GRAPHIC! - Juan Davila

JUAN DAVIL A GR APH IC !

29 AUGUst – 15 N o VembeR 2009

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FOREWORD SP Wright, director Griffith artworks + QCa Gallery

Griffith Artworks has enjoyed a rare opportunity to

of self-portraiture in which the subject constantly

present GRAPHIC!, a selection of 60 works on paper

facilitates the challenging of a stable, fixed identity.”

get close to the work of Juan Davila and is delighted to covering almost four decades of practice.

The title refers not just to the medium and substrate we elected to examine — drawing and printmaking on paper — but to the vividly descriptive ways by

which Davila and his guises visualise subjects and objects. There is a tension at play in all of Davila’s work, one that often operates at the threshold

slips away from us. In each, a doubling or mimicry Our project, the first solo public gallery exhibition of Davila’s work in Queensland, features early

works previously unseen or rarely exhibited and several major new works such as the epic

A Panorama of Melbourne (2008), a work central to our project.

where seduction and repulsion co-mingle, or cannot

Griffith Artworks thanks Juan Davila for the access

gravitational pull on the viewer we are almost dared

collection of works, all of which are on loan from

exist without each other. It is a tension with such

to look away, as if to reinforce much of what Davila considers at stake in the constant flux of post-

colonial identities, be they national, personal, sexual, indigenous. What is at stake? Apathy, ignorance, jingoism, to begin with.

As Abigail Fitzgibbons argues, “this strategy

can particularly be seen in Davila’s employment

we have been afforded to his personal archive and the artist. I would also like to acknowledge the

support and generosity of Juan Davila’s Australian representative, Kalli Rolfe, a private dealer based in Melbourne who went to great lengths to assist our enquiries, and printer Larry Rawling, whose

collaboration with the artist can be seen amid the dazzling array of silkscreen editions on display.

of alternative signatures, styles, motifs and

We are especially grateful to Abigail Fitzgibbons

development of personas or protagonists drawn

her first project at Griffith Artworks.

compositions by other artists; in his characteristic from history, myth, art history and popular culture; and in his fascination with an unconventional form

for her research and contribution to this catalogue,

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A PANORAMA OF MELBOURNE 2008 S i l kS c r e e n o n pa p e r 100 x 1200 cm edition of 2

By juan davila Our notion of what is familiar shifts and evolves as does our city.

Violence characterizes the beginnings of Melbourne. The ’mia-mia’ of the indigenous cultures were confronted by the technology of

the newcomers with their tent cities. After the discovery of gold, C

Melbourne emerged as an English Victorian pastiche or catalogue of styles. Here, architecture acquired the feeling of a prison ward, complicit with authoritarian government. The architecture of the

State had then, as now, few links to nature, little consultation with

the citizens, eroding the line between the country and the city and condemning people to nostalgic slums. Today the urban space still

isolates and alienates. The city dominated by technology was once a

science fiction nightmare, but is a reality today. People are controlled, spied upon, dependent on the Internet, IPods, cellular phones and

credit cards. The State promotes a virtual space in detriment of the living one. Our city is a clone of others; the historical centre is a

shopping mall, surrounded by pay freeways and the suburban slums, dormitories lacking any support facilities. Both Liberal and Labor

governments have embraced the developer’s dream: a car-centric, inefficient, horizontal suburban model that does not allow for F

climate change. This materialism denies nature with its unstoppable and self-righteous drive. The desolate megalopolis could be made

liveable and humanized responding to human needs; light, air, views, sociability. It could be a flexible and adaptable architecture — not our current featurism — as a network of adaptable elements. The

recurrent predilection towards regressive nostalgia could give way

to an aesthetic act of urban design, making this a political question.

We are trapped with a system that does not deal with exceptional

principles but with banality and commonplace. The social order and its master discourse today enforce submission to common news, foreclosure to shifting meanings, and obsession with utilitarian knowledge, numbers and the limiting horizon of capitalism

and science. Within this ordinary psychotic culture citizens are

commanded to Enjoy, with their sexual meaning transformed into

social meaning: commonsense and consumerism. The city we have i

today corresponds to this violence.

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. . . the wandering self is polymorphous. for to cross boundaries means a change in state. itinerancy leads to renunciation of sedentary habits binding the subject to a fixed morality or truth. by breaking out of this mould, the subject becomes a transient in identity.

1

JUAN D Avi LA: identity and mimicry

By abigail Fitzgibbons

At over 12 metres in length, A Panorama of

For an artist renowned for an aesthetic that is

and ambitious works. Created with the assistance

the seamless historical format of the panorama

Melbourne 2008 is one of Juan Davila’s most recent of printmaker Larry Rawling, it draws on a period

of residency at the State Library of Victoria where

Davila poured over visual and archival records of his

often libidinal, controversial and disjunctive,

might seem an odd choice. A popular art form in the nineteenth century, the panorama as a form of viewing the world embodies the precepts of

adopted city of Melbourne, from colonial times to the

modernism. Intended to capture and provide an

in time, with movement through space of primary

imply values of prosperity and progress. They are

references to colonial, art historical and other sources,

of great cities seen from (an often imaginary)

history, tracking the symbolic passage of Melbourne

and visual) were removed to provide a single and

present.2 Panoramas generally show a fixed moment concern. Davila’s panorama, with its many erudite

instead moves diachronically through time and

as a site for original occupants, to an introduced

tented establishment, and ultimately to the surreal and Lichtenstein-esque architecture of Federation

Square. It concludes with an imaginary projection of the future city.

overview of a growing city, panoramas necessarily also homogenizing, offering “convincing illusions

central vantage-point”.3 Discordant elements (social

very partial perspective. Thus the panorama both makes the city legible and constructs a coherent

identity for it. It is these very characteristics that

Davila’s practice is articulated against.

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A Panorama of Melbourne mimics the qualities

Davila’s subtle inversion of the values of the

unconventional form of self-portraiture in which

differences. The colonial narrative it follows is

larger practice — that of doubling or mimicry to

doubling or mimicry allows the challenging of a

of the traditional panorama yet contains subtle

panorama here suggest a strategy at play in his

the subject constantly slips away from us. In each,

partial and imaginary. Historical figures such as

undermine a fixed or stable identity.4 Rather than

Melbourne — and William Buckley are accompanied

Bhabha, is a strategy of resistance against (colonial)

Davila’s resistance to fixed meanings and singular

figures who populate the scene, strange rectangular

of the salient features of the person or object being

racial) has been a fundamental concern of his

John Batman — known as the possible founder of

by Davila’s personal friends. Scattered amongst the

and circular shapes dot the composition and appear

slavish imitation, mimicry, as defined by Homi

domination, and implies the exaggerated copying copied in which a “slippage” or “excess” occurs.

stable, fixed identity.

identities (whether sexual, social, authorial or

practice. This concern is played out across the

as apparitions or ruptures in the sky or earth. In

Mimicry is repetition with a difference, often utilizing

various mediums and techniques he employs, from

sky. The work ends with a surreal and imagined

“mimicry conceals no presence or identity behind

to the engagement with Latin American culture,

increasingly bizarre and convoluted. Instead of a

mimicry operates both stylistically and in terms of

the final scenes, a semen-like liquid seeps from the architecture of a future Melbourne which has become straightforward chronological sequence, what is

irony and humour. It is powerful precisely because its mask” and destabilizes the original. For Davila,

subject matter. This strategy can particularly be seen

offered here is a narrative of disjunctive repetitions,

in Davila’s employment of alternative signatures,

assembly of characters and events undermining

in his characteristic development of personas or

presented as uncertain, shifting and unbounded.

and popular culture; and in his fascination with an

vertical movements and displacements with an odd coherence. The identity and history of the city is

styles, motifs and compositions by other artists;

protagonists drawn from history, myth, art history

the early photo-collages, to 1980s appropriation, to the references to narrative history painting

and postcolonial perspectives. It is through the self-portraits and his portrayal of several key

protagonists that the strategy of mimicry emerges

most clearly as a language of resistance.

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Davila’s practice and his working method — that of transvestism. A term developed by Chilean-based critic Nelly Richard, it described an approach

adopted by a group of Chilean artists (including

Davila) working in the 1970s and 80s during the

era of General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. In a

Davila’s 1984 Self-portrait is an early work in which

not as a unitary identity, but as two individuals, or

photographic diptych showing the artist in two

individual. One is unadorned and masculine, the other

doubling and excess transparently occur. It is a

guises: in each black and white image Davila looks

as a split identity showing two aspects of the same

wears heavy make-up like a transparently imperfect

society in which cultural and artistic freedom was

discouraged, these artists utilized the “feminine”

to embody the abject and marginal as a means

of resistance to official discourse. Transvestism’s

subversive potential lay in its implication of a clumsy

mask or disguise. As with the panorama, Davila uses

or excessive copy of an original, exposing the original

end. On the right is a standard studio style portrait;

reveal, but to question and challenge.

for hidden desire and for the liberation of the social

his eyebrows have become thick and heavy, and his

Self-portrait 1984 also draws attention to an aspect

lipstick. Davila has chosen here to represent himself

strategy of mimicry and has been used to define

directly at the camera, his short hair is slicked back and he wears a white singlet. There the similarities

on the left Davila’s eyes are outlined with black kohl,

lips emphasized through the application of dark

the mode of the self-portrait against itself — not to

of his practice that can be seen as part of his larger

as a construct. Thus transvestism became a metaphor self. To appropriate the words of Julia Kristeva, it

stood in for what “disturbs identity, system, order.

What does not respect borders, positions, rules?

The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite”.5

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Davila himself was conscious of this term and its

permutations and continued to see it as relevant to

an abject feminized form while retaining masculine

traits. Yet transvestism, like mimicry, also implies a

his practice. Describing his collaborative partnership

more metaphorical methodology of hybridization and

Interior with Built-in-Bar 1992 — Davila remarked:

hide behind a mask or disguise, or who negotiate two

with artist Howard Arkley — in works such as i see our collaboration as a wonderful travesty.

Howard might not see it in these terms, but we are two transvestite painters, or camp decorators, who have no sense of taste, and we produced an intentionally bastard result. it has the appearance of a proper painting but as you come near the whole thing blurs, like make-up on a transvestite.6

In Davila’s work this strategy of transvestism

sometimes takes a literal form. Many of his signatures

and his protagonists’ names are feminized (‘Juana

Dávila’, ‘Juana Brack’, ‘Maria Davila’, ‘Simona Bolívar’

to mention only a few), and their bodies also take on

disjunction; and a fascination with protagonists who

has been forgotten and he has become associated

with a set of absolute values: national history, the unification of Latin American culture, ideological

truth and masculinity. Bolívar is often represented

in immaculate military garb as a General riding a

apparently opposing worlds. Thus it operates both

white horse, arm raised to lead forward into battle

matter, allowing him to break down the notion of a

figure’ retain these essential features, yet reverse the

at the level of style or working method and subject

unitary self or identity.

In the drawings and prints included in this exhibition, it is possible to see those characters or protagonists

who consistently fascinated him. Davila has created several versions of Símon Bolívar, one of which is

included in the exhibition. Bolívar, otherwise know

or the future. Davila’s conceptions of the ‘heroic

values associated with each item or gesture. In The

Liberator Símon Bolívar, 1994, the military leader

is ‘transvestized’ and made profane — his jacket is

open to reveal feminine breasts, his genitals exposed, and his finger raised not in victory but in a gesture

of obscenity. In other representations, he is given

the features of a ‘mestizo’ or person of mixed race. In

as “The Liberator”, was an important leader in the

The Liberator Símon Bolívar, Bolívar is shown against

revered as a national hero in many South American

kangaroo, while a Nolan-esque Ned Kelly (also with

struggle for independence from Spain, and he is

countries. In the process his identity as an individual

an Australian landscape, replete with gum tree and

female breasts imprinted in his armour) rides below.

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or directly drawn from, works by iconic Australian

painters. He appropriates their titles (Lost and Collins

St at 5.01pm), or literally signs the image with their signatures: S T Gill, John Longstaff, William Strutt.

Often these are artists of the colonial era or those quintessentially associated with Melbourne, such

as John Brack (reconfigured as ‘Juana Brack’). He

has also recast historical figures in unexpected

An indication of Bolívar’s importance to many South

This event has since been examined and re-examined

juxtapositions. Captain Cook and explorers Burke

arouse hidden anxieties, was the much recounted

almost essential to an understanding of the General’s

recent Disappointment series features, among others,

American countries, and of Davila’s ability to precisely

within the field of Bolívarian studies, becoming

and Wills have appeared in earlier work, while his

diplomatic incident that occurred when a similar

present day importance.

Hamilton Hume and the figure of William Buckley,

of 500 postcards as part of an art project financed by

As Guy Brett pointed out, the “essence (of Davila’s

tribe for many years and later mediated between

Chilean flag was burnt, and when protests occurred

geographies, histories and discourses to find their

image of Bolívar (by the artist) was printed on a set the Chilean Ministry of Culture. It caused a riot, the outside Chilean embassies in Venezuela, Colombia,

Ecuador and Peru, the Chilean government was

forced to issue a formal apology to these countries.

practice) lies in crossing boundaries between

a colonial Australian who lived with an Aboriginal

them and white settlers. Sometimes these scenes and characters clash with recognizable iconography from

secret links and common problems”.7 Davila has also

Latin American paintings (with figures derived from

In many works he uses compositions reminiscent of,

and Antonio Berni). In Collins Street at 5.01pm 1995,

turned his attention to Australian national identity.

Fernando Botero, Diego Riviera, Tarsila do Amaral

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a literal appropriation of Brack’s title, Davila’s

version of a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo looms

above the sombre faces of Brack’s Melbournian

inhabitants, creating an intentional clash and contradictory concoction.

Bushranger Ned Kelly is one of the historical

figures he has recast in a new context. In a series

from 1986, Kelly reclines naked in the Australian

landscape, adopting the classic posture of female

single-minded explorers traversing an unexplored

Bolívar. Verdejo and the closely related ‘Pobre Diablo’

(poor devil) are both Chilean comic characters.

nudes in Western art. In these images he is devoid

wilderness, the early settlers and the intrepid

shell of his characteristic armour. Davila has

is also an ambiguous, double figure — both hero and

1970s in Chile. He is ‘el roto’, a peculiar Chilean slang

it. In other images, only his mask or armour is

The characters who most embody the principle of

those from the poorest echelons of Chilean society.

As with his portrayal of Símon Bolívar, Davila’s

position of ‘go-betweens’, composite identities who

of that which gives him his identity — the outer seen what is essential to Kelly’s individuality in

the Australian conception of him and removed

present, he has become a faceless, empty signifier.

representations of Kelly expose the emptiness of

those stereotypes our sense of identity as a nation

is built upon — the founding myths of masculine,

adventurers (including bushrangers). Kelly himself

convicted outlaw.

mimicry in Davila’s work are those that occupy the

transgress borders and traverse numerous positions.

Verdejo is a frequent protagonist who, in many ways, is the inverse of the values associated with Símon

Verdejo was very popular from the 1950s to the

term - ‘roto’ (from the verb ‘roter’, to break) signifies

something broken or damaged — but was applied to

Verdejo as a character signified the ‘everyman’.

In Davila’s words: “he is untrustworthy, insolent,

sexually-charged, dirty etc. But he speaks truth and

expresses things with the Chilean humour to well-

known politicians and presidents”.8 Davila’s Verdejo

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drawing) are rare examples of Davila literally using

the work of another artist, rather than citing or appropriating it.

In King Bungaree and Verdejo Visit Melbourne — a

1992/1998 work which leads us back towards the

landscape of A Panorama of Melbourne — Verdejo is shown in the company of an Australian go-between,

is a hybrid identity both sexually, racially, and socially,

satirizing the values of sexual dominance suggested

visiting the surreal architecture of Federation Square.

A lesser-known figure than Ned Kelly, Bungaree

was painted by a variety of colonial artists. Initially

and his abject characteristics enable him to occupy

by this painting. In Verdeja 1996 (a companion

persistence, Verdejo penetrates the closed ranks of

humorously travestied with Verdejo’s base features.

which in turn relies on historical accounts by white

defaces an eighteenth century engraving by a French

‘king’) was said to be the leader of a group of Broken

multiple territories. Through humour, cunning and Chilean society and exposes its darkest secrets.

In Davila’s work, Verdejo sometimes becomes

‘Verdeja’ or ‘El rota’, a feminized, transvestized figure who asserts a presence in the most inappropriate situations. In La Perla del Mercader 1996 his face

takes the place of the merchant’s beautiful slave in

Valenzuela Puelma’s classic work of the same name,

piece to The Liberator Símon Bolívar) Bolívar is

In Let us oppress the poor 1997, Verdejo literally

artist, his ludicrous larger-than-life face appended

to the original print. Similarly Pobre Diablo inserts

Davila drew on Augustus Earle’s portrait of Bungaree, people. Bungaree (sometimes described as a ‘chief’ or

Bay aboriginal people. One of the few aborigines to receive recognition from white settlers as an

his presence into an eighteenth century print and a

individual, he mediated between whites and his

Pobre Diablo 1998. These works (reminiscent of

Port Jackson, dressed in cast-off military clothing.

Fragonard comedy of manners in Sudaca 1998 and

Robert Rauschenberg’s 1953 erasing of a de Kooning

own people. Often he would greet ships arriving in

In Earle’s painting he is shown wearing a military

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jacket, raising his hat in greeting, with ragged

trousers and bare feet. Records of the time recount

that he abandoned these clothes when amongst his own people. Thus his clothing and gestures acted

as a mask or disguise, allowing him to negotiate the

at once. In Davila’s works he appears in numerous

colourful, decorative work conveys Davila’s own

Latin American hermaphroditic angel (the giant foot

American Indigenous peoples and their treatment

Bungaree, he is the archetypal ‘savage’. Shown with a comes from Tarsila de Amaral’s works celebrating

polarized regions of colonialism.

indigeneity; the wings from Spanish colonial

Like Verdejo and the figure of the transvestite,

lace border reminiscent of folk art from the region

Bungaree embodies a certain mode of polymorphous identity — he is a go-between, a mimic, who

flourishes due to his ability to become two things

as The Savage Mind. Intentionally kitsch, this

guises and situations. In a 1991 work Portrait of

sense of the parallels between Australian and Latin

in Western culture.

paintings of armed angels) he is surrounded by a

When understood in context with those other

as well as religious or votive images. Beneath his feet

was fascinated, Bungaree suggests more than

Levi-Strauss’s infamous book known in English

He, like Verdeja, Bolívar and Kelly, represents a

are the words ‘pensee sauvage’, the title of Claude

characters or protagonists with whom Davila subversive resistance to a dominant culture.

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form of identity in transience. Davila’s various characters mutate, interbreed and reappear

throughout his oeuvre. As we have seen, Bolívar and Ned Kelly share the same space in The

Liberator Símon Bolívar; while Bungaree visits Federation Square with Verdejo / Verdeja, the Chilean comic character.

In a 2002 work Ned Kelly at Federation Square

these identities have literally merged and Davila

To return once more to where we began, with

breaks down the notion of a unitary self. ‘Ned Kelly’

A Panorama of Melbourne, mimicry as a strategy has

representations. A feminine face is surrounded

which are never panoramic, homogenized or

style of Bolívar or Bungaree which is open to reveal

Through these means his practice offers resistance

Bungaree’s characteristic gesture of greeting. Only

often exploratory and formative drawings, prints and

in this image retains few signifiers of his customary by long black hair; he wears a military coat in the

female breasts; he raises his hat above his head in

the presence of Kelly’s armoured mask in one hand

allowed Davila to create identities and perspectives

unitary but always multiple, shifting and ambivalent. to accepted cultural modes and ways of being. The

collages in ‘Juan Davila: Graphic’ reveal common or

and the title of the work give a clue as to his/her

recurrent themes, motifs and concerns, providing an

of Melbourne’s Federation Square.

practice as well as its continuities.

identity. In the background looms the architecture

insight into the diversity and versatility of Davila’s

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1

nelly Richard in Paul taylor, ed., hysterical tears,

Richmond: Greenhouse Publications, Richmond, POBRE Di ABLO 1995 SilkSCREEn on PaPER 100 x 77 C m Edition 100

1985, p. 19.

2

davila was an Honorary Creative Fellow at the

State library of victoria in 2007.

3

Roger Benjamin, ‘juan davila: panorama of

santiago, chile: 1973-2003’, anu drill Hall Gallery, http://www.anu.edu.au/hrc/research/WtoS/ Benjamin.pdf.

4

Benjamin Genocchio has also linked davila to

mimicry, analysing his fascination with Bungaree in terms of colonial dynamics. See Benjamin Genocchio, ‘Quotation and iconoclasm in the Work of juan davila’, jilas journal of iberian and latin american studies, 5:2, december 1999.

5

julia kristeva, powers of horror: an essay on

abjection. trans. leon S Roudiez. new York, Columbia university Press, 1982, p.4 6

juan davila (interview), in Stephen o’Connell, ‘Blue

Chip instant decorator, Howard arkley and juan davila’, 1996, http://www.artdes.monash.edu.au/ globe/issue3/decorate.html.

7

Guy Brett, ‘nothing has been settled’ in Guy Brett

and Roger Benjamin (eds), juan davila, museum of Contemporary art (exhibition catalogue), 2006, p.4 8

juan davila cited in Guy Brett, transcontinental: an

investigation of reality, nine latin american artists, london: verso, 1990, p.15

title: Juan Davila: GRAPHIC! editor: S.P Wright essay: Abigail Fitzgibbons Publisher: Griffith Artworks, Sewell House, Nathan Campus, Griffith University AbN: 781 0609 4461 IsbN: 987-1-921291-68-5 Design by Liveworm Studio, Queensland College of Art Designer: Jasmin de la Vega Cruz

All images Š Juan Davila Licensed by Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Melbourne