Distrito 4

Allan Sekula

13 Nov 2012 - 30 Jan 2013

© Allan Sekula
Shellfishers working and army preparing (Touriñan, 12/24/02), 2003
Cibachrome
57,15 x 200,6 cm.
ALLAN SEKULA
Black Tide / Marea Negra, 2002/03
13 November 2012 – 30 January 2013

Distrito 4 presents the exhibition Black Tide / Marea negra 2002-03 of Allan Sekula. This series was done after the Prestige disaster on November 13th 2003 in the Galician coast 240 miles of Finisterre at the request of La Vanguardia, a Barcelona newspaper. For this reason Sekula produced a series of documentary photographs, which are less dramatic and more meditative than most photojournalism. His images focus on the besieged coastal landscape, the physical properties of the invading oil and the exhausting work of the volunteers and the “people of the sea” the ones who really conducted the struggle against the black tide. The work which came out of it he called Black Tide / Marea Negra and subtitled Fragments towards an opera, referring to a supposed “operatic” silence which will last for the next thirty years. This series is being shown at the Marco in Vigo in the group show Ballena Negra. X Aniversario del Marco.

Sekula works primarily with the photography and the tests that constitute a sharp critique of globalization and the social reality. In this series Sekula focuses its attention on the sea as a forgotten area of globalization. The sea was used not only for trade but also as a union between continents. This work joins two main axes of the photograph; the documentation and the ambition aesthetics with a sharp critical sense and political. Black Tide/ Marea negra 2002-03 is a series of ten photographs that portray a variety of situations that occurred during the Prestige disaster. It shows us workers and volunteers faced with this situation as victims of the disaster. Allan Sekula documents and remembers those days of the disaster which addresses some of the most intriguing questions of our time: the exploitation of nature, the legacy of colonialism, the history of modernity, the myth of the indefinite progress, maritime trade, globalization, social movements or the war.

Sekula was born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1951 he is an American of Polish descent he lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Sekula has exhibited in international Museums and Institutions worldwide, highlighting some sucha as Centre Pompidou, Paris (France), 29th Biennial de São Paulo, São Paulo, (Brazil), Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art at the Dutch Cultural Center, Shanghai (China), MACBA, Barcelona (Spain), Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerp (Belgium), Ludwig Museum, Budapest (Hungría), Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna (Austria), Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisboa, (Portugal), Le Channel and Musée des Beaux-Arts (Calais), Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Mónica (California), Whitney Museum, Nueva York (USA).

Sekula ́s work is part of important international collections sucha as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Neva York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece, Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Museo de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany, Getty Research Institute, Resource Collections, Los Ángeles, California.
 

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