2015 CONCEPCIÓN 41
Installation views, Indigo
Exhibition with Johanna Unzueta
Concepción 41, Antigua Guatemala
August – September, 2015
Indigo #0 – #6, 2015
Hand dyed cotton fabric, thread and embroidered cotton
75 x 130 cm each
Notebook #7, 2015
Projected video
5:47 min., in loop
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INDIGO is the title of our exhibition at Concepción 41. It is also the door to a different world that we understand as a space where we can promote and make our works participate. This door, which is a color, is a formality in all its expression. It is also an attractive element, that can dazzle or even produce a moment of silence, of contemplation. It is also a hinge, between our intentions and the expectations that we have of that place – as well as the expectations that the place has towards us. Finally, it is a way to connect with techniques to be learned, to the knowledge that is normally left aside by the circuits of contemporary art, where for example dyeing and embroidery are generally considered artisanal techniques rather than tools that can be used to discuss “current issues”. This has to do with the settled notion of the de-manualization of contemporary practices, which we oppose. At this moment we find ourselves on a crossroads: trying to look at and to understand the future and past simultaneously. And at the bottom of this disjunctive are the textiles, what great textiles! The fabrication of these in such a rich region like this one cannot be ignored – mostly because of the kind of work we produce – yet we also do not want to fall into superficial assimilation of its ethnic, social, and political components. This is why we prefer the honesty of the indigo color, we prefer the honesty of choosing and focusing on just one element, which has a specific history and development within the region. We grab onto this element and secretly think “hopefully everything gets dyed”. Imagine Antigua all tinted in indigo-blue: a strange Mayan world, ancestral, indigenous and colonial, internationally and locally touristic. All in one color, or maybe everything in a gradation of the same color. Our works are separate beings yet they are used to dialogue, between themselves and also with the places where they exhibit. Also, sometimes when exhibited together, they aim to produce a certain confusion of authorship. This is why the exhibition at Concepción 41 was thought of as a flow of confrontations that accentuate certain characteristics of the place. The green of the patio, growing with the arrival of rains, which take their time but arrive, a perfect open “Green Cube”. The trees next to the empty pool, perfect natural columns. The studio-office-house, leaning or supported, to the destroyed Church of La Concepción. And in the background the volcano, and those crazy clouds.
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