8 minutes
The primary interest in the trilogy is Joskowicz’s use of cinematic space, with long tracking shots that portray resistance to habitual viewing experiences of film and television. Video plays a role in the relation between the use of her locations and the stories of actual figures depicted as central in the frame. The meaning behind these historical icons such as Che and Cassidy, speak to their stories as itinerant figures whom traveled in a preglobalized era through borders and cultures in order to escape the law or overthrow it. The camera work, and the stylistic and formal devices such as tracking and establishing shots, create narrativistic voids that offer the transference of new political or social meanings.
Claudia Joskowicz is a video and installation artist working at the intersection of landscape, history, and memory. Her works form unsettling scenes that reimagine public and private histories of Latin American individuals and communities. Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, these works often involve violent images to bring traumas to the present, and to offer a moment of catharsis for the ones who were affected by these incidents in some way. In her works, Joskowicz intentionally gives a great amount of power and agency to the camera, reminding the viewer of their passive role in the construction of history. In this way, the artist critiques technology as a medium that easily manipulates one’s interpretation of history, controlling what gets to survive in the public collective memory. As Joskowicz’s camera wanders around the landscape, or focuses on one of the protagonists in her stories, the rest of the scene—and with it, other possible perspectives—fall into the dark, constructing yet another subjective historical narrative. It’s easy to focus on the slow movement of the camera more so than the actual event being recorded, which Joskowicz harnesses to remind her viewers that history is man-made. When texts or events are taken out of their context and technology is present to create an imaginary cinematic space, any narrative is possible.
Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...
Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...
Part of a larger series of photographic works, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck’s Corrupted file from page 14 (V1) from the series La Vega, Plan Caracas No...
The perceived effortlessness of power, projecting above experiences of labored subordination is examined in Death at a 30 Degree Angle by Bani Abidi, which funnels this projection of image through the studio of Ram Sutar, renowned in India for his monumental statues of political figures, generally from the post-independence generation...
Destilaciones ( Distillations , 2014) is an installation composed of a group of ceramic pots, presented on the floor and within a steel structure...
The three monkeys in Don’t See, Don’t Hear, Don’t Speak are a recurring motif in Gupta’s work and refer to the Japanese pictorial maxim of the “three wise monkeys” in which Mizaru covers his eyes to “see no evil,” Kikazaru covers his ears to “hear no evil,” and Iwazaru covers his mouth to “speak no evil.” For the various performative and photographic works that continue this investigation and critique of the political environment, Gupta stages children and adults holding their own or each other’s eyes, mouths and ears...
Lockhart’s film Lunch Break investigates the present state of American labor through a close look at the everyday life of the workers at the Bath Iron Works shipyard—a private sector of the U...
With Roca Carbón (Charcoal Rock, 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks...
Lockhart’s film Lunch Break investigates the present state of American labor, through a close look at the everyday life of the workers at the Bath Iron Works shipyard—a private sector of the U...
Untitled (Women) (2011) presents a startlingly succinct history of violently romanticized femininity...
Ramirez’s The International Sail is the fifth in a series that features an upside-down worn out, mended and fragmented boat sail...
Days of Our Lives: Reading is from a series of work was created for the 10th Biennale de Lyon by the artist...
The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...
In Ante la imagen (Before the Image, 2009) Muñoz continues to explore the power of a photograph to live up to the memory of a specific person...
Herculine’s Prophecy by Juliana Huxtable features a kneeling demon-figure on what appears to be a screen-print, placed on a wooden table, which has then been photographed and digitally altered to appear like a book cover, with a title and subtitle across the top, and a poem written across the bottom...
Nicolas Paris studied architecture and worked as an elementary school teacher before he decided to become an artist...
Martinez’s sculpture A meditation on the possibility… of romantic love or where you goin’ with that gun in your hand , Bobby Seale and Huey Newton discuss the relationship between expressionism and social reality in Hitler’s painting depicts the legendary Black Panther leaders Huey P...