THEIR OPULENCE IS OUR EXCLUSION

Luisa Pedrouzo Gallery | Buenos Aires | 2002

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR

The events of our time take place in such swift manner that our relationship with the present becomes fleeting like our destiny, from which we massively relinquish, and like true deserters, we choose to deny in order to banish ourselves from our own land of collective oblivion.

Representation of the desired imagery follows the way of the collective unconscious (of the mirror) and has its reference in the stories that constitute memory. We recognize in them, sometimes unconsciously, what we are or what we would like to be, reconstructing faded dreams and making them possible.

Imagination often substitutes reality itself and together they form new imagery that reflects the longing for being and existence.

In my work, presenting oneself “as the other person”, even manifesting his own appearance, is a way of recomposing a plot that has been broken by intolerance.

Furthermore, the epic essence of our present is resignified through the events that marked the founding of a nation on the basis of an outrageous violence incarnated sometimes by civilization, others by barbarity.

This work is the presentation of the representation; it understands these critical versions as constructions that are presented over what is real, by reinventing traditions and genealogies and by putting new subjects up for discussion.

For me, quoting is part of a mechanism of construction of collective memory that captures fragments of history through art and incorporates desire by making realization of dreams possible.

The choice of the photographic language allows me to subvert the perspective of the observer, inciting them to discover the alluring uncertainty of visual paradox and opening new semantic orders, in the attempt to cross that mirror where we can gaze at and recognize ourselves.

Leonel Luna