ALINKA ECHEVERRIA | SOUTH SEARCHING by Gazelli Art House

ALINKA ECHEVERRIA SOUTH SEARCHING

GAZELLI ART HOUSE

“Around the time I was learning to read my father taught me to use a compass. ‘Find your North’, he said, ‘….then you can go anywhere’.” Migrations of people, shifts in theoretical paradigms and the presence of mystical experience have defined us an ever-evolving species. South Searching speaks of transformation and a pursuit for alternative ways of thinking about the world; of moving away from that which is structured and revered, to a search for the unspoken, the unacknowledged, the unseen. - Alinka Echeverría

CONTENTS Foreword by Mila Askarova....................................................5 Wit(h)nessing Society by Laura Gonzáles Flores..................7-9 Sigils of the Unsayable by Kevin Bloom.................................13 M-Theory...................................................................10-19 Looking Anthropologically by Kiven Strohm......................21-22 And So It Was Told.......................................................23 To See Her and Let Her See Me................................24-25 Mexico’s Inherent South by Diego Gómez Pickering.............30 The Road to Tepeyac..................................................27-31 From South to South by Gabriela Salgado......................32-33 Becoming South Sudan: Chapter I...........................34-40 On Becoming South Sudan by Emma Lewis.....................36-42 Becoming South Sudan: Chapter III...............................43 Becoming South Sudan: Chapter II..........................44-52 Biography......................................................................52-55 Credits & Thanks.................................................................56

F OR E WOR D BY M I L A AS K A ROVA “Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” - Toni Morrison, Beloved What does identity really mean and how is it influenced by the anthropological, sociological and political developments over a period of time in a region one can refer to as home? The accessibility and desire to seek specific information about society, ancestry and heritage, provides an understanding of one’s identity – limited or in-depth – and an insight into their behavioral patterns, which can be linked to their individual or collective past. Alinka Echeverría’s four separate bodies of work, produced over the past five years, take the subject of the individual to the forefront. The conversations then initiated are three fold: questions around the individual’s own perception of themselves, the interrelationship between the individual and society, and the perceptions of a society in a more global, international context. The intention of this ambitious direction for the exhibition is not only to bring all four bodies of work together, but also to illustrate the connected underlying themes between each series and the artist’s evolving artistic enquiry.

M-Theory, Echeverría’s latest body of work, was selected to introduce the dialogue of context within which one’s perception of an individual is formed. Presented in images alluding to landscape aerial views, the fingerprints close-ups have the biographical content of the owner stripped, the story of each of these individuals playing a historical role in shaping modern day South Africa, is omitted. Thus tackling all three angles of the conversation points, M-Theory transcends labels that are commonly attached to better understand one’s identity. The anonymity prompts one to attempt to understand the unique mapping of each fingerprint and enable the viewer to decode an individual life captured through these images. Through the Becoming South Sudan Chapters I, II, & III, people and their accompanying stories are introduced, on the contrary to M-Theory. The subject’s gaze, raw and charged, in an environment that is yet unknown to them, provides an insight into the transformation of one’s identity. The intimate accessibility to and one’s understanding of the information presented and the possession of specific knowledge to form an opinion about the subject matter, brings in the Blind series, which initially acted as an umbrella theme to the M-Theory. The works displayed from this ongoing series provide an excellent overview of the deconstruction of content – audio-visual or image-based – that is crucial to the creation and the build up of a belief system. Removing that visibility of and access to content presents an empty image as in the case of IXIPTLA and To See Her And Let Her See Me, or a reading as in the case of And So It Was Told, which further explores the codes of understanding. The final room of the gallery displays Alinka’s first acclaimed body of work, The Road to Tepeyac. The identities here are transformed as being pilgrims at that point in time, translated through the images of the self-made depictions of the virgin acting as an indication of, or introduction to, who they really are. A final say posed more as an introduction to the many more insights Echeverría will produce going forward. 5

WIT(H)NESSING SOCIETY: ALINKA ECHEVERRÍA AND THE CONSTANT MAGIC OF SEEING BY L AUR A GON ZALEZ-F LORES

At first sight, the four bodies of work by Alinka Echeverría presented in South Searching, could all be understood as projects of photographic portraiture. While The Road to Tepeyac (2010) reminds us both of the fixed viewpoint and the serial quality of the archive-oriented portraiture of August Sander—a 20th century critical and self-reflexive variant of the Positivist anthropological archive of the 19th Century—Becoming South Sudan (2011) draws us closer to the portrayed subject, bringing up the surface details of physical appearance and forcing us to stand up to the subject’s gaze. The third series, M-Theory (2014-2015), interrogates the indexical quality of photography by using it in a critically reversed way. Instead of functioning as unquestionable markers of identity, the fingerprints of well-known leaders of the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa who were incarcerated for years are transformed into poetic and enigmatic visual landscapes. M-Theory’s selfreflexive use of photography also opens up the way to the latest body of work, Deep Blindness (2015), which uses various audio-visual resources to destabilize and interrogate conventional associations of vision and knowledge inherent to our common understanding of photography. While Echeverría´s images certainly work well as portraits her critical and self reflexive use of photography extends far beyond a mere constative documentation of social realities. Shifting between the description of the objective characteristic features of individual identities (portrait of the person) and the depiction of masks that operate as symbolic cues of social belonging (portrayal of the persona), her images inhabit an inbetween indeterminate space of photographic practice. Refusing a stable position as an affirmative testimony of public existence (photography as document) or as a negative contestation of social vulnerability (photography as social denunciation), Echeverría’s work may be better understood when thought of as a performative visual discourse. To her, photography is a visual “speech act” (in the sense proposed by J. L. Austin in How to Do Things with Words ) that enacts what is being signified. Thus, her images bring about whatever they are representing. More than a stunning set of photographs of pilgrims of different age, gender, class, profession, and culture, The Road to Tepeyac is a project that makes use of recurrence in a performative manner. While the depiction of social typologies is undoubtedly an effective result of her work, the real purpose of the series is that of unveiling the affective coding of social life. Thus, more than obtaining a social archive, as in the case of Sander, Echeverría aims to convey the cyclic and recurrent nature of ritual time through the use of iteration. When we look at the photographs of the backs of the pilgrims, one after another, we connect ourselves to their ritual walking. Like them, we seem to tread towards the centre of the image, to that imaginary vantage point where this time and space of our real lifetime seems to stop. Our connection to the images opens us up to the rite of passage, to that other time and space where our life, as that of the pilgrims, could also change.

While the photographs of Sander ask us to look there at them, those of Echeverría point here, back to us, the viewers. Can we, like the pilgrims, separate from our lives to procure desired change? Wherein lies our goal, our vantage point? What are we willing to do—or offer—in order to attain it? Echeverría´s work reminds us of the loss of what Antonin Artaud called “constant magic”, that is, a resistance to the expected and predictable that furthers our capacity to act out our ethics. To Artaud, in order to see ethically we need to stand in a theatrical setting—a mise-en-scène—that we help to set up. As opposed to a response to a preconceived right or wrong according to the setting, our consciousness of the constructability of the set furthers ethical behaviour in us. We play our role consciously on a stage whose rules have not been “already set”. The portraits of Becoming South Sudan amplify the process of imaginary exchange by confronting us with an unknown setting, that of the newly independent Republic of South Sudan. Whereas the faces of the pilgrims in The Road to Tepeyac are hidden from us by the use of a back shot, the portraits from South Sudan face us in a blatant way. Depicted tightly within the frame, and thus closer to us, the portrayed men and women seem to address us with their gaze. Echeverria´s empathy with them translates into a close imaginary dialogue between viewers and sitters. Again, a performative language game is set up by the image: more than a document of something or someone, the photograph is a re-enactment—a mise-en-scène— of a relationship. What marks this dialectic game is the lack of certainty on both parts: neither the viewer nor the sitter wins control of the image. Its meaning is loose; we cannot take control of the portrayed subject assigning him or her a stable role within our ideological cosmos. Nor we can respond to their implicit questions regarding our perspective of their too fragile and unknown world. Therein lies the component of violence of these images. Not in the obvious association of the sitters with an armed process or a social conflict, but in our incapacity to establish sense out of their image. The photographs that comprise M-Theory deal with the instability of meaning of the image. Real ink fingerprints of well-known leaders in the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa are magnified, enlarged and transformed into visual landscapes. Using analogue platinum-palladium printing for the final works, Echeverría achieves a subtle long-scale continuous-tone; these images are unlike the original prints in that they range subtly from black to white. The indexical image that certifies the identity of Nelson Mandela, Eddie Daniels, Lionel Davies, Tlou Cholo, Ahmed Cassien and other fighters incarcerated in Robben Island, shifts its use and meaning away from that of social surveillance. The colour of the skin is rendered meaningless as a means of ascribing social value. In this new visual rhetoric, which Echeverría implements through an active collaboration with her sitters aesthetics has replaced ethics.

Do we know what we see? Can we see in order to know? Involving a reflexive use of photography, the work of Alinka Echeverría interrogates the link between vision and knowledge. Through subtle and poetic visual resources her series disclose the paradoxical nature of vision. It is precisely when we strive to affix meaning to an image when it displays its unstable or contradictory nature. The more certain we are about what we see, and thus know, the less we are capable of establishing a live and present connection with it. Taking things for granted, we cease to interrogate the ever-changing world in front of us. The indexical and optical character of photography has promoted its central purpose a testimonial means. Without renouncing to the deontological witnessing drive of her medium, Alinka Echeverría magnifies it so as to encompass the possibility of a dialogic relationship. In that way, her images attain the wit(h)nessing capacity propounded by feministic aesthetics: that “being with” an(other) which the artistic process may bring forth. Rather than a technical effect, her aesthetic practice thus becomes a mode of expression and exchange of affect. Or, as Artaud would describe it, her strong and direct images connect us with the “constant magic” of seeing again as children.

References Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). J. L. Austin, (1975). How to Do Things with Words, ed. By J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisá (Cam-bridge: Harvard University Press,): 4-7. Antonin Artaud cited by Mark Ledbetter, “Do Not Look at Y/Our Own Peril. Voyeurism as Ethical Necessity or To See As A Child Again”, in Asbjørn Grønstad and Hernik Gus-tafsson, Ethics and Images of Pain (London: Routledge, 2012): 9-10. Griselda Pollock, After-affects /After-images. Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation in the Virtual Feminist Museum (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013): XXV.

M-Theory IV 2015 Platinum-Palladium Print floated on museum board with hardwood stain frame 80 x 55 x 5.5 cm - framed

SIGILS OF THE UNSAYABLE in response to M-THEORY

The thing he missed, she said, was the silence. Perhaps he smiled; impossible to be sure. The smile, if that's what it was, was a permanent fixture/feature. The smile of the adept, the initiate, the master (Order of the Single Cell). He was the first to get out, she said. "I waited for her," he said. Between them, a total of thirty -six years. This she didn't say: the cell was the liberation. And how/why would she, when to say would be to unsay, when to say nothing would be to speak? M had also missed the silence, she said. After taking office, he would dream sometimes of returning for an eternity, for an afternoon beside his tight square of light. "To think," she said. Of the day he broke through his last ending? The moment he saw through the trick? Of the day, the moment, the ground rose up (through the floor)?

II. The ground: it does not telegraph its arrival, she said. It does not write to say it will rise after lunch. It comes like a thief, in stealth up the stairs, to claim the few souls that have slipped past the guards. "`Wide open," his smile said, of his first virgin plunge into freedom. And what was the boon? What had they brought to us as revelation? What had the ground found at the top of the stairs? "The hen is only the egg's way of making another egg," a poet once said, a poet part utopianist/ part satirist, a poet who could punctuate silence. All silence: the movement of the ground into space. The sigil of the cell and the star. The point where the binaries meet. Which is no point, no space, no star. Liberation from the membrane of the cell. Solve et coagula, dissolve and bind. For twenty-six years an alchemist, M for twentyseven, her for ten. And there were also (of course) the others: the unheard of adepts, unspeaking knights, not of the movement, not the flag, but no-endings.

III. It was us, the unitiated, the less-thanlifers, who took the symbols as core. Less the truth behind the image than the image before the truth: us, blind, deaf, the best we could do. They tried to show, tried to teach: less. The lesson was less. Which, for us, was less than enough. Their signatures, their imprints, their fingers and thumbs, did not mark them from the start for greatness. Who knew? Some were petty, some were angry, all on their worst days were small. But all of those who counted at some point stopped counting Time. Just sat in the ground of time-being. The suchness of the cell and the sun. The whorls in the prints in the stars. Just watching, just witnessing, this. And we, still we, still we continue to ask, â&#x20AC;&#x153;What?â&#x20AC;? We who are still our old selves, still safe in our cellsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;still ungrounded, unstill. Why do we end? How do we still miss the silence? Kevin Bloom Johannesburg, South Africa 2015 13

M-Theory III

M-Theory IX

2015 Platinum-Palladium Print floated on museum board with hardwood stain frame 80 x 55 x 5.5 cm - framed

M-Theory V

M-Theory VI

2015 Platinum-Palladium Print floated on museum board with hardwood stain frame 80 x 55 x 5.5 cm - framed

M-Theory I M-Theory I 2015 Platinum-Palladium Print floated on museum board with hardwood stain frame 80 x 55 x 5.5 cm - framed

M-Theory M-Theory VII 2015 Platinum-Palladium Print floated on museum board with hardwood stain frame 80 x 55 x 5.5 cm - framed

M-Theory II 2015 Platinum-Palladium Print floated on museum board with hardwood stain frame 80 x 55 x 5.5 cm - framed

M-Theory VIII 2015 Platinum-Palladium Print floated on museum board with hardwood stain frame 80 x 55 x 5.5 cm - framed

IXIPTLA 2013 archival pigment print, mounted on aluminium 93 x 33.5 x 4 cm

LOOKING ANTHROPOLOGICALLY: ON ALINKA ECHEVERRÍA’S METHOD BY K IVEN S T R O H M

Alinka Echeverría’s work is underpinned by an interest in cultural difference, the politics of representation and the use of fieldwork within art practice. The anthropological element in her work is of note and I’d like to explore it in more detail here, in particular how her “method” might contribute to the ongoing dialogue between art and anthropology. Let me turn to the work M-Theory, a series of platinum-palladium prints of the fingerprints of prominent former detainees at Robben Island, a prison for political prisoners during the Apartheid era (it is worth noting that the fingerprint as a form of identification was the product of the colonial encounter, see Sengoopta 2003). The first thing I noticed was that these prints are not straightforward representations. As Alinka describes her process: “The fingerprints are taken with dry ink on acetate sheets. They are then photographed and inverted so the black lines become white, and the white negative space in the original print becomes black.” Within the play on racial categories, categories that, incidentally, remain unavailable to the fingerprint, the viewer is confronted with fingerprints that no longer “look” like fingerprints. Even if the text accompanying the exhibition tells us we are looking at fingerprints, the subtle yet powerful inversion of colours renders the images abstract, inviting the viewer to create their own narrative. Although left unsaid in the exhibition, M-Theory is the product of three and a half months of fieldwork in South Africa. All but one of the prints resulted from one-on-one meetings with former prisoners. Alinka spent time with them in their homes, permitting an intimacy with the subjects not uncommon in anthropology. In fact, the fieldwork undertaken for this project creates an intimacy between the artist and her subjects that invites us to think about the artwork in terms of a social encounter, an open-ended process without any specific narrative or closing (see Schneider and Wright 2013). In what could be seen as an effort to prolong this social encounter, the images in M-Theory should be considered along the lines of what the anthropologist Stephen Tylor refers to as “evocations” (Tylor 1986; For a similar argument see Mjaaland 2013). These are images that do not present, describe or represent but instead evoke, with the viewer given the freedom to choose how to interpret. The play with monochromatic colour opens a world of possibility; for South Africa, a country still riddled with an insidious racial politics, leaving open the possibility of imagining the world otherwise could also be seen as a political gesture.

Art and anthropology have had a long and ambiguous series of exchanges reaching back to the early twentieth century. In the 1920s and 1930s Dadists and Surrealists started to explore anthropology as a possible avenue for rethinking the relationship between art and everyday life. Seeking to de-familiarize and turn a critical eye on their own society and using it as an explicit form of cultural critique (Marcus and Fischer 1986) these artists found that anthropology was uniquely positioned to offer the resources and tools for such a détournement. Today, however, it can be argued that this relationship has been reversed as anthropology looks to experiment with method and continues to offer ethnographic studies that invite the reader and viewer to be a participant within the ethnographic encounter. By aiming to sustain and continue the social encounter of fieldwork and refusing to limit interpretive possibilities, the “method” offered within the work of Alinka Echeverría is an example of this new thinking. And as her work displays quite vividly, the dialogue between art with anthropology is not merely an academic exercise.

References Mjaaland, Thera. “Traversing Art Practice and Anthropology: Notes on Ambiguity and Epistemological Uncertainty.” In Anthropology and Art Practice, Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright, eds. pp. 53-62. London: Bloomsbury (2013) Marcus, George E. and Michael J. Fischer. Anthropology as Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1986) Schneider, Arnd and Christopher Wright. “Ways of Working.” In Anthropology and Art Practice, Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright, eds. 1-24. London: Bloomsbury (2013) Sengoopta, Chandak. Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India. London: Macmillan (2003) Tylor, Stephen. “Post-Modern Ethnography: From the Document of the Occult to Occult Document.” In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, James Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds. pp. 122-140. Berkeley: University of California Press (1986)

And So It Was Told 2014 Audio loop - continuous

To See Her And Let Her See Me 2014 Video loop 32 minutes

The Road to Tepeyac #67 2010 Archival pigment print - Hahnemuhle fine art print, mounted on aluminium in hand finished tulip frame 60 x 45 cm - framed

The Road to Tepeyac #34 2010 Archival pigment print - Hahnemuhle fine art print, mounted on aluminium in hand finished tulip frame 60 x 45 cm - framed

The Road to Tepeyac #7 2010 Archival pigment print - Hahnemuhle fine art print, mounted on aluminium in hand finished tulip frame 60 x 45 cm - framed

The Road to Tepeyac #45 2010 Archival pigment print - Hahnemuhle fine art print, mounted on aluminium in hand finished tulip frame 60 x 45 cm - framed

MEXICO’S INHERENT SOUTH BY DIEG O G O ME Z PI C KE R I NG Alinka Echeverría’s images talk to us in a way few others can. Hers is a look at the world from a very personal perspective, an undisputable insight into life and humanity from within. The long and thorny road to independence both in the political and individual realms. The invincible and unexplainable strength of faith, in oneself or in a religion. The treacherous but unavoidable game of identity, perception and belonging. Her lens portrays a unique view of societies and nations, a visual narrative from the South. A look on its own that is a reflection of Mexico. A capricious geography encapsulated between the North and the South of the American continent, embraced by both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans; a country of over 120 million people and over 60 different languages. Mexico is a world in itself, with a millennia-old history and multiple cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Like Alinka’s work, Mexico transcends tags and categories; its attachments and layers are multiple and overlapping. Tremendously modern and painfully antique, extremely rich and miserably poor, wise but naïve, heaven and hell, alive but dead; a party in the middle of a funeral, both a celebration and a eulogy. Mexico is a place where opposites attract and reality becomes surreal. It is constantly on the move and at the same time perennially immobile: the South in search of the South. It is from this unique platform that the artist looks at her surroundings and captures what few others can; for the meaningless to have a meaning and for the pointless to have a point. It requires stripping ourselves from definitions and preconceptions. To understand the South you need to look at it from the South. And that is precisely what Alinka and Mexico provide; a different perspective on people and situations; a naked eye cast onto stories that imperiously need to be retold; a soulsearching and cathartic look into scenes seen a million times before, that present themselves to the viewer for the first and only time. It is only when faces, bodies, eyes and even fingerprints speak, that the images containing them can be heard. That moment in which black is no longer black and brown no longer brown; when the South becomes the North and the evident stops being so. When words are substituted by thoughts, and ideas by images, is when the world starts making sense despite all its nonsense.

The Road to Tepeyac #104 2010 Archival pigment print - Hahnemuhle fine art print, mounted on aluminium in hand finished tulip frame 60 x 45 cm - framed

The Road to Tepeyac #132 2010 Archival pigment print - Hahnemuhle fine art print, mounted on aluminium in hand finished tulip frame 60 x 45 cm - framed

FROM SOUTH TO SOUTH: CHASING THE SOUL OF IMAGES BY GA BRIE LA S A LGA D O ‘South Searching’ is an exhibition of photographic images made of subtle traces and powerful metaphors from the perspective of a border artist. In this instance, the borderline concept designates far more than a physical division between territories, instead signifying states of mind familiar to those who know the complexities of a shared cultural make up, as is the case for Alinka Echeverría. Trained as an anthropologist with a practice as documentary photographer, the artist looks at the construction and mediatisation of images from a multidisciplinary perspective. As an anthropologist she explores images as keys to unlock belief systems and culturally determined behaviour. As an artist, she passionately communicates the complexity of our image-centered epoch by dismantling the conventions of representation in benefit of a certain poetry of evocation and an exercise of erasure. In 2011 she embarked on a trip to South Sudan, with the intention of documenting the aftermath of the referendum, which formalised the plea of the separatist guerrilla groups that struggled to divide the country in two. As a result, the southern and mostly Christian region that became South Sudan had to produce a sense of sovereignty and manufacture its own identity as a nation state. During the six months that followed the triumph of the secessionist resolution, citizens entered a period of rehearsal of the nation state articulated through the creation of an iconography to define its existence among nations. A national anthem, a flag, a police force, and an education system had to be designed to incarnate the idea of nationhood. After going through numerous bureaucratic hurdles, Alinka immersed herself in the visual documentation of this unique utopian moment. Her photographic portraits in Becoming South Sudan (2011), show diverse groups of citizens: imposing men in military attire, police officers on their graduation day showing distinctive marks of tribal scarification, and puzzled school pupils in their uniforms exuding difference and integration, as sixty-nine ethnic groups became united under one flag. The history of decolonisation in Africa is made of such numerous forced amalgamations: for the past sixty years the creation of nation states has been a compendium of permanent readjustments and adaptations.

Also in the exhibition, and following the path of iconography as a crucial element of complex cultural definitions, Echeverría’s series of works entitled The Road to Tepeyac focuses on pilgrims to Our Lady of Guadalupe sanctuary in Mexico. The photographic portraits, video and sound piece presented in the exhibition obliterate the representation of the most popular catholic icon in Latin America to whom the striking devotional activity is dedicated. Reversing representation to its negative - or rather to its reflection - the artist portrays the pilgrims as human mirrors of the solar image. According to the myth, the Madonna manifested to a peasant boy named Juan Diego in the XVI century, only a few decades after the Spanish colonisation of the territories subsequently known as Mexico. The apparition of the Virgin, a native looking woman, whose image was imprinted on the boy’s tilma (cloak) supposedly by electromagnetic radiation emanating from her luminous aura, became the source of great theological dispute. Accordingly, the icon drew herself with light on the tilma, producing an imprint - a photograph - as a proof of her miraculous apparition.1 In Echeverría’s series the icon, draped in her golden starred, cosmic looking mantle at the centre of her irradiation, is as immaterial as the disputed existence of the Virgin, and only seen in the banners carried by the pilgrims. Born out of syncretism due to the failure of colonial domination to completely erase local spirituality, most religious entities in the Americas contain a multitude of identities, effectively merging the ancestral and the imposed icons. As general practice, catholic churches were erected over the ruins of pre-colonial sacred sites, promoting a history of realignment and sublimation, powerfully at play in the site of the ancient goddess Tonantzin, today sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the most visited catholic sanctuary in the world.

1 Deriving from the Greek language, the term photography etymologically originates in φωτός (phōtos), genitive of φῶς (phōs), “light” and γραφή (graphé) “representation by means of lines” or “drawing”, together meaning “drawing with light”.

ON BECOMING SOUTH SUDAN BY E MM A LE W I S

On July 9 2011 South Sudan was made an independent sovereign state, an act of emancipation from the Republic of Sudan that effectively ended around forty years of violent civil confrontations. As the creation of two separate nations brought the challenges of establishing national identity, so too came a myriad of problems to do with changing identity at the level of the individual. For South Sudan, this meant people from some sixty-three different tribes now being defined as one nation, with demilitarised soldiers being assigned institutional roles as police officers or prison guards. It meant a country that war has left disproportionately populated by women seeking how to establish a society in which they are able to exercise new rights. And it meant a place in which 70% of the population is under thirty years old determining how to forge roles for its young people into this new nation. What Alinka Echeverria photographed during that period was therefore not the emergence of a fully functioning and unified society, but a place in which latent fragmentation and poor infrastructure meant a country and its civilians â&#x20AC;&#x201C; many of whom are returning exiles â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in a state of flux. As the series title Becoming South Sudan denotes, she documented a country as it began a long and very gradual process of coming into being. Her interest at this time was primarily in how this formation of a new identity manifests itself. This included outward signs such as religious dress and government-issue uniforms, the rituals and displays that project an image of national solidarity at a time of great change, and the moments that encapsulate the difficult reality of such upheaval. The works are presented in three formats: scenes such as military rehearsals and refugees in transit; largeformat, close-up portraits that emphasise the singularity of the subject; and seventeen full-length, life-size singular portraits of the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first graduating senior police officers. All depict people in the attire and spaces that illustrate their role or position at that defining moment in the birth of their nation.

Chief. Becoming South Sudan: Chapter I 2011 C type print on archival photographic paper, mounted on archival museum board in hand finished hardwood frame 78 x 78 x 4 cm - framed

The portrayal of ‘types’ as seen in the singular portraits has a long and established history in photography. August Sander, Irving Penn, and Richard Avedon produced some of the most renowned examples of people portrayed under defining categories such as their trade, while in contemporary photography, Rineke Dijkstra’s portraits explore the characteristics of individuals within group settings. Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing, and Samuel Fosso, meanwhile, are among those who have taken a more self-reflexive approach to this area of photography, employing role-play and masquerade to explore identity in terms of its malleable and performative nature. Looking at Becoming South Sudan in this legacy, we see the natural tendency to group people by class, culture, and the job that they do. We also see that identity is not something that just ‘is’, but something that requires construction and participation in order to exist. Whether in the uniform of a boy scout or a prison guard, the monochrome dress code of the choirgirl, or the white robes and religious talismans of the nun, Echeverría shows that external details such as this do not present the entire facts of that persons being, but they can, however, provide insight into what the construction of national identity means when it is undertaken at the level of the individual. Looking at these portraits of people as they adopt their new status as citizens of South Sudan – people such as the groups of men who are ex-rebel soldiers but now possess a shared status as police officers or prison guards – we see how the relationship between appearance and identity is essentially a reciprocal and self-fulfilling one: how the act of wearing is a mode of becoming. In portraying people at this very specific moment in their social, political, and cultural history, Echeverría does not adopt the romantic cliché of cultural reform as a sweeping, euphoric moment of change. Instead, she acknowledges the coexistence of symbolic gestures of unity and social cohesion – the Independence Day parade or national anthem recitals, for example – together with what goes on behind the spectacle. Namely, the ingrained fragility that exists as a result of continued violence and interethnic conflict. This nuanced approach is particularly significant given Echeverría’s own cultural identity. It points to a moment in which African and non-African photographers alike are seeking to establish a new visual language with which to portray a continent whose visualization by the West has, for too long, been entrenched in crude imagery of otherness. Historically, this has meant the tendency to distil the unfamiliar into easily consumed categories of the exotic, primitive, or violent. As Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor has described, however, this lens has recently shifted from one of reduction towards one of disappearance. Here, as the aftermath of colonialism demands a revision of power hierarchies, visual culture no longer depicts Africa only as place to fear (and, by implication, as a place to dominate). Instead it now all too frequently adopts a pitying attitude that Enwezor terms ‘Afro-pessimism’, wherein the continent is represented as a place that is less-than, deprived, and despairing – a place that is on the brink of ceasing to be.

Rebel. Becoming South Sudan: Chapter I 2011 C type print on archival photographic paper, mounted on archival museum board in hand finished hardwood frame 78 x 78 x 4 cm - framed

Anthem. Becoming South Sudan: Chapter I 2011 C type print on archival photographic paper, mounted on archival museum board in hand finished hardwood frame 78 x 78 x 4 cm - framed

In Becoming South Sudan Echeverría has inverted these tropes. In place of reduction and disappearance is the narrative of the birth and development of a new country. Instead of snatched, passing shots or requests for empathy, are portraits in which the subject stands face-on, staring hard back at the camera – literally and symbolically returning its gaze. The large-format technique that Echeverría uses contributes to this, necessitating a longer and more collaborative approach. It also requires absolute stillness, resulting in compositions that undercut what we have come to expect from traditional photojournalism or reportage. Here, in the clean, almost graphic look that comes from newly worn uniforms and restrained postures, the line between genres is blurred towards something that has more in common with studio portraiture, or even narrative photography. The beauty and appeal of the portrait, of course, is that it allows scrutiny of another person with intensity that normative social grace does not permit. In these portraits, this effect is magnified. Pin-sharp and almost sculptural in their form, Echeverría renders facial cues and tiny gestures with a clarity that would otherwise be indiscernible. In doing so, she constructs an encounter in which we can read and instinctively respond to the form of the individual as though they were right there in front of us. Faced with body language and eye contact that is challenging, even intimidating, the images demand our attention and defy reduction to type. Crucially, they also invite curiosity about the story of the individual beyond the uniform in which they are photographed. These moments of transition are especially powerful in the images of women, for whom, in photography, pivotal stages are typically centred on natural but deeply personal rites of passage such as adolescence or motherhood. Looking at the portrait of Christina Killa, a fine- boned older woman who fought in the rebel army for seventeen years and is now the chief prison officer of Juba Women’s Prison, what we see in her brown uniform and authoritative gaze is the embodiment of a period of change. Specifically, change under a new constitution that states that each government institution must include 25% women in decisionmaking roles. As Echeverría alludes to in the inclusion of six women amongst her portraits of police officers, this is not a portrait of a defining moment for one woman alone, but – at least in intent – for a nation’s entire female population. In each of the images in Becoming South Sudan, whether of a choirgirl during rehearsals of the new national anthem or the careful composition of a group of police officers, Echeverría conveys how acts such as wearing a uniform or taking part in a parade are not simply benign gestures. These outward displays are loaded, and project an identity that often exists in tension with how that person, or group of people, identified themselves up to that point. They are also signs of a process: a role being actively constructed, performed and, gradually, inhabited. Capturing these first steps, Echeverría conveys the atmosphere that she found there during this transitional time – a heady mix of resilience and uncertainty, unease and self- possession – with searing clarity. Nowhere are there signs of identity being adopted passively. Nor are there empathy-provoking images of the trauma of change. Instead, her images possess a quiet strength and cumulative power entirely befitting to a portrayal of the nation that is becoming South Sudan.

Officer Jackson Onek Paul. Becoming South Sudan: Chapter III (Graduation Day) 2011 C type print on archival photographic paper, diasec mount in hand finished tray frame 131 x 67 x 5 cm - framed

South. Becoming South Sudan: Chapter II 2011 C type print on archival photographic paper 76.2 x 114.3 cm

Window. Becoming South Sudan: Chapter II 2011 C type print on archival photographic paper 76.2 x 114.3 cm

Altar. Becoming South Sudan: Chapter II 2011 C type print on archival photographic paper 76.2 x 114.3 cm

Sunday. Becoming South Sudan: Chapter II 2011 C type print on archival photographic paper 76.2 x 114.3 cm

ALINKA ECHEVERRIA (b. 1981, Mexico City) Lives and works in London. Forthcoming Exhibitions 2016 Les Recontres de la Photographie, Arles 2016 BMW Art&Culture Pavillon, Paris Photo Grand Palais 2016 Swiss Foundation for Photography, Winterthur Selected Solo Exhibitions 2015 Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa 2015 Casa de Africa, XII Havana Biennial 2015 Gazelli Art House, London 2015 Goa Photo Festival 2014 The California Museum of Photography 2014 Laleh June Galerie, Basel 2012 Manezh Exhibition Hall, Moscow Photobiennale 2012 Lima Biennial of Photography, Peru 2012 French Institute of Latin America, Mexico City 2012 EB & Flow Gallery, London 2012 Centro Cultural Recoletas, Buenos Aires 2011 Maison de la Photographie, Lille 2011 L’Arsenale, Metz 2011 Galerie Réverbère, Lyon Selected Group Exhibitions/Screenings 2015 KALA Art Institute, California 2014 Backlight Photo Festival Tampere, Finland 2013 Centro Cultural EJE, Mexico City 2013 The Wittliff Collections, Texas 2013 Center for Photography at Woodstock 2013 Museo de América, Madrid 2013 FORMAT International Photography Festival 2013 The Strand Gallery, London 2012 Galería Nacional de San José de Costa Rica 2012 Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles 2012 Shizaru Gallery, London 2012 Museo Archivo de la Fotografía, Mexico City 2011 Fototeca Nacional del INAH. SINAFO, Mexico 2011 Bibliothèque Nationale de France François Mitterrand, Paris 2011 National Portrait Gallery, London 2011 Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art, Medzilaborce, Slovakia 2011 Lehigh University Art Galleries LUAG

2011 2011 2011 2011 2011 2011 2011 2010 2010 2010 2010 2010 2010 2010 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2008 2008 2008 2008 2007 2006

Bursa International Photography Festival, Turkey FOAM Museum Amsterdam Flash Forward Festival, Boston Les nuits de Pierrevert, France Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris Espace Dupon, Paris The Royal College of Art, London Flash Forward Festival, Toronto Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, Oregon Steven Kasher Gallery, New York Salomon Contemporary, East Hampton LOOKBetween Festival of the Photograph, Virginia Fotovisura Pavilion, New York Photo Festival The International Center of Photography, New York Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery, New York Crane Kalman Gallery, Brighton, UK Slideluck Potshow XIII – New York La Fototeca de La Habana, Cuba Biblioteca de México, México City Host Gallery, London Galleria Jean Blancheart, Milan The Art of Photography Show, San Diego Getty Images Galley, London Spazio Oberdan, Milan 5th Reel Venus Film Festival, New York Pingyao Photo Festival, China International Center of Photography, New York Museo de Los Pintores Oaxaqueños, Oaxaca, México Spazio Thetis, Arsenale, Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art Academia d’Arte Cignaroli, Crossroads festival, Verona

Public/Institutional Collections The Life Collection, South Africa The Nelson Mandela Foundation, South Africa The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Wittliff Collections, Texas Fundación Casa Medina Sidonia Bibliothèque Nationale de France HSBC France/Fondation de France Lehigh University Art Galleries LUAG FOLI Museo de la Fotografía de Lima Nicéphore Niépce Museum, France BMW Art & Culture collection, France

Education 2007-2008 International Center of Photography, New York, USA Graduate Certificate Program 2000-2004 University of Edinburgh, UK MA Honours in Social Anthropology & Development 2002-2003 University of Bologna, Italy Exchange Program - Politics; Visual Anthropology Artist Residencies 2015 BMW Photographer-in-Residence, Nicéphore Niépce Museum, France 2014/15 KALA Art Institute, Berkeley 2014 The Life Collection, Maboneng Precinct, South Africa 2014 Nirox Foundation, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa 2014 Writer-in-residence, ART 21 Magazine 2013 SOMA Summer Residency, Mexico City 2010/11 Artist-in-Residence at L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie, Arles, France. Awards/Grants 2015 FT/Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Awards 2014 British Council/Arts Council England- International Development Fund  2014 KALA Art Institute Fellowship Award, Berkeley  2014 Renaissance Photography Prize - Shortlisted Finalist 2013 Foam Paul Huf Award - Nomination 2013 Terry O’Neill Award - Finalist 2013 Prix Pictet - Nomination 2012 Lucie Awards - International Photographer of the Year 2012 Magnum Emergency Fund - Nomination 2012 Prix Pictet - Nomination 2012 Magenta Foundation Flash Forward - UK Winner 2011 Magnum Expression Award - Finalist 2011 World Press Photo-Joop Swart Masterclass - Selected Participant 2011 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize - Selected Artist 2011 Encontros da Imagem Braga Photography Award - Finalist 2011 PX3 Prix Pour la Photographie - Gold medal in Fine Art & Portraiture 2011 Prix HSBC Pour La Photographie, France - Winner 2011 Magenta Foundation Flash Forward - UK Winner 2011 The Aftermath Project - Sahrawi Grant Finalist 2011 Visas de l’Association Nationale des Iconographes - Finalist 2010 Reportage by Getty Images - Selected Emerging Talent 2010 Magenta Foundation Flash Forward - UK Winner 2010 FotoVisura Grant - Finalist 2010 Center, Santa Fe – Second Prize editor’s choice 2008/9 New York Photo Festival Awards - Finalist in artist book category 2009 2008/9 American Photo Images of the Year 2008 - Honorable mention 2008/9 American Society of Media Photographers - ‘Image 08’ Judge’s Choice

Alinka EcheverrĂa in the gallery. Photography ÂŠRoger Alarcon, 2015.

I would like to express my gratitude to Mila Askarova and all the team at Gazelli Art House for making this exhibition possible. To Laura González-Flores, Gabriela Salgado, Emma Lewis, Diego Gómez-Pickering and Kiven Strohm for their thoughtful words. To David Vasquez for sharing his oral tradition, and to Jennifer Hughes, Daisy Vargas and the sound team at UC Riverside for helping me capture it. To Julian Fisher, Jacob Cockcroft and Willem Marx for encouraging me to venture to South Sudan at a time of uncertainty, and to the citizens of South Sudan who allowed me to photograph them. To James Sanders and Barbara Jones for an unforgettable trip to Qunu, to Benji Liebmann and the Nirox family for providing a haven of inspiration in the Cradle of Humankind, to the kind people at the Nelson Mandela Foundation and Ahmed Kathrada Foundation for their moral support and encouragement, to Ahmed Kathrada, Laloo Chiba, Shirish Nanabhai, Andrew Mlangeni, Theophilus Cholo, Eddie Daniels, James April, Kwedi Mkhliphi, Ebrahim Ebrahim Ismail, Lionel Davis, Christo Brand, Ahmed Cassiem and Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Ernest Moseneke for their earnest collaboration. To Kevin Bloom for his incredible poem and to Adolfo Echeverría, for his sensitive translation. I would also like to acknowledge and thank Jose Luis Guijarro, Milena Vassova, Fernando Marroquin, Xareni Penichet, Paul Bransby, Cathy Michaels, Alexia Webster, Bronwyn Lace, Marcus Neustetter, Aupa Ngwato, Nadine Rubin, Emily Pitts, Medeine Tribinevicius, Paul Waterworth, Jonathan Beer, Guillaume Dulermo, Life Collection, Hasselblad UK, Max Caffell/Studio 31, Darbyshire Framing, Metro Imaging and Location Audio for their logistical support and technical assistance. Lastly I would like to thank my partner Leo Maguire and our families for their ongoing support, especially my parents - por ser mi Norte. - Alinka Echeverría

Buluk. Becoming South Sudan: Chapter II 2011 C type print on archival photographic paper 76.2 x 114.3 cm

Exhibition Catalogue: South Searching 22 May – 27 June 2015 Published by Gazelli Art House 39 Dover Street London W1S 4NN Photography: © Benjamin Westoby. Courtesy Gazelli Art House © Alinka Echeverría M-Theory Installation image Artist Images: © Alinka Echeverría Design: Alinka Echeverría & Tala Mahjoub

39 Dover Street London W1S 4NN / +44 (0) 207 491 8816 www.gazelliarthouse.com