.
Pero esa ventana por la que se asoma tiene varios marcos: por un lado, la estrecha relación que puede establecerse entre la historia de los animales y la convulsa realidad en territorio colombiano, hilada a punta de grupos armados y con el negocio de la droga como telón de fondo. Cuando se ve la gran bolsa de basura con la carita de un hipopótamo que exhibe la artista, se piensa no sólo en el traslado de los restos de Pepe, que por lo demás no es el único que ha muerto en esas riberas. Por otro, tiene que ver con el archivo y con cómo se administra la información: aisladamente los medios dieron cuenta del hecho, pero aún quedan muchas preguntas por resolver.
En otra arista, quizá la más importante, aborda la relación entre la identidad latinoamericana y los mitos re-elaborados que la conforman (el del paraíso terrenal, el de las bestias descritas por los antiguos cronistas y que hoy han mutado en otras historias y otros nombres) y, también, la necesidad de la artista de mostrar su cuerpo de obra en proceso.
"La única postura que asumo en esta exposición es la ecologista. Se trata de un trabajo político en su sentido más amplio: en el de lo que la polis piensa, en cómo se estructura. Es un intento por reconstruir los archivos sobre la idea del hombre a partir de este hecho, que es como un bocado para entrar en ese archivo", dice Castillo.
"Cuando me encontré con esta historia comencé a crear un archivo de obras posibles, a abrir el laboratorio para mostrar procesos, que es lo que más me interesa ahora. Se trata de un trabajo con mayor desfachatez conceptual, más relacionado con el texto, con la narración; aunque no deja de existir la idea de paisaje, existe en términos más tangenciales", señala e insiste en que los artistas hacen una traducción sensible de las cosas que observan.
No ha terminado la frase cuando se recuerdan las palabras dichas por el curador Félix Suazo hace apenas unos días en estas páginas: "El arte nunca fue tan cotidiano y tan obstinadamente contextual como lo es ahora". Nayarí Castillo escribe la palabra identidad con H de hipopótamo.
Fuente: El Nacional. Caracas, Venezuela.
Nayarí Castillo
escribe identidad con H de hipopótamo
Nayarí Castillo: La única postura que asumo en esta exposición es la ecologista.
[Foto: Ernesto Morgado]
[Foto: Ernesto Morgado]
La artista venezolana expone su trabajo reciente en la Oficina #1, donde la historia de unos mamíferos se convierte en parte de quién es el latinoamericano
MARJORIE DELGADO AGUIRRE
La historia parece sacada de un libreto del teatro del absurdo, de uno que se escribe en América Latina o, mínimo, del programa Ocurrió Así. Hace 27 años, cuando Álvaro Uribe era alcalde de Medellín, Pablo Escobar Gaviria intentó pasar un contrabando. La mercancía no era en polvo, era en carne y hueso. Se trataba de una NarcoArca de animales exóticos, entre ellos una pareja de hipopótamos que el capo del narcotráfico quería liberar en la Hacienda Nápoles, un lugar idílico en Puerto Triunfo, en las riberas del río Magdalena, donde vivía y cocinaba sus negocios turbios.
Las autoridades llevaron los animales al zoológico, pero Escobar compró a los vigilantes y logró trasladar a los mamíferos a su destino inicial. Los hipopótamos se reprodujeron y el año pasado el Gobierno dio luz verde para cazarlos. Mientras unos llamaban a matarlos, otros defendían a los animales como suyos.
La controversia ambientalista que generó el hecho fue registrada en una nota breve de un periódico español que la artista visual Nayarí Castillo leyó en un avión. El hecho, en el que los límites entre ficción y realidad son intercambiables, casi de realismo mágico, se convirtió en el detonante de una exposición que puede verse en la Oficina #1 del Centro de Arte Los Galpones.
Castillo, con toda la seriedad del investigador que sabe usar el humor y la ironía, encontró en la historia de hipopótamos un animal tangencialmente cercano a la memoria de las personas (H de hipopótamo, dicen los abecedarios) la excusa para asomarse a la psiquis del latinoamericano, a la conformación de su identidad poscolonial, tema que, junto con el paisaje, ha convocado su investigación visual desde hace unos años.
Pero esa ventana por la que se asoma tiene varios marcos: por un lado, la estrecha relación que puede establecerse entre la historia de los animales y la convulsa realidad en territorio colombiano, hilada a punta de grupos armados y con el negocio de la droga como telón de fondo. Cuando se ve la gran bolsa de basura con la carita de un hipopótamo que exhibe la artista, se piensa no sólo en el traslado de los restos de Pepe, que por lo demás no es el único que ha muerto en esas riberas. Por otro, tiene que ver con el archivo y con cómo se administra la información: aisladamente los medios dieron cuenta del hecho, pero aún quedan muchas preguntas por resolver.
En otra arista, quizá la más importante, aborda la relación entre la identidad latinoamericana y los mitos re-elaborados que la conforman (el del paraíso terrenal, el de las bestias descritas por los antiguos cronistas y que hoy han mutado en otras historias y otros nombres) y, también, la necesidad de la artista de mostrar su cuerpo de obra en proceso.
"La única postura que asumo en esta exposición es la ecologista. Se trata de un trabajo político en su sentido más amplio: en el de lo que la polis piensa, en cómo se estructura. Es un intento por reconstruir los archivos sobre la idea del hombre a partir de este hecho, que es como un bocado para entrar en ese archivo", dice Castillo.
No ha terminado la frase cuando se recuerdan las palabras dichas por el curador Félix Suazo hace apenas unos días en estas páginas: "El arte nunca fue tan cotidiano y tan obstinadamente contextual como lo es ahora". Nayarí Castillo escribe la palabra identidad con H de hipopótamo.
Fuente: El Nacional. Caracas, Venezuela.
Natural Palimpsest: Notations for a Memory of the Forestry Station
Intervention in Public Space
The work consist on the construction of a route where 12 site-specific interventions reflect events of the remembrance of the Forestry Station INTA in 25th of May,Buenos Aires.
A series of signals designed for the occasion evoke the historic moments of the station.
Conversations with the workers with more than 20 years of service inside the institution are the main source of information.
Facing North: Looking for a Lemming in the L.C Bates
Semi-public intervention.
The collection of the L.C Bates Museum in Hinckley, Maine, USA is transformed and re-read with 6 interventions that dialogued with the content of the museum.
The Lemming, a small mammal that use to be present in the stuffed-animal collection of the scientific museum, has disappeared from its diorama showcase.
The project elaborates a series of playful interventions that propose different hypothesis for the estrange vanish of the creature.
In situ / 2008
Video-installation . The work consist on a real-time close circuit view of a big mountain near the gallery.The distance of holes is proportional to the one of the antique viewers. A metaphor to natural change and scientific observation.
Ndoto ya Jane
Live-stream-video-performance.
Jane was the sewing lady of Barsheba, a very poor neighborhood in the city of Mombasa. Every day I went to talk to her, asking about her daydreams. Her biggest dream was to leave the slum. My work was then to find a kiosk for her, a place where she could work in a central place far away from her community; I worked with Barbara Minishi, a wonderful Nairobi base photographer, who helped me set up the kiosk and document Jane's dreams.
Due to the husband severity, Jane could not attend the performance, instead we set up a live-streaming video action with the image of her projected in the new space, giving her the possibility of working in her new environment.
Sanctuary to the Souls of the 8th Island
Invited by the regional government of “Guía de Isora”, Tenerife, Canary Islands, to elaborate a proposal in public space, a work was created about emigrational relational patterns between individuals of Venezuela and Canary Islands. This work was also seen as a connection with the past, introducing the tale of the genetics of the artist in the panorama of the actual movement or emigrational flow. The piece is an ode to the great grandmother that flew to Venezuela in the 1900’s and never returned. The work consists on a little chapel in honor of those migrants that went away and died far away from home, people of the Canary Islands who, looking for a better life, moved to Venezuela and established themselves there. It is dedicated to those that did not have the opportunity to return and created in the new place a new hybrid “patria” inhabited by the descendents. This is a sanctuary for the prayer of their souls.
The objects that conform the installation are floats that the marine undercurrents take to Venezuela. They give the idea of floating sea structures of fixed origin surrounded by water as islands, fragmented by an unexpected situation, floating adrift to end up stranded as parts of another territory. Struck and transformed, willing to be part of a new geography. This is without a doubt a metaphor of the immigrant, the one who painfully leaves his own land to integrate into another.
Certainly the reaction of the people towards the monument was a surprise. With tears in their eyes, singing, praying and talking about vacations or experiences in the remote Venezuela, people came to the little house to pay homage for those who stayed back. Despite the action of the church against the little house, for being too laic, the acceptance of the viewers was total and became a subtle political statement for those whom in the time of the dictatorship of Franco disappeared. During that time it was common to hear when people asked about others who mysteriously disappeared: It’s ok, they were sent to Venezuela!
More information about the project can be seen www.intervenciones.org
The objects that conform the installation are floats that the marine undercurrents take to Venezuela. They give the idea of floating sea structures of fixed origin surrounded by water as islands, fragmented by an unexpected situation, floating adrift to end up stranded as parts of another territory. Struck and transformed, willing to be part of a new geography. This is without a doubt a metaphor of the immigrant, the one who painfully leaves his own land to integrate into another.
Certainly the reaction of the people towards the monument was a surprise. With tears in their eyes, singing, praying and talking about vacations or experiences in the remote Venezuela, people came to the little house to pay homage for those who stayed back. Despite the action of the church against the little house, for being too laic, the acceptance of the viewers was total and became a subtle political statement for those whom in the time of the dictatorship of Franco disappeared. During that time it was common to hear when people asked about others who mysteriously disappeared: It’s ok, they were sent to Venezuela!
More information about the project can be seen www.intervenciones.org
Paula Modersohn-Becker Project. Leben!
Using different spaces and understanding possible places of contemplation in the city of Worpswede, the idea was to create an installation that gave the public the possibility to reflect in the postcard as a visual souvenir and as an echo of the life of Paula. The viewer could see trough the windows, from outside, of the Information center, 5 minimal monitors the size of real post-cards with videos made upon the nostalgia for Paula. These very slow motion pictures or contemplative moving postcards that gave the sensation of been floating in the space.They also worked as a contemporary detonator for the absence. As estrange miniature paintings they hanged there, by the windows, with the silent aura and the deep coloratura of the mourning.
The main concept was to recall sensations and feelings expressed in some quotations of the Requiem of R.M. Rilke to Paula Moderson-Becker. 5 videos were shown simultaneously in the windows, each of them related to the mourning of Paula. The public had access to them within the possibility to buy an image. By obtaining a still-of –the-videos-printed-postcard inside of the store that includes a phrase on mourning, the viewer obtains a personal postcard that mourns Paula. The money obtained was donated to a children school for arts in the city of Worpswede making with this the link to important loves of Paula: painting and Children.
Ostalgisches Meerweh
I realized a complex investigation about the site, in this case, Jena in Germany and the ideas and distribution of illumination in the public space in the city. By itself is a very dark place, where most of the streets are obscure during the night . Surrounded by abandoned structures from GDR times, most of the buildings of great size, not related with the University, are practically empty. The process started observing the relationship of light and sun, and the impossibility of traveling before the wall came down. It’s interesting to notice that there exist a numerous amounts of places that use, as nominal structures, words that refer to the tropics. So from the very beginning the work was settled in the necessity of the action of traveling in this particular section of Germany and the idea of illuminating the city through the image of the tropics. After a long period of research, I found the strange information that during the GDR period Fidel Castro gave Erich Honecker a small island in Cuban territory as a present. After the demolition of the wall, this strange piece of territory was never reclaimed, so it did not become a part of the reunified Germany. Such a particular story gave me the opportunity to talk about the strange nostalgia for the past times, a very particular sensation that produced a complicated constellation of contradictory feelings within myself. Mixing my past as a former kid pioneer and my Latin-American background, I developed an invitation to take part in an imaginary trip to the Ernst-Thällmann Island, and subsequently to the beach, called for real PLAYA DDR.
The final output of the piece was an installation in the Bus Station Jena Paradise (Busbahnhoff Jena Paradis), a structure that is prompt to be removed and renewed to transform itself into a contemporary ultra modern station with the same esthetic of a regular train one. So this abandoned and completely dark bus station acted as a receptacle of the piece, that was made up of a monitor hanging from the ceiling in a metal structure similar to the preexistent ones used to display information on the place. Inside the metallic box a monitor showed in constant movement the story of the island and a video-diary of German fictional traveler to the islet. The monitor was the only illuminated spot on the place, so this alternative stop was an invitation to the light of the tropics.
The final output of the piece was an installation in the Bus Station Jena Paradise (Busbahnhoff Jena Paradis), a structure that is prompt to be removed and renewed to transform itself into a contemporary ultra modern station with the same esthetic of a regular train one. So this abandoned and completely dark bus station acted as a receptacle of the piece, that was made up of a monitor hanging from the ceiling in a metal structure similar to the preexistent ones used to display information on the place. Inside the metallic box a monitor showed in constant movement the story of the island and a video-diary of German fictional traveler to the islet. The monitor was the only illuminated spot on the place, so this alternative stop was an invitation to the light of the tropics.
Note From the Curator:
It only takes an instant
for an impression
to become a vision.
(Bill Viola,1985)
The action of traveling is a movement that drives to a development of a personal imaginary. Travel, a powerful source of change, activates an accumulation of images that causes a particular narrative of space by performing the experience of exploring. This contact with the otherness and continuous reflection on personal identity, that involves the action of travel, is the main subject of the intervention of Nayari Castillo. Using the traveller’s metaphor, the anxiety for the sea (Meer-weh) and the tropical dream, Castillo develops a video diary of an imaginary movement, which registers the experience of a personal history within a foreign environment. The events cited by the artist evoke the impressions of a German voyager travelling to a Caribbean island; the Ernst Thälmann Island, which is not only a small-unexplored land, but also a real remain of the GDR territory. Working with “OSTALGIE”, a nostalgic German voice of the former GDR times, the artist takes into consideration historical ideas and images of the period. She produces a video-piece that combines, playfully, GDR-memories and experiences in the tropics, producing a portrait of the travel.
Hipatia Amos
It only takes an instant
for an impression
to become a vision.
(Bill Viola,1985)
The action of traveling is a movement that drives to a development of a personal imaginary. Travel, a powerful source of change, activates an accumulation of images that causes a particular narrative of space by performing the experience of exploring. This contact with the otherness and continuous reflection on personal identity, that involves the action of travel, is the main subject of the intervention of Nayari Castillo. Using the traveller’s metaphor, the anxiety for the sea (Meer-weh) and the tropical dream, Castillo develops a video diary of an imaginary movement, which registers the experience of a personal history within a foreign environment. The events cited by the artist evoke the impressions of a German voyager travelling to a Caribbean island; the Ernst Thälmann Island, which is not only a small-unexplored land, but also a real remain of the GDR territory. Working with “OSTALGIE”, a nostalgic German voice of the former GDR times, the artist takes into consideration historical ideas and images of the period. She produces a video-piece that combines, playfully, GDR-memories and experiences in the tropics, producing a portrait of the travel.
Hipatia Amos
http://www.uni-weimar.de/medien/europa/Aboard/AboardMainFR.htm
Das Wort/Die Stille (The Word/The Silence)
As part of the project “Day to Day in Weimar” in the context of the program Master of Public Art and New Artistic Strategies of the Bauhaus Universität and supported by the sponsorship of the Goethe Institut Caracas in the environment of the project “der Macht des Sprache”, I present a video-intervention that relates the daily and difficult condition of the immigrant with the surrounding world of meanings, with the new and complete faraway experience of the “other” trough verbs. This fuzzy state of loosing the self in translation transforms the reflection about the sign and the meaning into a bodily-related state of the mind. The word that before was a complex nostalgia of the past environment is now a new and particular corporal sensation related to the images that its touch reveals. The video consists of a game between word and image, where the poetic relationship is translated into contemplation. These series of video relate also with the silent, and the powerful instance in which the mind recreates it self in meditative situations. The word as an open door to understand the meaning of the soul, the word as silent witness of the agitate life of the brain, the word as presence and absence and as an excuse to be silent to listen to the internal fluids and, in terms of John Cage, understand the personal music.
The intervention “Das Wort/Die Stille” was conceptualized as an almost invisible installation in the index-card shelves of the library of the school of music Franz Liszt in Weimar. The idea is that a series of videos about the word and its significance as poetic discourse, in term of its impact in the comprehension of the language of silence, will be projected in a tiny screen that will replace for a period of a week the usual box of the index. This small installation is meant to create awareness on image and video as possible media to describe the word, as a translation dialogue between the world of the images and the power of the language; and over all, to talk to the users of the library, by whispering about the human condition of contemplation, about the ideal status of the word, that is the always silent and deep companion in the travel of the mind. In practical terms the spectator, the normal user of the index-cards, will observe a small change in its environment, a subtle discourse about silence and the real and abstract meaning of words.
This work will be shown again this year in the environment of the Goethe Institute’s year project in Berlin as a collective exhibition in the Goethe spaces in the capital. A subtle transformation has taken place due to size and the characteristics of the place, so the work, instead of using a complete index card dispositive, will use a small one, changing from the actual collective size of the library into a more intimate format.
The intervention “Das Wort/Die Stille” was conceptualized as an almost invisible installation in the index-card shelves of the library of the school of music Franz Liszt in Weimar. The idea is that a series of videos about the word and its significance as poetic discourse, in term of its impact in the comprehension of the language of silence, will be projected in a tiny screen that will replace for a period of a week the usual box of the index. This small installation is meant to create awareness on image and video as possible media to describe the word, as a translation dialogue between the world of the images and the power of the language; and over all, to talk to the users of the library, by whispering about the human condition of contemplation, about the ideal status of the word, that is the always silent and deep companion in the travel of the mind. In practical terms the spectator, the normal user of the index-cards, will observe a small change in its environment, a subtle discourse about silence and the real and abstract meaning of words.
This work will be shown again this year in the environment of the Goethe Institute’s year project in Berlin as a collective exhibition in the Goethe spaces in the capital. A subtle transformation has taken place due to size and the characteristics of the place, so the work, instead of using a complete index card dispositive, will use a small one, changing from the actual collective size of the library into a more intimate format.
About public intentions
Space, video and Photography:
Nowadays the object of art has transcended. The “thing”, as a living romantic organism that should provoke the spectator, is substituted by the completely abstract idea of personal interpretation. The artwork is related, then, to the set of reflections that arise in the comparison or interaction of two or more objects, in the place and moment in which they are related. As many artworks exist as interpretations manifest. We find ourselves, then, in an absolute plural environment.
This character of multiple meanings that adhere to the understanding of the artwork requires a site-specific analysis. It is linked to the concept of artwork, where the artist liberates a product that is not the work itself, but an operatic detonator of itself. The object is an excuse. The real artistic process locates itself in an invisible place, in a kind of meta-discourse. The artwork is the object; its environment, its placement, the site where it is shown and a series of other factors that added to the perception establish a polisemic discourse. A constellation structure that depends fundamentally in the individual to penetrate the artwork. In the case of public detonating objects a degree of freedom is added to the problem, justified in the appearance of social perception and the implied scales characteristic of the space.
“Spacialization” is, then, a real relationship between the body and the space that surrounds the detonating object. Between spectators and their physical way to enter into the site, in the relation between the observer and the object. "The space of the art was no longer perceived as a blank slate, a tabula rasa, but a real space. The art object or event in this context was to be singularly experienced in the here and now through the bodily presence of each viewing subject, in a sensorial immediacy of spatial extension and temporal duration, rather than instantaneously perceived in a visual epiphany by a disembodied eye" . To get to know the context of the detonating object is perhaps the crudest approximation of the public in space, in the sense of inside-outside. The movements of the possible spectator and his link with the “object excuse” allow the understanding of the here and now of the concept of place. A site abstractly generated in the interrelation itself, in the affective spacialization carried out between the spectator and the object. To understand the detonating object as a spatial event is, to my judgment, the principal range of Art. In the public case this environment is very complex and it is related fundamentally with what is conceived of as context and with the impressions of site that the object generates in the plurality that perceives it. Public space is, perhaps, the study situation most interesting in the context of what is understood as space. It is related to and justifies problems of magnitudes, subtle ways in which, the public and the private, distance from each other. Is the interaction with this place (the public sphere,) the major concern of most of my recent investigations.
The medium, without any doubt, plays a fundamental role in the effectiveness of the concept of artwork. In my particular case, the video has served as a modulator of sense in the experimental processes I have lived and photography as mediator of many of my proposals. Comprehending video art as a co inhabitant of the country of gesture, its use is understood in the complex system of the contemporary senses, moreover, in the spatial determinations generated. Understanding Video as a provocateur of events and at the same time gesture, and Photography as extended and immediate action. Here, the analysis of the spectator within the artwork is linked to the situations where intervention and gesture are the same locus, the same niche. The implications of the use of these mediums in public space and their activation as gestural readings are the principal objects of my public research.
I have carried out along with some cultural institutions what has become to be known as “ A crusade for the Video-Art in Venezuela”, a project that consists in teaching introductory audiovisual workshops along the national geography of Venezuela. This initiative is accompanied by a series of screenings of videos, which travel with me, in big scale and in public spaces. Also photography workshops are included in the program. After the realization of the project I realized a couple of art interventions related with the experience and with my reflections around travel, identity and geography. Product of the dissimilar places I got to know, appeared a body of work called “The Postcards”, a series of quotations of reality, snapshots of life in my country and of the social interaction I had in every place I visited, a sort of documentations of explored places and the discourses of the people. In this project I worked not only with the idea of Travel diary but also with the small line where photography transform in video. To the eyes of the spectators small light boxes appear in the space, after some minutes in the installation, becomes clear that they, the photos, are nothing but moving images of different landscapes.This work won in 2005 the First Prize of the Juror in the "Jóvenes con FIA" contest.
Public Space and Interventions:
There are various places where the public becomes art. For instance, the literal place, there, in the direct screened projections over public surfaces, in that immediate place that is related with the exterior where the detonating object is located. In the case of the public intervention MORPHEUS, two great projections located in the ceilings of one of the main theaters of Caracas, Teatro Teresa Carreño, the impact over the public space was immediate.
The common passerby experimented a feeling of strangeness over the place naturally walked around. The space was, thus, transformed by the intervention, especially because of the disproportionate magnitude of the images observed (30x40mts). In the case of photography the intervention can be of more impact but also extremely subtle, in the case of “Reverberations” a wall of transparent bricks in the National Center of Photography of Venezuela is used as surface for the light installation of my memories, not only as new location in the abstract space, but as a physical presence in the structure of the building. A wall, in wich, the action of memory is constructing the physical space.
In second place public space as a producer of sense or its interaction with the artist as the detonator of an event “art piece”. I have a particular case here. In the year 2002 I studied photography at the Sommer Akademie of Salzburg, the year after that I returned with a scholarship and a particular event originated the piece: “In Salzburg time expands so much that it stops”. The art piece consisted in a poster relating a singular event, a photograph of the found object and a kit to move it. This piece that may sound confusing clears itself out with the story:
Last year heavy rains fell over Salzburg. During one of the more violent days, a day in which the storm went out of control, I got completely wet while walking down the street. My Nike green pants (RF # 335 68 45 NTS # 556 78-MN-86B) got totally soaked. After changing clothes, I took them to the hallway of my hostel and extended them over the heater to dry. When I got my things together for my trip back home, I forgot to pick up the pants.
Two days ago I arrived in Salzburg in the middle of one of the hottest days of the year (39° Celsius). I went back into the same hostel assigned to me last year. Next morning I was surprised to find the green pants in the same place I left them to dry. This is a memorable occasion. I have never before experience a feeling of time being as immobile as this. I have a conclusion from this event: In Salzburg time expands so much that it stops.
The kit consisted in a pair of pants placed inside a plastic box to be left behind for two consecutive years in some space around the city, waiting its permanence in the site. In this particular case, the artist, I, is influenced by the context. The social context confronts her by producing an object that at the same time reinserts itself in public space. This creates a kind of a feedback process between an event, an object and a person, where the analysis of a situation of values and social ethics translate into an artwork.
Another possibility exists in collective elaborations, where the perception of a big group of people unites to generate a proposal of public scale that shows a coherent vision over a determined object. In some cases my role has been that of a coordinator of events to conceive a unique idea, which because of its coherence in public space, generates one single discourse. Such is the case of the II Slide Festival realized in the open spaces of the National Gallery of Art of Venezuela. This was an invitation to show the memory of a medium out of use, using a similar previous call realized in the 70’s by one of the most important Venezuelan conceptual artists.
The reformulation of a country’s imaginary was the fundamental essence of the proposal realized by Claudio Perna in the year 1977 at the Sala Mendoza Gallery in Caracas, Venezuela, where a wide invitation united numerous photographs that reflect, in a descriptive manner, a national Venezuelan cartography, associating in what was termed the I Slide National Festival.
This retake of themes adjusts to a necessity, almost nostalgic, of apprehending the format. Generally speaking, the invitation is the same, although, the validity of the medium as a translation tool of the environment, is seen altered. The slides sing over a different geography. A distant territory, submerged at times by history, subjected to a multi-temporal action almost postmodern. There the past and the present coexist in a parallel reality. The called to submission was extremely satisfactory, more than 3.000 slides where received in the National Gallery due to the Second Festival of Slides and projected in the open spaces of the building in the presence of all the artists, opening the media of slides, not only to the general public, but to those for whom the media was in former times, a real media of communication.
Restructuring the original idea, a project for a third invitation could be consolidated allowing for the new digital media to play a central role. This would take us to another territory where the perceptions of space can be expanded and the national cartography could transform in virtual action, very near to the construction of a mental map of affects.
Public space and its bonds to the artwork have, according to my perception, multiple variants. This understanding is a mayor theme for my personal research; be it around the event as a piece of artwork, the space that it in itself generates, the physical place where the object is located, the phenomena of scale and time or to the site of social interpretation that is implied. All aspects related to the artwork as a social and contemporary event.
Nowadays the object of art has transcended. The “thing”, as a living romantic organism that should provoke the spectator, is substituted by the completely abstract idea of personal interpretation. The artwork is related, then, to the set of reflections that arise in the comparison or interaction of two or more objects, in the place and moment in which they are related. As many artworks exist as interpretations manifest. We find ourselves, then, in an absolute plural environment.
This character of multiple meanings that adhere to the understanding of the artwork requires a site-specific analysis. It is linked to the concept of artwork, where the artist liberates a product that is not the work itself, but an operatic detonator of itself. The object is an excuse. The real artistic process locates itself in an invisible place, in a kind of meta-discourse. The artwork is the object; its environment, its placement, the site where it is shown and a series of other factors that added to the perception establish a polisemic discourse. A constellation structure that depends fundamentally in the individual to penetrate the artwork. In the case of public detonating objects a degree of freedom is added to the problem, justified in the appearance of social perception and the implied scales characteristic of the space.
“Spacialization” is, then, a real relationship between the body and the space that surrounds the detonating object. Between spectators and their physical way to enter into the site, in the relation between the observer and the object. "The space of the art was no longer perceived as a blank slate, a tabula rasa, but a real space. The art object or event in this context was to be singularly experienced in the here and now through the bodily presence of each viewing subject, in a sensorial immediacy of spatial extension and temporal duration, rather than instantaneously perceived in a visual epiphany by a disembodied eye" . To get to know the context of the detonating object is perhaps the crudest approximation of the public in space, in the sense of inside-outside. The movements of the possible spectator and his link with the “object excuse” allow the understanding of the here and now of the concept of place. A site abstractly generated in the interrelation itself, in the affective spacialization carried out between the spectator and the object. To understand the detonating object as a spatial event is, to my judgment, the principal range of Art. In the public case this environment is very complex and it is related fundamentally with what is conceived of as context and with the impressions of site that the object generates in the plurality that perceives it. Public space is, perhaps, the study situation most interesting in the context of what is understood as space. It is related to and justifies problems of magnitudes, subtle ways in which, the public and the private, distance from each other. Is the interaction with this place (the public sphere,) the major concern of most of my recent investigations.
The medium, without any doubt, plays a fundamental role in the effectiveness of the concept of artwork. In my particular case, the video has served as a modulator of sense in the experimental processes I have lived and photography as mediator of many of my proposals. Comprehending video art as a co inhabitant of the country of gesture, its use is understood in the complex system of the contemporary senses, moreover, in the spatial determinations generated. Understanding Video as a provocateur of events and at the same time gesture, and Photography as extended and immediate action. Here, the analysis of the spectator within the artwork is linked to the situations where intervention and gesture are the same locus, the same niche. The implications of the use of these mediums in public space and their activation as gestural readings are the principal objects of my public research.
I have carried out along with some cultural institutions what has become to be known as “ A crusade for the Video-Art in Venezuela”, a project that consists in teaching introductory audiovisual workshops along the national geography of Venezuela. This initiative is accompanied by a series of screenings of videos, which travel with me, in big scale and in public spaces. Also photography workshops are included in the program. After the realization of the project I realized a couple of art interventions related with the experience and with my reflections around travel, identity and geography. Product of the dissimilar places I got to know, appeared a body of work called “The Postcards”, a series of quotations of reality, snapshots of life in my country and of the social interaction I had in every place I visited, a sort of documentations of explored places and the discourses of the people. In this project I worked not only with the idea of Travel diary but also with the small line where photography transform in video. To the eyes of the spectators small light boxes appear in the space, after some minutes in the installation, becomes clear that they, the photos, are nothing but moving images of different landscapes.This work won in 2005 the First Prize of the Juror in the "Jóvenes con FIA" contest.
Public Space and Interventions:
There are various places where the public becomes art. For instance, the literal place, there, in the direct screened projections over public surfaces, in that immediate place that is related with the exterior where the detonating object is located. In the case of the public intervention MORPHEUS, two great projections located in the ceilings of one of the main theaters of Caracas, Teatro Teresa Carreño, the impact over the public space was immediate.
The common passerby experimented a feeling of strangeness over the place naturally walked around. The space was, thus, transformed by the intervention, especially because of the disproportionate magnitude of the images observed (30x40mts). In the case of photography the intervention can be of more impact but also extremely subtle, in the case of “Reverberations” a wall of transparent bricks in the National Center of Photography of Venezuela is used as surface for the light installation of my memories, not only as new location in the abstract space, but as a physical presence in the structure of the building. A wall, in wich, the action of memory is constructing the physical space.
In second place public space as a producer of sense or its interaction with the artist as the detonator of an event “art piece”. I have a particular case here. In the year 2002 I studied photography at the Sommer Akademie of Salzburg, the year after that I returned with a scholarship and a particular event originated the piece: “In Salzburg time expands so much that it stops”. The art piece consisted in a poster relating a singular event, a photograph of the found object and a kit to move it. This piece that may sound confusing clears itself out with the story:
Last year heavy rains fell over Salzburg. During one of the more violent days, a day in which the storm went out of control, I got completely wet while walking down the street. My Nike green pants (RF # 335 68 45 NTS # 556 78-MN-86B) got totally soaked. After changing clothes, I took them to the hallway of my hostel and extended them over the heater to dry. When I got my things together for my trip back home, I forgot to pick up the pants.
Two days ago I arrived in Salzburg in the middle of one of the hottest days of the year (39° Celsius). I went back into the same hostel assigned to me last year. Next morning I was surprised to find the green pants in the same place I left them to dry. This is a memorable occasion. I have never before experience a feeling of time being as immobile as this. I have a conclusion from this event: In Salzburg time expands so much that it stops.
The kit consisted in a pair of pants placed inside a plastic box to be left behind for two consecutive years in some space around the city, waiting its permanence in the site. In this particular case, the artist, I, is influenced by the context. The social context confronts her by producing an object that at the same time reinserts itself in public space. This creates a kind of a feedback process between an event, an object and a person, where the analysis of a situation of values and social ethics translate into an artwork.
Another possibility exists in collective elaborations, where the perception of a big group of people unites to generate a proposal of public scale that shows a coherent vision over a determined object. In some cases my role has been that of a coordinator of events to conceive a unique idea, which because of its coherence in public space, generates one single discourse. Such is the case of the II Slide Festival realized in the open spaces of the National Gallery of Art of Venezuela. This was an invitation to show the memory of a medium out of use, using a similar previous call realized in the 70’s by one of the most important Venezuelan conceptual artists.
The reformulation of a country’s imaginary was the fundamental essence of the proposal realized by Claudio Perna in the year 1977 at the Sala Mendoza Gallery in Caracas, Venezuela, where a wide invitation united numerous photographs that reflect, in a descriptive manner, a national Venezuelan cartography, associating in what was termed the I Slide National Festival.
This retake of themes adjusts to a necessity, almost nostalgic, of apprehending the format. Generally speaking, the invitation is the same, although, the validity of the medium as a translation tool of the environment, is seen altered. The slides sing over a different geography. A distant territory, submerged at times by history, subjected to a multi-temporal action almost postmodern. There the past and the present coexist in a parallel reality. The called to submission was extremely satisfactory, more than 3.000 slides where received in the National Gallery due to the Second Festival of Slides and projected in the open spaces of the building in the presence of all the artists, opening the media of slides, not only to the general public, but to those for whom the media was in former times, a real media of communication.
Restructuring the original idea, a project for a third invitation could be consolidated allowing for the new digital media to play a central role. This would take us to another territory where the perceptions of space can be expanded and the national cartography could transform in virtual action, very near to the construction of a mental map of affects.
Public space and its bonds to the artwork have, according to my perception, multiple variants. This understanding is a mayor theme for my personal research; be it around the event as a piece of artwork, the space that it in itself generates, the physical place where the object is located, the phenomena of scale and time or to the site of social interpretation that is implied. All aspects related to the artwork as a social and contemporary event.
Other examples of my work in public
Santa Lucía is an old community in the centre of the city of Maracaibo in Venezuela. The metropolis was generated around this historic area, preserving in time the imaginary of a distant country. In its main street, which faces the church, once a year it is celebrated, under the initiative of Clemencia Labin- a Hamburg based artist of Venezuelan origin- an evening event called La Velada de Santa Lucía. There, 30 artists unite to produce site-specic artworks in houses of the neighborhood. The work is hard and consists mostly of the interactions that occur between the artists and the community. This place allows play and dissertation in public space.
The crowds of people gathers together as in a fair and observe with wondering eyes how their homes are transformed in exhibition halls. This place filled with colors assimilates works of contemporary art and registers by contrast a singular constellation of events.
I participated in this event for the first time in 2004. Then I carried out what I have called a proof of montage, which consists in using freely an artwork to be observed in a site-specific location, testing and analyzing its context, without demeaning other circumstances. I use what I consider to be flexible artworks; videos in my case, generated for a white cube and reconsidered for each instance of montage, space appropriation.
Alte Saline Hallein,Austria,2002
The piece chosen for this occasion was “Strange Animals of the Salzach” that had been shown in the Alte Saline of Hallein in 2003. This piece talks in two very different reality contexts. In the particular case of Hallein the piece is shown as part of the final exhibit of the Salzburg Sommer Akademie. There, in context, the people that transit the artwork are, mainly, familiar with the art world. In general terms, they belong to the group of cultural operators. In this case, in difference to Santa Lucía, the artwork was related to the concept of mimesis, with the need to hide some of the elements. In this piece bodies float in a river, recalling a closer reality. The treatment of the image is constituted as if it were a great white sheet similar to snow, coldness floating, a strange difficulty to read the bodies, a resemblance to animals in rare waters.
Santa Lucía,Venezuela,2004
In Santa Lucía, the effect was very different. Many of the people that lived there never had even seen a video projection. In particular, the children were curious to learn how that illusive machine worked. These contextual differences made me think about the artwork with a calmer look, free of the rigorous interpretations of art. I reflected upon the message and how the mind of the observer constructs the pieces with his sight. The surprised reactions filled me with satisfaction, feeling that through a window the floating bodies could be really seen. The distance of the mediation diluted itself in astonishment. To my judgment this was a memorable occasion where I filled, in at first hand, the differences that imply contexts. Here the image was also cold, but the perception was completely corporal.
The possibility of exhibiting in Santa Lucía again with another piece offered a real challenge to me. Because of this, within the framework of La Velada, and encouraged by the intervention on public space, I chose the piece “Negrura: the latin temperament does not allow to be Alfonsina”. I realized it as a grand scale video projection on the frontal wall of one of the houses in the street.
I decided upon a closer theme and familiar images. A woman strolls into the sea waving in, in rhythm to a bolero, her body. This time it was the cold again, but a cold in harmony to the tropics, a freshness that has to do with the wind and the water. In general terms it is constituted as a similar piece of art although the approximation was different. The people sang with the beat of La Lupe, the singer, identifying in its idiosyncrasy. The medium disappeared for the second time, making way for the direct message. I understand better now with earnestness Oldenburg’s phrase: Indeed,these site-specific works can be characterised precisely in their acting out of a process, which, like its object, is continually 'on the way between one point and another [Oldemburg,C.(1967)Store Days. Something Else Press.New York.p51.]
The crowds of people gathers together as in a fair and observe with wondering eyes how their homes are transformed in exhibition halls. This place filled with colors assimilates works of contemporary art and registers by contrast a singular constellation of events.
I participated in this event for the first time in 2004. Then I carried out what I have called a proof of montage, which consists in using freely an artwork to be observed in a site-specific location, testing and analyzing its context, without demeaning other circumstances. I use what I consider to be flexible artworks; videos in my case, generated for a white cube and reconsidered for each instance of montage, space appropriation.
Alte Saline Hallein,Austria,2002The piece chosen for this occasion was “Strange Animals of the Salzach” that had been shown in the Alte Saline of Hallein in 2003. This piece talks in two very different reality contexts. In the particular case of Hallein the piece is shown as part of the final exhibit of the Salzburg Sommer Akademie. There, in context, the people that transit the artwork are, mainly, familiar with the art world. In general terms, they belong to the group of cultural operators. In this case, in difference to Santa Lucía, the artwork was related to the concept of mimesis, with the need to hide some of the elements. In this piece bodies float in a river, recalling a closer reality. The treatment of the image is constituted as if it were a great white sheet similar to snow, coldness floating, a strange difficulty to read the bodies, a resemblance to animals in rare waters.
Santa Lucía,Venezuela,2004In Santa Lucía, the effect was very different. Many of the people that lived there never had even seen a video projection. In particular, the children were curious to learn how that illusive machine worked. These contextual differences made me think about the artwork with a calmer look, free of the rigorous interpretations of art. I reflected upon the message and how the mind of the observer constructs the pieces with his sight. The surprised reactions filled me with satisfaction, feeling that through a window the floating bodies could be really seen. The distance of the mediation diluted itself in astonishment. To my judgment this was a memorable occasion where I filled, in at first hand, the differences that imply contexts. Here the image was also cold, but the perception was completely corporal.
The possibility of exhibiting in Santa Lucía again with another piece offered a real challenge to me. Because of this, within the framework of La Velada, and encouraged by the intervention on public space, I chose the piece “Negrura: the latin temperament does not allow to be Alfonsina”. I realized it as a grand scale video projection on the frontal wall of one of the houses in the street.
I decided upon a closer theme and familiar images. A woman strolls into the sea waving in, in rhythm to a bolero, her body. This time it was the cold again, but a cold in harmony to the tropics, a freshness that has to do with the wind and the water. In general terms it is constituted as a similar piece of art although the approximation was different. The people sang with the beat of La Lupe, the singer, identifying in its idiosyncrasy. The medium disappeared for the second time, making way for the direct message. I understand better now with earnestness Oldenburg’s phrase: Indeed,these site-specific works can be characterised precisely in their acting out of a process, which, like its object, is continually 'on the way between one point and another [Oldemburg,C.(1967)Store Days. Something Else Press.New York.p51.]
Bio
1977. Venezuela/USA. Molecular Biologist and Artist. MFA in Contemporary Visual Systems. Art University, Caracas, VE. MFA Public Art and PhD in Fine Arts, Bauhaus University, Weimar, DE.
Has participated in numerous collective and solo exhibits in cities like Berlin, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Mexico DF, Miami, NY, Salzburg, Budapest, among others. Has won multiple prizes and bursaries including the First Prize in the 62th National Contest Arturo Michelena in Venezuela. Is mentioned in publications like: Open Maps: Latin-American Photography 1991-2002/Alejandro Castellote/ Telefonica/Madrid. In the past five years has attended various residencies including Skowhegan SPS (2009). At present resides and works in between Plymouth, UK and Berlin, DE. Using video, text and photography as tools of communication, her installation work relies on sitesp-ecific constructs firmly attached to traveling concepts. Her interventions engage with history, time and space, claiming a semantic where ancient tools and contemporary devices combine in one and only discourse.
Has participated in numerous collective and solo exhibits in cities like Berlin, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Mexico DF, Miami, NY, Salzburg, Budapest, among others. Has won multiple prizes and bursaries including the First Prize in the 62th National Contest Arturo Michelena in Venezuela. Is mentioned in publications like: Open Maps: Latin-American Photography 1991-2002/Alejandro Castellote/ Telefonica/Madrid. In the past five years has attended various residencies including Skowhegan SPS (2009). At present resides and works in between Plymouth, UK and Berlin, DE. Using video, text and photography as tools of communication, her installation work relies on sitesp-ecific constructs firmly attached to traveling concepts. Her interventions engage with history, time and space, claiming a semantic where ancient tools and contemporary devices combine in one and only discourse.
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