Photography (MA)
Constanza Valderrama
Constanza Valderrama is a Chilean artist based in London . Her recent exhibitions and displays include El Pueblo Unido (Windows 187, London), Angstrom (Museo de Arte Contemporaneo MAC, Valdivia / Galeria D21, Santiago), En la Azotea (Galeria Animal, Santiago), and Carga de Lavado (Centro Cultural de España, Santiago)
Constanza was awarded a two-year scholarship by the Chilean National Research and Development Agency (ANID) to conduct her research at the Royal College of Art. She was previously awarded the highest distinctions by the Universidad de Chile, and by the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Constanza studied fine art at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., receiving her BA with First Class Honours. During this period, she was offered a place at the Fine Arts Faculty of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where she conducted six-month research. In 2013 she completed courses at the School of the International Centre of Photography (ICP), New York. In 2015, she received her MA in Visual Arts with distinctions from the Universidad de Chile. Currently, she is completing her MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art, London.
Her understanding of photography as a material thing has allowed her to explore the material properties with which photographic images intertwine, a process that she refers to as ‘photographic incarnations’. These are processes in which images and materials coalesce. Consequently, her work renders visible that every copy or visualization of a photograph is always unique and unrepeatable,
even if its nature is digital.
Through diverse material experimentations, Constanza’s practice aims to expand the limits of photography, not only to question the conventional ways of doing photography but also discussing the idea of reproduction that traditionally links to it.
An ‘economy’ of resources constitutes the second principal axis through which Constanza thinks of photography. Her work displays an articulation of ordinary and low-cost materials, laser prints, low-quality images, and quotidian thematics. These choices allow her to advance a reflective critique of the elitism and ‘high standards’ in which art and photography generally embed. The economy of resources of her practice also highlights her condition as a Latin American female artist working in a global contemporary art market.
Laser prints on post-it notes. 110 x 180 cms. — Day 1
Laser prints on post-it notes. 110 x 180 cms. — Day 2
Laser prints on post-it notes. 110 x 180 cms. — Day 3
Laser prints on post-it notes. 110 x 180 cms. — Day 4
Laser prints on post-it notes. 110 x 180 cms. — Day 5
Laser prints on post-it notes. 110 x 180 cms. — Day 6
Laser prints on post-it notes. — Detail. (Day 1)
Laser prints on post-it notes. — Detail. (Day 1)
Because of its materiality, this photographic incarnation exhibits a particular texture but also produces a dialogue between the image and the wall. As shown in this work, images, materials, and the environment intertwine and resonate to each other. Here, the white empty spaces of the wall become part of the composition.
Through this dialogue, as well as by the symbolic connotations of the post-its as reminders, this work helps us to reflect on the fragility of memory. The association between old-age and its pathologies, in this case, my grandmother's Alzheimer's, intersects with my incomplete memories of my family members who have died.
The performance behind the construction of this work, and its transformation through time as post-it notes fall, embed this dialogue with a dynamic and ephemeral quality.
Medium:
Prints on post-it notesSize:
110 x 180 cms.
General View — Digital print on natural fabric with manual unravelling intervention. 50 x 70 cms.
Detail — Digital print on natural fabric with manual unravelling intervention. 50 x 70 cms.
Detail — Digital print on natural fabric with manual unravelling intervention. 50 x 70 cms.
Detail — Digital print on natural fabric with manual unravelling intervention. 50 x 70 cms.
Detail — Digital print on natural fabric with manual unravelling intervention. 50 x 70 cms.
Detail — Digital print on natural fabric with manual unravelling intervention. 50 x 70 cms.
In this photographic incarnation, the chosen material responds to the tight relationship of the portrayed with clothing due to her trade of dressmaker. The "unravelling" of the fabric, exposes fine threads that resemble my grandmother's soft white hair but also disarranges her face producing a new partial and blurred representation. This intrusive gesture of erasing part of a portrait represents how diseases such as Alzheimer violently attack the elderly. However, due to the nature of the manual labour that this technique entails, this gesture is also a delicate intervention, through which I allude to the elder’s skin, especially sensitive and fragile. Inspired by my own experience, the interruptions and fading of the final image that this photographic incarnation entails represent the vulnerability of memories over time.
Medium:
Digital print on natural linen clothSize:
50 x 70 cms
Horizon Tautology — View 1. (Mixed Media). 220 x 45 cms.
Horizon Tautology — View 2.(Mixed Media) 220 x 45 cms.
Horizon Tautology — View 3.(Mixed Media) 220 x 45 cms.
Detail, Piece 1: Parallel Horizons; Confusing Memories — The same image is printed on the same paper repeatedly.
Detail, Piece 2: Wind — Digital print on natural cloth with manual unravelling intervention.
Detail, Piece 3: Summer Warmth. — Superimposition of two prints on different tones of paper, with manual cutting intervention.
Detail, Piece 4: Palimpsest, Here and There. — Digital print on an old illustrated book page.
Detail, Piece 5: Bare Feet — Digital print intervened with sandpaper.
Detail, Piece 6: Grandma´s Trade — Digital print on cotton fabric with manual embroidery.
Detail, Piece 7: Omission — Partially covered print.
Detail, Piece 8: They — Superimposition of two prints on different tones of paper, with manual cutting intervention.
Whereas the repetition of the same image speaks of the recurring act of remembering this place, the different plastic solutions translate autobiographic situations, emotions and sensations that have shaped this memory over time.
This collection is visually linked by the horizon line, articulating a final organic composition containing a multiplicity of shapes, textures, colours and thickness. Altogether, these ten pieces suggest that particular ways of remembering form the general puzzle of memory.
Medium:
Mixed mediaSize:
220 x 45 cms.
Photography by Constanza Valderrama
Film Screening: 17.00 (GTM+1), 30th July, with an Introduction by the artist and the filmmaker Cristóbal Valderrama.
Medium:
Film completely made with still photographs.Size:
70 minutes.ANID Chilean National Research and Development Agency
Website:
https://www.anid.clConstanza Valderrama & Cristobal Valderrama: The Name