An extensive Photography Exhibition covering Contemporary Latin America:'Resiliencia' currently on show at Milli Reasürans Art Gallery between 7-30 April 2011
Organized by PhotoEspaňa, 'Resiliencia' exhibition features the works of ten contemporary photographers chosen by the curator Claudi Carreras Guillén. * The notion of Resilience from
which the show’s title was taken, qualifies the regenerative capacity of a body after an impact,
and bears witness to this constant acclimation. The name is defined as “Capacity of a solid to recuperate its original form and size, when the forces causing the system’s deformation cease.”
In Latin America the artistic process arises in the midst of political, economic and social
turmoil. The artists found themselves compelled to explore new forms of conceptualization in order to draw attention to their projects amidst a sea of possibilities. Besides a wish to portray the changes taking place around them, they also reflect the role of images in society, employing all available sources in the creation of their work. In this way, habitual paradigms are questioned, and new visual codes of continual mutation occur.
The photographers whose works are selected for this exhibition are Ana Cecilia Gonzales Vigil, Livia Corona, Ramiro Chaves, Tomás Munita, Mark Powell, Óscar Fernando Gómez Rodríguez, Morfi Jiménez, Nicola Okin Frioli, Dante Busquets and Pavka Segura.
Ana Cecilia Gonzales Vigil´s project, “When the Tremor Stops”, shows images taken in Perú´s central coast in 2008, one year after the brutal earthquake that shook the country. It is possibly the work that most clearly identifies itself with the concept of resilience that gives title to the exhibition.The rebuilding task has not yet allowed the inhabitants of the area to return to everyday life, to normality. In her images the inhabitants try to rebuild their lives in totally devastated surroundings. What strikes one most is the look of normality on the faces of the persons portrayed in these images.
Livia Corona's 'Two million homes for Mexico', addresses directly the housing situation in Ixtapaluca, one of the towns with a fastest demographic growth rate in Latin America. Her images delve into the effect of the state housing policy on the people who suffer from it. They show in full front views the physionomy of these new urban settlements that experiment an exponential growth.
Ramiro Chaves' images take us to Miramar (Argentina), a small village that got flooded when the waters of the Mar Chiquita lake rose and then had to be moved elsewhere. The author guides us through unaccustomed landscapes charged with homesickness and mixed feelings. The inhabitants of the area had to leave their homes and businesses due to the succesive risings of the lagoon waters. Still, they refused to leave for good and instead they went on living beside its limits, where they are constantly at risk.