Associação Cultural Videobrasil

After the economic crisis of 2002, in the aftermath of the institutional tsunami that hit Argentina in the previous year, dawn came upon an emptier Uruguay. Emigration reached alarming levels: according to estimates, over one hundred people left the country everyday in that year, most of them between twenty and twenty-nine years of age. Those who stayed did not “turn the light off.” They struggled to find a way of remaining in the country.

Thus, an enterprising generation flourished, disconnected from expectations of government benevolence, and in tune with global trends and discussions. Over the last five years, Montevideo witnessed an eruption of publications, businesses, and ideas that revitalize various fields of activity, ranging from fashion events to independent centers for selling the work of young authors. Within the embryo of artistic creation, a sector that represents “global postmodernism,” as the Artnet magazine put it, surprised by leaving its offices to entertain a dialogue with society.

This structural “good wave,” which resisted the hurricane of the early century, includes Paula Delgado. Holder of a degree in economics, the artist—who, as a child, like many other little girls around the world, would read the delicate comic strips of the Love Is... series and who, as an adolescent, would hum to the tunes of George Michael, Madonna, Roxette, and to the sound of MTV—was born, as a creator, in the early 2000s.

She got started with theatrical experiments in college. From there, she moved on to performance: “The theatrical structure was too rigid for me, and the freedom allowed by performance, in terms of timing and physical space, would enable me to be more specific with regard to the contents and ideas that I wished to convey.” Soon she incorporated other forms of expression, such as photography and video. In her quest for languages and discourses, she was a member, alongside her cousin Martín Sastre and other artists, of the Movimiento Sexy, a critical, debauched collective, intent on laying bare the structures of the local art market.

“I think that there were better expectations at that time, in 1999, 2000. Lots of proposals seemed to be arising, but then they disappeared,” she recalls. “The economic crisis probably had much to do with it, because a whole lot of people went away. This led the artistic panorama to become frozen once again.”

Nevertheless, the Movimiento Sexy collective heated up the Uruguayan scene and projected Delgado, most of all on an international scale. Candy, her first creation, formulated around that time, visited the pages of The New York Times upon landing on Manhattan with a modernity as carefully constructed as it was passé, based upon an “American Way of Life” remodeled under Latin American conditions, anachronistic and displaced.

“My work was always better received abroad than it was in Uruguay, without exception, from the first works I exhibited to my most recent project. While here the specialized public would be still discussing whether what we did was art or not, out there, each work would be quickly processed, and there would be some feedback. This is something that annoys me in Uruguay: the lack of feedback. The reality in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for example, is totally different. Everyone has an impressive capacity of absorbing what is being presented. They understand it, process it, and give you something back. It is fulfilling to present a work in Buenos Aires, the energy is very strong.”

To the bold Candy followed the melancholy Mariana, a girl in a wheelchair who, in her quite gloomy bedroom, filled with medication and old furniture, fantasizes about the romantic encounter with the man of her dreams, as a hit song by Mexican pop icon Luis Miguel, sung by herself, serves as the soundtrack to her reverie.

Next up, Delgado would emerge as a Pollyanna-cum-debutante/bride, her character in Feliz aunque no libre. In the work, she brings back the little naked couple from the Love Is… series in order to purge away its sexist messages that inebriated generations. Afterwards, she quit acting in her videos, abandoned her personas, and started proposing reflections about the themes that intrigue her—especially the social roles ascribed to men and women—by means of situations and people culled from real life.

This crop includes the recent works Karina and Cómo sos tan lindo. In the former, the protagonist was discovered at 1:30 a.m., in downtown Montevideo, as Delgado and her friend and collaborator Julia Castagno were walking and taking statements from women on how they felt and reacted to sexual harassment in the streets, which is often regarded as a natural thing, and usually not discussed. The work was screened in Uruguay and Argentina, and was selected to represent the artists in Spain, during the 1st Bienal São Paulo-Valencia, held in 2007.

In Cómo sos tan lindo, the aim was to break another taboo: to put a group of men in front of the cameras, liberating them from the role of almighty males, and putting them in a position of people who were willing to make a self-assessment of their physical condition, with no preconceived discourses or roles. “The way in which a woman looks at and portrays a man is not the way that we are used to seeing. In terms of imagery, the representation of a male body is always created by the eyes of another male. This project is a tribute to male beauty, and a space in which to discuss it with the men themselves,” says Paula Delgado.

The author keeps an eye out for many different fields. In addition to the visual arts, she is a professor at the Universidad de la República, the Uruguayan federal university, and she also works with art production in advertising, an activity that provides her with elements for artistic creation. In the academic field, she published in 2005 La industria audiovisual uruguaya. ¿Realidad o ficción? Su impacto sobre las PYMES, written along with three other researchers from Uruguay.

In 2008, she presents, in Vienna, an Austrian version of Cómo sos tan lindo, with support from the Ministry of Culture of Uruguay. “Europe has a very large art market. They are eager for new proposals. There, art that deals with genres has an important place.”