Uyuni is a Bolivian city known for being near the Salar de Uyuni, a 12,000-square-meter salt flat in the Province of Potosí, located in the border with Chile. In Uyuni (2005), although he makes no mention to the salt flat, Argentinian artist Andrés Denegri depicts a situation as arid as the desert itself. Shown at the 15th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival (2005) and featured in Videobrasil on Tour 2006-2007, the video serves as a starting point for this edition of FF>>Dossier, which is dedicated to the work of Denegri, and a part of the Outros espaços curatorial section, aimed at widening the debate about the possibilities of construction-perception of space through image.
In Uyuni, a foreign couple that can't leave town discuss their situation inside a room, standing on the border between safe and unsafe. Superimpositions of video and film create a sharp view of space, combining the intimacy of conversation, images of empty streets, and broadcasts from a Peruvian radio station. As if in an extension of the situation in which the couple find themselves, the space is charged with tension between public and private, places and territories, imagination and reality. In this work near and far overlap with each other (as do electronic and filmic images), evidencing the heterotopia typical of contemporary spaces. Street, city, room, country, continent, all can be seen in open shots amidst the desolate landscape of Uyuni.
With a deep knowledge of the Argentinian cultural scenario and artistic production, critic, professor, and curator Rodrigo Alonso wrote about Denegri's artwork in the Essay. The situations created by the tension between distance and intimacy, present ever since the artist's first works, are one of the issues approached by Alonso, to whom Denegri tends to work with metonymy, leaving the final decision about certain situations up to the audience. As Alonso himself put it, Denegri “builds an audiovisual account using fragments that refer to an absent entirety, with gaps left to be filled in by the viewer.”
Further info on this artist available at the collection
