Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
Both biography and autobiography are central in my practice. I am interested in taking the experience of regular people as starting point (and also my own) to relate to and to reflect on political and social historical or contemporary conflicts.
My work La Vida en Rojo arose from the need to understand my own inheritance, in order to build my own generational tools to act in the present. Revolution, utopia and militancy were central words in my surroundings since I was a child. I remember knowing the word revolution, without completely understanding its meaning. It was necessary for me to go through different geographies and political conflicts, which were central in the history of socialism and communism – and also of my family story – to deconstruct and to rethink these concepts. The revolution my grandparents fought for had a color, a manifest, a party. I believe that, today, there may be not only one, but several revolutions and utopias, multiplying themselves under different forms instead of a vertical, allegedly homogenous one. Their appearance may not take the form of a rebellion in one timeframe, but grows silently over time instead, creating new alternatives to the capitalist system.
As one of my main interests, archives composed of personal documents, notes and photographs have the potential to open up different narratives of our recent history, which can extend or contradict the predominant historical accounts. Reading recent political memories from a letter, a small note, an underlined book, give us the possibility to relate to our own acts and political context, to rethink the present we are creating with our decisions and through acts that may appear small or insignificant. But they are creating our future history, even if we are not aware of it. The question is: what future and what history of the future do we want to create?