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Includes a 13-minute animated short
Carlos Amorales´s work will represent Mexico at the 57th Venice Biennale
May 09, 2017Visual artist Carlos Amorales (Mexico City, 1970) will represent Mexico at the 57th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale with his work Life in the Folds, which combines sound, video, images and installation of objects.
The proposal, curator Pablo León de la Barra says, is made up of different installations integrating a single one, which generates a kind of visceral resonances so it goes beyond an intellectual reflection with the development of new languages.
The curator commented that Carlos Amorales dedicated himself for six months to the creation of Life in the Folds, a title taken from a book written by French Henri Michaux, published in 1949.
"The book sets out the discomfort of a man who must face the conflict in his environment. That's a lot of what Carlos does. He as an artist must face what he hates: a world that every day becomes darker and more conflictive, where the worldwide problem surpasses us”, he explained.
In an interview, he commented that Amorales created for his project, an abstract alphabet that is transformed into letters and musical instruments (ocarinas), which he used to write poems and a musical score that can be played by musicians.
He added that the installation takes place in a space in which different disciplines meet: graphic design, animation, cinema, music, literature, poetry. "This installation creates new vocabularies, languages, preferences and sounds through which trauma can be negotiated and life can be reinvented”.
The collaborator in different publications around the world, said that the proposal includes a 13-minute animated short, made by Amorales. The movie tells the story of a family of migrants who, when they reach a foreign village, the local people chased them out and lynched them.
"In a way, what Carlos does is to confront that idea of difference, to question why to reject those who are different, why as a society rejects others”.
“This is an issue that not only has consequences in Mexico and that suffer the Mexican migrants who cross to the United States, it is also a problem of the Central Americans who come to Mexico; there is a refugee crisis worldwide”.
He pointed out that at present different conflicts are perceived in the world, but also the reappearance of extreme right-wing nationalisms that precisely reject the difference and the other.
In Pablo León de la Barra’s opinion, Carlos Amorales goes, with this work, beyond the surface to delve into the interests that just generate a conflict, producing a beautiful work.
"This human piece goes beyond being understood only. It is visual, it is sensory and it has to do with Carlos' ability to develop new languages. By creating new alphabets and new forms of communication the public will see that there is something beyond language and nationality”, he said.
Amorales’s work is mainly concerned with language and the impossibility or possibility of communication through unrecognizable or uncountable forms: sounds, gestures and symbols
He experiences the limits of the image and the sign, through different means that include: animation, video, cinema, drawing, installation, performance and sound. His practice is based on different forms of translation: instruments that become the characters of his movies, letters that become forms and narratives that become actions impossible to verbalize.
"He is one of the most recognized Mexican artists abroad. He is a very peculiar and particular artist with a very own artistic language that works, thinks and integrates other disciplines and at the same time questions them. He produces an almost unconscious optical effect, it is as if he could communicate with our unconscious based on images ", de la Barra pointed out.
The 57th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale will open its doors on May 13th under the title VIVA Arte Viva, which celebrates the capacity of art to embrace life and face the circumstances of a world full of conflicts.
Mexico,Distrito Federal
