Fragmented Metaphors/Reparation Isabel Barbuzza-Patricia León-Gonzalo Pinilla
Fragmented Metaphors/Reparation is a three persons exhibition by Isabel Barbuzza (Argentina), Patricia León (Colombia) and Gonzalo Pinilla (Colombia), the three residing in the United States.
While León and Pinilla examine the relationships between the photographic language and that of graphics via prints and photographs, Barbuzza re-contextualizes and reshapes the narratives that the legacy of colonization has left in countries of the Global South, even after independence and detachment from its colonizers.
León and Pinilla’s records of the visual presence of places, characters, and events that populate Latin American countries including Argentina, Chile, and Colombia orchestrate a visual dynamic dialogue. On one hand, because of their indexical nature, the images suggest direct references to the particular social and cultural landscape in Latin America and make visible the moment and circumstances of the photographic encounter. On the other hand, the graphic works brings us closer to the sound and the acoustic sensations that surround our daily lives. The graphic sign materializes the voices, words, and symbol from those that are not, from those that have been, from what was, and that sometimes mixes with what we can hear and what we can see. And finally, the fusion of the two artistic expressions merge into the informative function that represents man confronting the plain infertile, determined to deny some values, adverse to his way of life.
Barbuzza is very interested in the history of European colonization and conquest that has continued in the world through atlases, geography, movies, and history books. In the works presented for this exhibition, she has used discarded World Book Encyclopedias and some dictionaries that she has collected or people have gifted her. Using those discarded books she reconstructs information that is wrong and with a prevalent self-ascribed racial and cultural superiority of the Western world over the non-Western world. In some of the pieces she uses the entire books: book covers, fabric, pages and the fabulous gold leaf edges. Cuellos/ Ruffs are made from the pages that she has manipulated using water and glue. As Barbuzza worked on those pieces, she spent long hours looking at paintings of the period, specifically Reina Isabel and Rey Ferdinando’s portraits to inform her works.
