155
154
what he called “the person”, which is what we commonly call “mask” and some other concepts. At that time I couldn’t say that it was also speaking about me, but eventually, looking back, I can see the connection and the similar components. Talk to us about your artwork in the XXV Concurso de Arte Eduardo León Jimenes. There is a painting called Nunca es tarde si la dicha es buena, it is an expression on how I feel today: happy and grateful for my life. It is a tribute to this stage of my life. The other piece, Son solo burbujas de vida… espejos de preguntas y esperanzas, deals with memory. Both of the works have autobiographical components. The installation more than anything; where there are bubbles that are based on some of my drawings. These drawings are reproduced, torn, and again reassembled to form bubbles. These bubbles are connected to each other in a room. And what I’m stating with that piece deals with memory, as I see memory, as I understand it; and the other component is about the difficult stages in life or times of chaos, turbulence or uncertainty; the drawings have a component of points of light, and with that I’m referring to the always present light in our lives, or in my life. This work speaks in a personal manner. I look back and understand that all these experiences I have lived, good and not so good, have been learning experiences that shape and form what Mónica is today. That’s what this piece is about. I opt to tearing as a formal resource, but it contributes to the conceptual element of it. Because as I see memory as the process of rebuilding on fragments you remember, at the right time for me to remember what I do is join them again… but they are still fragments. So I tear, or in good Dominican, I “ripeo” the original drawings. How do you evaluate the national panorama in artistic mater? I will speak from my generation and those who come after us. I feel that there have been significant and positive changes. That you always want more? Yes. I think that’s part of human nature to always want more. But there have been positive changes in several maters: we have an international presence in important group exhibitions, which curators are taking into account. That is very positive. I am also glad to see that there is a new medley of artists between the late 20s and early 30s. I am particularly glad to see them because they are artists who are already demonstrating that they are very talented; these are taking their career
with a seriousness and responsibility that is very important because talent per se is not enough. Marie Jiménez (Santo Domingo, 1991) Graduated in Fine Arts from La Escuela de Diseño of Altos de Chavón, La Romana, Dominican Republic. She was a selected artist in the Bienal Nacional de Artes Visuales of the Museo de Arte Moderno in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in 2011. After completing her studies at Parsons The New School for Design in New York, United States, she exhibited her videos and pictorial work in a variety of cultural venues. She was selected artist in the XXIV Concurso de Arte Eduardo León Jimemes. Sin título. 2014 Videoart Loop projection Variable Dimensions A la luz de la sombra. 2014 Acrylic on canvas by Edward Salcedo 101.6 x 152.7 cm Artist’s statement This video installation consists of a video and a painting displayed in a room. It shows a painter socially marginalized and at the same time privileged; while suggests to analyze the role of video in opposition to the traditional language of painting. The video as the center of the installation depicts the link between two emerging artists living in different contexts: Edward and Marie. This part of the installation shows Edward as the artist in the periphery; through stories of his evolution as a painter in a context where he was not been offered with opportunities for his production to be valorized. The installation uses this painter’s paradox to question whether the marginalized has a voice and if one can be recognized as such. “My practice is based on the use of video as a tool to move the periphery to the center. I explore the issues that generate this interest; including the relationship between marginalization and happiness, knowledge and center, and the boundaries between the centers of the periphery. My work shows these issues through documentation of subjects in fictitious or real situations, presenting them in a way that addresses their privacy and confronts the viewer. I usually work from personal experience that I shape with a screen that allows me to prioritize feelings”.
Conversation with Marie Jiménez Tell us about your background as an artist and the scenarios in which you have shown your work. I studied Fine Arts at Altos de Chavón and then at Parsons The New School of Design, where I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts. I have had the opportunity to show my work at the Museo de Arte Moderno and the Centro León in the Dominican Republic. In New York, I have shown my work in alternative spaces such as galleries, cafes and more traditional contexts as in the Hudson River Museum, St Paul’s Chapel Gallery, Columbia University and Parsons The New School of Design. How is your working process and in which issues are you interested? My work always deals with issues of identity through privacy. I start with the research, which for me is a process of personal understanding (point of view, perspective) and then social understanding (theoretical, analytical) that leads me to shape the piece. Talk to us about your artwork in the XXV Concurso de Arte Eduardo León Jimenes. This work comes from friendship and deals with the artist within the art industry and marginalization in the Dominican Republic. The piece began to take shape when I started to question my friend’s position as a painter. My friend Edward and I started to exchange assignments as a kind of exercise to understand why we decided to work in the field we work. We talked daily about socioeconomic status, what education represents, and the opportunities to grow professionally as an artist in both contexts. I asked Edward to record videos with his topics of interest, while I was helping him to verbalize what he was doing with his paintings. To have a better understanding of his work, I decided to take one of his paintings to New York. There, out of its original context, the technical ability caught the attention of the viewer more than the subject of the painting. This reaction made me think about what causes this, the story behind it is crucial to create a discourse on the subject and not on the painting. I started working with printed text, produced by the collection of talks between Edward and me, the text was fit for ‘a story’ and the act of reading could create a space of intimacy with the viewer. But in its physical form, as a book, made me feel frustrated because its inaction in relation to painting, when they are in the same space. The painting of Edward, a manufactured object,
brushstroke by brushstroke, and in large size, the dimensions of a human body, draws more attention than the text. Trying to bring the text to a physical plane, such as the painting, I overlaid the conversations with sounds and videos that Edward was recording with his cell phone, creating an audiovisual piece that could be projected and had a more dominant presence in the space. Trying to bring the video to a physical and mystical level, closer to the painting and what it generate in the viewer, it was necessary to continue the discourse of marginalization to the point that the media have a dialogue in parallel with the dialogue that Edward and I have in the video. Joiri Minaya (New York, 1990) Graduated from the Escuela Nacional de Artes Visuales in Santo Domingo, the Escuela de Diseño Altos de Chavón in La Romana and Parsons The New School of Design in New York. She has participated in residencies such as Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, USA and L –EST European Performing Arts and Transmedia Lab in Scène Nationale MA in Montbéliard, France. She was the winner of the Grand Prize at the XXVIII Bienal Nacional de Artes Visuales at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Santo Domingo. Lives and works between New York and Santo Domingo. Siboney. 2014 Performance Artist’s statement Siboney is a performance in two parts that explores the stereotypical constructions of the Caribbean and Caribbean women based on fantasies drawn from foreign otherness. The performance reflects on how these constructs are then internalized and thoroughly reproduced by the subject in which they originate. A fabric with a “tropical” generic pattern found by the artist and the song “Siboney” sang by Connie Francis are the elements of departure for this research. The print has a stereotypical souvenir design character or a mass production design. When is manually copied and painted on a wall, symbolizes a process of internalization of something determined by someone else. The song “Siboney”, composed in 1929 by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona at a time of longing home, was popularized in 1931 by the interpretation of the Dominican baritone Eduardo Brito and then recorded by several artists, including Connie Francis in 1960. With this recording,