Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
I'm interested in juxtaposing traditional, unassociated origins of knowledge, collaborating with different actors coming from particular disciplines and beginnings such local engineers, scientists, community leaders, biomechanics or experts in community development, and bring all of them together for a common goal, when dealing within the concepts of energy and technology. I'm trying to erase the labels of such predefined categories as "high tech" and "low tech," using methodologies in my work that bring together these different disciplines and perspectives.
Energy itself and its accomplishment needs to be redefined after the Second Industrial Revolution. I think that today art practices inscribed in a post-neoliberal context need to deal with their own loss and overload of energy. Almost all of my works start as a research project that attempts to link specific stories to historical materialism, adding layers of complexity to a not well-known or recognizable time frame, making it clear that dealing with history is political. My work is looking to a determined historiography, and the configuration of it, as a political fact. I’m interested in creating uncertain narratives, that raise doubts in regards to established historical narratives.
From that, I acknowledge that the ways we relate with discourses of the State and nationality are a place of confrontation. I always distrusted pre-elaborated discourses coming from the State—what it shows and what it really hides. The construction itself of an identitary profile as a unique, “central identity,” or a “national identity” as a whole, is really problematic for me. In some of my works it is possible to see some very specific local identities that really move away from what the Ecuadorian State wants to project and develop as its own culture.