Activities
Exhibitions
Absentia
Laura Barrón
27.11.13
“With this work (Absentia) I explore issues of cultural identity. By connecting memory and territory and presence Absentia also talks about nostalgia, longing and loss.”
ARTIST STATEMENT ABOUT ABSENTIA
Absentia is a project that narrates a returning journey to my home country after being an immigrant in Canada for more than a decade. In 2003 I moved from Mexico. After many years of my relocation I came to the realization that I was learning about Latin America in a way I never did while living in Mexico.
Most of my friends are from Latin American descent. The connection with this group of people planted in me the idea of a return trip that would require a long detour throughout South America and the Caribean. I wanted to visit my friend´s home countries as a way to understanding them better but also to reconnect with my roots. In 2013 I started traveling, the first place I visited was Colombia, then Ecuador, Perú, Chile, Argentina, Cuba, and so on.
The project became a reconstruction of my history in Canada, but also a reconstruction of my own territory and a return to myself.
Related artists
Absentia@Argentina consisted, first of all, in the elaboration of a photographic archive of vacant, abandoned or transitional urban spaces of the city of Buenos Aires. After the registration, the artist built books-sculptures that were installed in the Transversal Space of the Fundación ’ace.
Interested in finding in the urban landscape elements that work as footprints, as evidence of what was, the artist questioned and reconsidered the perspective of the landscape through photography, a tool that suggests, questions, evokes, stimulates, builds, invents and modifies.
