Azucena Vieites
20 Mar - 22 Jul 2013
AZUCENA VIEITES
Tableau vivant
20 March – 22 July 2013
Using drawing and collage as her main work tools, Azucena Vieites (Hernani, 1967) engages in a process of appropriation and iconographic resignification of materials and references that are linked to the contemporary cultural imaginary.
Through this exercise in visual re-elaboration, Vieites explores the expressive potential of non-linear forms of narration and knowledge production, and at the same time critically reflects on questions such as the conception of aesthetic creation as a processual task always linked to a certain social and economic context, or the need to generate discursive strategies that help break the binary logic that persists in many of today's cultural representations.
In the configuration and evolution of her artistic practice, in which a series of stylistic and conceptual constants can be recognised (intensive use of fragmentation and repetition, the search for expressive immediacy, and commitment to collaborative work...) and which has been closely linked, ever since her projects with Colectivo Erreakzioa-Reacción, to (post)feminist and queer activism, a primary role has been played by the notion Do It Yourself . And particularly by one of the most emblematic historical manifestations of the DIY culture: the fanzine, a type of publication that has given collectives without access to traditional means of production a tool that allows them to document and give visibility to their own representations.
In her most recent works, Azucena Vieites has focused her gaze on the ways in which children do things. These ways of doing things reveal a will to construct language and an ability to overcome norms and social conventions, two qualities that, in the artist's opinion, should always be present in artistic practices, whose main objective is to generate in spectators a feeling of strangeness that leads them to rethink their relationship with the surroundings. Vieites' show at Museo Reina Sofía was preceded by a workshop for children called Colouring Book, in which a group of children modified, by colouring them, some of her works. Part of the material generated by this workshop is shown in Tableau vivant, where we can also see the first video piece by this artist and a set of serigraphs made with pre-existing images that allow her to explore - and question - the distinction between original work and copy (between a one-of-a-kind work and works in series, or reproducible work).
Tableau vivant
20 March – 22 July 2013
Using drawing and collage as her main work tools, Azucena Vieites (Hernani, 1967) engages in a process of appropriation and iconographic resignification of materials and references that are linked to the contemporary cultural imaginary.
Through this exercise in visual re-elaboration, Vieites explores the expressive potential of non-linear forms of narration and knowledge production, and at the same time critically reflects on questions such as the conception of aesthetic creation as a processual task always linked to a certain social and economic context, or the need to generate discursive strategies that help break the binary logic that persists in many of today's cultural representations.
In the configuration and evolution of her artistic practice, in which a series of stylistic and conceptual constants can be recognised (intensive use of fragmentation and repetition, the search for expressive immediacy, and commitment to collaborative work...) and which has been closely linked, ever since her projects with Colectivo Erreakzioa-Reacción, to (post)feminist and queer activism, a primary role has been played by the notion Do It Yourself . And particularly by one of the most emblematic historical manifestations of the DIY culture: the fanzine, a type of publication that has given collectives without access to traditional means of production a tool that allows them to document and give visibility to their own representations.
In her most recent works, Azucena Vieites has focused her gaze on the ways in which children do things. These ways of doing things reveal a will to construct language and an ability to overcome norms and social conventions, two qualities that, in the artist's opinion, should always be present in artistic practices, whose main objective is to generate in spectators a feeling of strangeness that leads them to rethink their relationship with the surroundings. Vieites' show at Museo Reina Sofía was preceded by a workshop for children called Colouring Book, in which a group of children modified, by colouring them, some of her works. Part of the material generated by this workshop is shown in Tableau vivant, where we can also see the first video piece by this artist and a set of serigraphs made with pre-existing images that allow her to explore - and question - the distinction between original work and copy (between a one-of-a-kind work and works in series, or reproducible work).