About
CHRIS KRAUS, Writer & Filmaker
Mely Barragan, San Diego Art Prize 2023
Born in the mid-1970s, Mely Barragan is part of a dynamic cohort of contemporary Mexican artists who began their careers in the Baja California border cities of Tijuana and Mexicali in the 1990s. At that time, there were no formal art schools in northern Mexico. They learned by looking to the work of their predecessors, and to each other. Nevertheless, equally influenced by international contemporary art, Mexican and history and border culture, they chose to remain. As Barragan told Frieze magazine in 2019, “The outside world didn’t know what to make of us. We were neither Chicano nor Mexican enough.” Since her first exhibition, Mi Gente, in 2002, Barragan has worked across media – from collage and painting to sculpture and installation – to explore and enact urgent ideas. Like the late American artists David Wojnarowciz and Dash Snow, Barragan is a total artist, responding to the experiences she’s witnessed and passed through. She begins by selecting materials she believes will best describe her ideas, although often she finds that the materials take on a life of their own. The physical and internal dialogue with materials manifested in the four recent works in this show has become increasingly complex and devious over the years. The collages and paintings created in the series Mi Gente (2002) depicted the imaginary characters Barragan invented as a small child. Her earliest memories involved a search for identity and a desire for justice. In Los Guerreros (2006) she assembled a series of metal sculptures from roadside muffler shops: human figures welded from mufflers as DIY signage by the owner-mechanics. At the time, international curators were trawling Tijuana in search of the new, so Barragan decided to create an installation that captured the visual reality of this border mecca’s cheap auto repair and medical care. She thought – Why don’t I bring all the mufflers together? She named each piece for the mechanic who made it. The work brilliantly depicted the chaos and warmth of urban life. But Barragan’s work isn’t always created in Tijuana. Since the early 2000’s, she has traveled to residencies from Russia to China, to Morocco and the American midwest. Such residencies are essential to any contemporary artist living outside an international center. Like the equally nomadic, New Zealand-born sculptor Kate Newby, Barragan has accepted and capitalized upon this enforced nomadic state. She travels light, carrying only ideas, using the materials she finds in these strange new environments to bring them to life. The sculptural works in this exhibition, all created in Barragan’s Tijuana studio during the past year, explore themes of personal and geopolitical history. Evading any easy description, they probe the undertow of psychic distress. In Family Legacy (2023), Barragan transforms her late grandfather’s old Bracero ID card into a magnificent banner or flag ringed by a fringe of chemical green. The ID card is a powerful totem, carrying both pride and shame. For twenty-two years, between 1942 and 1964, the Bracero program brought more than two million men to the US on short-term labor contracts and visas. The program defined a rich portion of Mexican cultural history that’s only recently begun to be rediscovered and claimed by projects like Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez and Daniel Ruanova’s Bracero Legacy Project. To be a bracero was to become ‘one who swings his arms,’ working amidst toxic agricultural pesticides and hunched over all day with a short-handled hoe that ruins your back. The program also enabled her grandfather, Jose Barragan, to support his wife and twelve children in their home of Nuevo Ideal. “Among Mexican families,” Barragan recalls, “it’s a stigma to have been a bracero. It was so delicate and hard to talk about.” Over the years, Barragan came to realize that the Bracero program also helped to enforce a system of patriarchy, imposed upon families by historical circumstance and the culture itself. In Family Legacy, Barragan gently feminizes her grandfather’s experience, appropriating an heirloom that symbolized a man’s work and softening it with a granddaughter’s touch; sewing thread through the fabric that sustained her family. On the banner, Jose Barragan’s young face floats like a ghost. The card was issued to him by the US Department of Justice. By screen-printing the word ‘Justice’ in an almost imperceptibly bolder typeface, Barragan subtly, powerfully, evokes the unjust economic colonialism at the program’s heart. Shallow Water Emerges Til Dawn (2023), a stunning and monstrous assemblage, hangs from the gallery ceiling by hooks and aluminum chains. Shiny black latex tubes, given weight by embedded chain, cascade to the gallery flood in a menacing flood. The piece is one of the most ambiguous, troubling works by the artist to date. In it, Barragan alludes to a time of chronic illness when she was forced to inhabit a medicalized version of her own life. But the trauma conveyed by the work extends far beyond her own body. Shallow Water evokes a larger, shared illness: a literal toxicity that spreads across landscape, affecting all human relations. The black latex shimmers seductively, weighted by chains. Bodies, the work implies, have become wholly disposable, like medical waste. The work is a dream and a talisman for confronting fear. Installed alongside Shallow Water, Post Human Accumulations (2023) – four small- scale sculptures made out of electrical components, polyurethane foam, wood and glass – rest on the floor like small tumors. The sculptures are beautiful hazards, abstracting the biological waste and visual chaos across the US/Tijuana border into seductive and troubling form.
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Texto por Lucia Rey Orrego, 2022.
Académica e investigadora independiente (Chile).
Para la revista Arte Al Limite edición 101.
Mely Barragán
Blanduras, nudos y escrituras
Reflexiones estéticas performativas sobre la corporalidad de los significados
Un antecedente de lo que hoy se llama escultura blanda lo encontramos en los ready made de Duchamp, que empujaban al espectador hacia una crisis de significado y sentido material en relación a la funcionalidad de los objetos. Específicamente la funda hueca de una máquina de escribir con la inscripción en la misma funda de Underwood que titula Pliant de voyage, 1916. La propuesta de Mely se construye en su misma materialidad, la blandura de los objetos parecen indicar un vacío objetual. Estas esculturas blandas comienzan para la artista desde la experimentación con la escritura tridimensional ritual en 2008. Problematiza, no el acto de la escritura sino más bien la escritura como concepto, en donde el cuerpo de la letra se confunde con la abstracción, como un acto inasible. Así, esta escritura blanda va llenándose de contenido en la medida que se presenta en el ritual, como el llamado a la presencia física de lo que se escribe. Sin embargo, en este proceso de investigación, su propuesta adquiere un sentido crítico al encontrar disonancias entre la macro escritura objetual y los significados de las palabras. Allí es donde aparece la experimentación escultórica, puesto que emplaza perceptivamente al espectador a relacionarse con esta producción de sentidos, ya no de la escritura en sí directamente, sino con su presencia escultórica; le interesa a la artista “burlar los significados del lenguaje” en este tensionar significados a través de su puesta material en escena como nuevo contenido.
La cuestión contemporánea del arte conceptual, desde los años 60, ha problematizado el arte como objeto, para “instalar” el contenido como acción conceptual y fracturar la estabilidad y las estructuras materiales no solo del arte sino que también de realidades, en cuanto cultura. Así, las relaciones que se establecen a partir de la obra apuntarán a emplazar al público hacia una reflexión crítica sobre la propia realidad. En este caso, las 5 obras acá presentadas se modulan además por un proceso interior, de (auto)interrogación y (auto)transformación en relación a temáticas relacionadas principalmente con el tema del género y la apertura hacia una crítica femenina sobre la deconstrucción del masculino.
La primera obra es Behave, esta escultura indica al comportamiento como una cuestión cultural y biológicamente condicionada. En ese sentido la autora apela a la tensión entre la blandura de la escritura escultórica y el significado de la palabra. Una tensión que podría también aparecer entre la blandura de la carne uterina y la rigidez fálica de los significados, y también puede indicar supuestos determinismos del comportamiento humano, en tiempos en donde la ciencia parece imponerse desde las frías aguas del cálculo algorítmico. De manera que el estudio del comportamiento hoy en día se aloja muy específicamente allí, en los big data, con la inteligencia artificial. En este sentido nos podemos preguntar: ¿Qué significa comportarse? La artista abre la tensión en esta complejidad predecible de lo humano y la consciencia de nuestro propio comportamiento en el mundo, como decisión de lo que se es.
La elaboración material, que es central en su obra, indicará una intensión iconoclasta, pero no contra la imagen sino a través de ella, en este caso se trata de la cercanía entre las palabras y las cosas distanciadas en sus significados. La tensión conceptual entre: signo-significado-significante, en donde el significante es la letra, el signo es la obra, y el significado sería lo puesto en tensión (intersubjetiva) mediante la problemática material que constituiría una estructura de significados deconstruidos por los mismos materiales elegidos, que pretenden interrogar sobre lo escrito y su sentido en la realidad práctica. Esta tensión lingüística nos permite sospechar de alguna reminiscencia de culturas orales no alcanzadas por la modernidad, en donde elementos sígnicos pueden adquirir un valor simbólico primitivista.
La segunda obra se titula Acumulaciones, y corresponde a una articulación escultórica con objetos creados con la misma materialidad de la escritura, pero en este caso, no la usa para escribir sino para “dibujar” con volumen, estos volúmenes abstractos están cubiertos con pinturas y barniz, para generar una estética orgánica, como si se tratara de la exhibición objetual de interioridades arrancadas del cuerpo para ser colgadas ante el público, cuestión que nos sugiere la idea delueziana del cuerpo sin órganos, que Hal Foster apunta como un eje del arte contemporáneo.
La tercera obra se llama Bittersweet testosterone, es una obra con carácter intimista, con sentido terapéutico. La corbata, desde el siglo XVII existe como accesorio que da cuenta de un estatus especialmente masculino, en este caso podríamos verlos como signo del “privilegio masculino”, aunque también desde otra perspectiva, al sesgo puede observarse como un “corset” de ciertos tipos de palabras habladas (vinculadas a la blandura) y del oxígeno, con el que se puede también apuntar al “mandato masculino” que problematiza Rita Segato. En su doble significado: privilegio y a la vez mandato, lo que trabaja acá la artista es la masculinidad. La palabra escrita alude también a la palabra no hablada, anudada en la garganta, apuntando a lo no dicho, lo no tragado o procesado, dejándola en conexión con las obras anteriores. Esta colección de “sujeciones” o “privilegios” también sirven para colgarse desde el cuello. La artista logra abrir ese closet familiar desanudando las corbatas, mostrando en una superficie plana y curva, sin nudos, justo la parte que debe anudarse, exhibiendo una reflexión sobre la masculinidad.
La cuarta obra, Love handles, remite prontamente al cuerpo del erotismo femenino, que adquiere una forma contra-funcional, que aparece como anomalía enigmática, reapareciendo la idea deleuziana de la reorganización de los órganos a partir de los flujos deseantes. La quinta obra llamada Ovario 1, aunque aparentemente no hay indicios, nace de la palabra escultórica “macho”, que gracias a la blandura material, es moldeada al extremo hasta darle forma de útero. Este nudo blando, entonces sería el resultado de un ritual performativo intimista, que se presenta como un mundo-nudo interior femenino, que parece ser infinitamente curvo.
Estas cinco obras, aunque independientes unas de otras, forman parte de una proceso artístico introspectivo, cuya constante es la blandura y los nudos. La blandura puede llamar al relajamiento y al descanso, pero también puede generar nudos, para desarmar o para crear.
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Trifecta: Art, Science, Patron
September 25, 2021 – January 16, 2022
Featured artists include: Marcos Ramirez ERRE, the De La Torre Brothers, Siobhan Arnold, David Adey, Xuchi Naungayan Eggleton, Debby and Larry Kline, Mely Barragan, Christopher Puzio, Cesar and Lois Collective and Wendy Maruyama.
Curated by Chi Essary
Major funding for this project generously provided by the Ray Thomas Edwards Foundation with additional support from Weston Anson and ArtWorks San Diego. Institutional support provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and by the Members of the La Jolla Historical Society. The Society is immensely grateful to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies for their support and participation in this project.
Grabs Back @ Being Here With You / Estando Aquí contigo – MCASD Museum Of Contemporary Art San Diego 2019
Mely Barragán highlights daily life and popular cultures sites of contradiction in patriarchal and consumerist society. Often working with found images and materials that carry gendered associations, Barragan multiplies signifiers of femininity to scramble stereotypes.
Barragán´s Grabs Back is more pointed in its subject, offering a response to U.S. President Donald Trump´s boasting of sexual assault on the notorious ¨Access Hollywood¨ tape. The word ¨pussy¨ is surrounded by a bustling arrangement of vintage illustrations – of men, women, and a large poodle- and layered with sequins, fur, a skirt, and painted phallic forms. Additional textual elements – ¨female dog¨, and ¨grabs back¨ – propose an active mode of resistance to forms of indignity and oppression endorsed by those with power.
(excerpt from Museum catalogue)
Mixed media, painting on tapestry cloth, thread, hairy texture, sequins, on stretcher. size 164 X 194 cm.
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técnica mixta, pintura sobre tela de tapicería, hilos, peluche, acrílico, lentejuela sobre bastidor. dimensiones 164 X 194 cm. año 2017.
BEING HERE WITH YOU/ ESTANDO AQUÍ CONTIGO: 42 ARTISTS FROM SAN DIEGO AND TIJUANA
Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo brings together work by 42 artists and collectives living and working in the San Diego and Tijuana region. Presenting both early career and established artists, Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo highlights distinctive practices shaping conversations and communities in our binational region and beyond.
Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo borrows its title from the bilingual song “Angel Baby” by Rosie and the Originals, a teenage band from National City, California, which points to the region’s rich history of homegrown talent. The title also harkens back to MCASD’s 1985 survey, A San Diego Exhibition: Forty-Two Emerging Artists. Since that time, MCASD has broadened its focus to include the work of Tijuana artists. Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo reflects the Museum’s mandate to serve the binational constituency of the region and affirms its commitment to artists on both sides of the border. Recognizing that San Diego and Tijuana’s artistic communities are distinct but overlapping, the exhibition builds on the ongoing artistic exchanges between the two cities.
Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo presents artworks in a broad range of mediums, including installation, painting, drawing, video, digital media, photography, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, and performance. The exhibition draws attention to common interests and artistic strategies. Artists in the exhibition address today’s urgent questions as well as issues affecting our region, including public space and public memory; colonialism and its afterlife; the border as fantasy and reality; housing and homelessness; feminist and queer politics; and the place of the body in the digital world.
An improvisational approach to process and performance is shared by numerous artists, many of whom engage in painterly experimentation and the transformation of traditional craft forms. Many artists demonstrate a resourcefulness with respect to materials, especially through the reclamation and reanimation of found objects. Collaboration is a frequent strategy, with several artists working directly with their peers or alongside members of their communities. Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo also acknowledges the crucial role that alternative art venues play in the region’s art scene, with nearly a quarter of the exhibition’s artists running or programming independent spaces in San Diego and Tijuana.
MCASD is honored to include the work of James Luna (1950-2018), who accepted our invitation to participate before his untimely passing. For over four decades, Luna subverted accepted narratives of history and cultural identity through his incisive, humorous, and often poignant installations and performances. His influence is apparent in the work of many artists in Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo.
Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo is co-organized by Curator Jill Dawsey and Assistant Curator Anthony Graham. The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.
Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo: 42 Artists from San Diego and Tijuana is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and made possible by the Being Here With You/ Estando aquí contigo: Underwriters Community. Institutional support of MCASD is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund.
https://www.facebook.com/bienaljamonroy/videos/1430848530443968/
https://museodemujeres.com/es/artistas/index/14-barragan-mely
Mujeres artistas: nuevas narrativas, enfoques y espacios de visibilidad
ASSEMBLING DEEP BLUNT THOUGHTS
Si las palabras son cuchillos, la obra de Mely Barragán (Tijuana, 1975), llena de palabras y cuchillos en igual cantidad, se descubre obsesiva en su intento por decirnos algo. Utilizando elementos gráficos e imágenes reapropiadas de medios masivos y cultura popular, Barragán aborda temas como la desigualdad de género y violencia normalizada en cada detalle de nuestras vidas. Esta selección de obras es tan sólo una muestra de la trayectoria de la artista durante los últimos años y de su proceso creativo, el cual se sigue desarrollando como un ensamblaje de sus pensamientos más profundos y afilados.
El título de la exposición es un ejemplo de la manera aguda en la que Barragán juega con las palabras, partiendo por la traducción como arma de doble filo: simultáneamente es herramienta y obstáculo. Por ejemplo, la palabra blunt significa ¨desafilado¨ (como un cuchillo sin filo) y también puede ser algo o alguien ¨directo¨,¨franco¨,¨cortante¨ o ¨descortés¨. Barragán a menudo usa el bilingüismo como estrategia y combina elementos gráficos absurdos y disonantes. Mientras que en Haunted (2014-2015) un felino que observa la composición puede ser a la vez cazador y presa, Literatura (2017) es un políptico que yuxtapone frases en blanco y negro para hacer una lectura crítica de la ¨literatura basura¨, jugando con la traducción convirtiendo la primera parte en litter, o basura. De las frases resalta por ejemplo ¨Gunn Laws¨, pues esta se lee como ¨reglamentos de armas¨pero originalmente hace alusión al famoso profesor de moda y conductor de televisión Tim Gunn.
Este frenesi de palabras en sus collages más recientes tiene el mismo efecto cuando la artista usa palabras en singular y las vuelve tridimensionales. Macho (2009) pone en evidencia las contradicciones de la masculinidad exagerada con la selección del material y de la letra cursiva, ambas asociadas con cualidades femeninas. Otra escultura blanda que sirve como puente para tejer la relación entre las obras es Shallow Water II (2012). Está plantea el tema de la violencia mediante la materialidad del vinilo, el cual tiene connotaciones sexualizadas, pero cuyo título también insinúa el peligro del océano en zonas donde el oleaje no se rompe y nuestra vulnerabilidad en situaciones que superficialmente parecen ser inofensivas.
Finalmente, con Hard and Soft Knives (2015-2016), Barragán pone en tensión a los materiales y a nociones de domesticidad y protección. Así como es un arma de agresión o resguardo, el cuchillo como objeto ha sido empleado como recurso visual por artistas feministas desde los años setenta. De igual manera, Barragán subvierte la forma directa de los significados del lenguaje que nos oprimen y reprimen para cambiar su sentido y destruir arquetipos por medio de la imagen y la palabra.
Selene Preciado, marzo 2017
News / Noticias
extracto de texto, Página 195-196 del libro: DE AQUELLOS PÁRAMOS SIN CULTURA… (tres décadas de artes en Baja California: de lo retiniano a lo conceptual) por: ROBERTO ROSIQUE
Las pinturas (impresiones) de Mely Barragán (Tijuana B.C., 1975), resueltas con copias de aquel dibujo delineado y colores planos empleadas por diseñadores del pasado, impresas sobre soportes plastificados profusamente ilustrados con motivos florales, creados para ser usados como manteles del comedor o protectores de superficies; la artista en una visión retro, contemporaniza los pasados años en que la ilustración se convierte en elemento sustancial para estimular los mercados y alimentar el consumismo, el american way of life como expresión de máximos alcances (El pecado, Compañera ideal, del 2004). Representado por amas de casa perfectamente maquilladas, peinadas y ataviadas con lo último de la moda realizando labores del hogar; por empleadas o secretarias (Las maravillosas, 2004, Ellas, 2005), todas mostrando una singular alegría por el supuesto placer que resulta desempeñarse en estas desvaloradas actividades. Estos contenidos emblemáticos de sumisión simulada serán revitalizados por la artista prodigándole nuevos significados; cuestionando, incluso, la subordinación desde su propia feminidad (Las lloronas, 2005).
Una artista ya indispensable en las lecturas que deben hacerse sobre el arte fronterizo, que explora otros medios (The chain, 2004), interviene espacios (Proud boy de la serie Golden Boy, 2008 , Macho / Male 2008) realiza instalaciones con obras de diversos componentes, siempre en un cuestionamiento de las imposiciones sociales y de nuestra pasividad y acatamiento.
excerpt from: Catalogue text for CUSTOMIZING LANGUAGE, curated by Idurre Alonso and Selene Preciado The inaugural presentation of the LACE Emerging Curator Program.
Mely Barragán uses elements and images from mass media, pop art, and popular culture to address gender issues, particularly imposed feminine archetypes by our patriarchal society. She utilizes various media including collage, painting, printing and sculpture, such as in her most well-known work from 2004, La Cadena (The Chain), in which a plaster sculpture of a bride and groom multiplies in a row of eleven, but the top of the figure of the bride is gradually shaved off from sculpture to sculpture until she almost completely disappears.
This works reflects her preoccupation for the role of women in contemporary society, which publicly promotes and encourages an image of a strong, independent, woman, especially in the workforce, while the economic system is not yet balanced in terms of equal pay, fair treatment of working mothers, and in private space often traditional gender roles persist.
The use of specific materials plays a key part in Barragán´s work, for example wallpaper prints, or those traditionally associated to domestic and female use, such as sewn felt, in the case Macho, 2009. This work simultaneously alludes to the issue of machismo-defined as a strong sense of power or entitlement to dominate in males-while emphasizing the contradictions of exaggerated masculinity with the use of the material and cursive typography, both associated with female qualities.
Artube: Entrevista a Mely Barragan [TransmediosTV]
“I learned how to speak in two languages at the same time, my identity is constructed by thousands of copy-pastes. Juxtaposition is natural for border people”
“I utilize the appropriation of images to resignify their use, upon finding myself in a by-product world where we are inundated by concepts of identity based on consumption, I become empowered by this imagery without playing its game. I search for more honest visual formulas that question imposed visual formulas (industry, society, tradition, etc). I describe my process as reflections on the absurd, obsessive, fateful, grotesque, beautiful and fragmented”
M. Barragán.
THIS MACHINE KILLS @ Fine Art Complex
Dates: 11.5.2016 – 12.10.2016
Where no black ones come to roam!
No, no, no! Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!
Galleries Director: Grant Vetter / fineartcomplex1101.com
http://fineartcomplex1101.com/past-exhibits/this-machine-kills___________________
This Machine Kills__________________
Opening: Saturday, November 5th, 7:00-10:00pm.
imágenes de mujeres dentro de situaciones marcadas por su género. Por ejemplo, exploró el papel de las mujeres en la historia, la vida contemporánea y las relaciones personales, sexuales y sociales como el matrimonio y las tradiciones familiares. Ella comenzó a jugar con la idea de moldear el rol de género utilizando la figura masculina como objeto de decoración al igual que la figura femenina ha sido usado y abusado. Barragán utiliza dibujos, objetos y palabras para convertir pensamientos en ideas. “
(varios autores)
EL VALOR DE LAS COSAS
No hace mucho tiempo, accidentalmente termine viendo una página de internet que se enfoca en el fenómeno OVNI y llamó mi atención el encabezado: “Avistamientos en Beijing, China y Tijuana, México.” Luego más aún el hecho de tratarse de dos videos aparentemente filmados el 1 de enero del presente año. Me interesó como 10,265 kilómetros de distancia con 15 horas de diferencia, se unían simbólicamente mediante unos pretendidos objetos voladores. Me interesó más aún el hecho que estas dos ciudades encarnan cotidianamente un estigma donde lo falso y truculento, lo peligroso, lo exótico, lo emocionante y lo surreal campean así, sin más. En fin, al final del día quede convencido que si en algún lugar del mundo debe de haber ovnis es precisamente ahí. Acepto que podría parecer absurda la analogía para referirme al primer ejercicio expositivo surgido del proyecto TJ IN CHINA: THE VALUE OF STUFF / three displaced perceptions on trade, tradition & trauma. Una suerte de laboratorio donde Mely Barragán, Daniel Ruanova y Jaime Ruiz Otis, presentan un grupo de obras producto de su actual residencia en Beijing. Ahora bien, es importante hacer notar que no se trata únicamente del desplazamiento físico o de la percepción de los artistas, sino, en todo caso, del acto mismo de dislocar sentidos, de re aprender en cierta forma fragmentos del proceso productivo personal y finalmente de la asimilación del contexto inmediato y su representación mediante el marco conceptual y el elocuente uso de los materiales. Si bien en los 3 casos esta obra reciente refiere a su cuerpo de obra previo, también lo es que hay una evolución clara hacia rutas que hoy les resulta viable explorar. Unir ideas corporizadas en luz neón, vidrio, metal y objetos diversos, utilizando soportes como el video, la nueva escultura y la intervención en sitio, entre otras, permiten ir visionando el rumbo que empieza a perfilar la obra de los artistas, pero además debe ser considerado como una declaración de principios del proyecto en su conjunto. Más que intentar hacer un crossover o verse pretendidamente mainstream lo de Barragán, Ruanova y Otis es una propuesta que articula, como bien lo dice el título de la muestra, esta trasferencia y tráfico de identidades, de tradiciones y de traumas o recelos sobre los cuales uno soporta su propia existencia. Sin embargo, de nuevo termino convencido que si hay un par de lugares tan intensos y complejos como empáticos y necesariamente artísticos son Tijuana y Beijing. Sean pues bienvenidos a TJ IN CHINA 001.
THE VALUE OF STUFF
THREE DISPLACED PERCEPTIONS ON TRADE, TRADITION & TRAUMA
Not long ago, I accidentally viewed a website that focuses on the UFO phenomenon and the headline caught my eye: “Sightings in Beijing, China and Tijuana, Mexico.” Both videos were apparently filmed on the 1st of January this year. I was interested that the two cities were symbolically joined by a reported flying object, at a distance of 10.265 miles with a 15 hour time difference. I was even more interested in the fact that these two cities daily lives embody a stigma where the false and tricky, dangerous and exotic, exciting and surreal abound “just like that”. Finally, at the end of the day, I was convinced that if somewhere in the world there are UFO´s, it must be there.
I agree that the analogy may seem absurd to refer to the inaugural exhibition project created by TJ IN CHINA, THE VALUE OF STUFF / three displaced perceptions on trade, tradition & trauma. A sort of laboratory where Mely Barragan, Daniel Ruanova and Jaime Ruiz Otis, have a group of works resulting from their current residence in Beijing. Now, it´s important to note that this is not just about the physical movement or perception of artists, but in any case, the very act of dislocating senses, somehow rearranging the fragments of the production process and finally, the assimilation of the immediate context and its representation through the conceptual framework and the eloquent use of the materials. Although the three projects refer to their past body of work, there is a clear path to the routes that are now feasible explore.
Connecting ideas embodied in neon, glass, metal and other objects, using media such as video, new-sculpture, on-site intervention among others, we can envision the direction that begins to outline the work of the artists, and this must be considered a declaration of principles of the project as a whole. Rather than attempting to make a supposedly mainstream crossover, Barragan, Ruanova and Otis proposals articulate, as well as the title of the show, a transfer and trafficking of identities, traditions and trauma or suspicion on which one bears hers or his own existence. However, I am still convinced that if there are a couple of places so intense and complex as empathic and artistic, thay are necessarily Tijuana and Beijing. You are welcome to TJ IN CHINA.
Marco Granados, May 2012
http://tjinchina.dinstudio.com/gallery_3.html
“La dicotomía dentro/fuera” [Abstract]
Con esta nueva edición individual Mely Barragán muestra en Tijuana, tras su regreso de una residencia en China, una nueva serie de obra plástica en el conflictuado espacio de Arte Vía, uno de los pocos destinados al arte contemporáneo en la ciudad, creado apenas este año, y el cual en este momento no goza de un manejo estratégico, corriendo el riesgo incluso de desaparecer tan pronto como fue creado. Barragán es una artista de la generación de jóvenes 2000-2010 en Tijuana, a la cual pertenece la mayoría de artistas visuales profesionales de la ciudad activos actualmente, los nombres más conocidos dentro del mapa nacional del arte contemporáneo. Se ve así en esta muestra la obra de una artista que ha visualizado su camino individual, en este caso a través de transferencias, reflejos, multiplicaciones, ideales físicos humanos que flotan o se contienen, relucen o descansan, se miden, estiran, prueban. Hombres y mujeres cuyos cuerpos y posturas se sumergen en una serie de inversiones de género donde –aunque aparezcan desafiantes temas como los derechos de la mujer, etcétera– el feminismo ya no ocupa el tema central, sino que aparece en algunas piezas, como circunstancia de un todo con una complejidad más real y actual, más allá de posturas extremistas. Hoy cualquier idea de género puede estar arriba o abajo, enfrente o atrás, cerca o lejos, ser malo o bueno, verdad o mentira, caber adentro o afuera, tal como el título de la serie sugiere, escrito en inglés, como es natural para una artista de esta región fronteriza.
“The dichotomy inside / outside”
IN OUT, Mely Barragán, solo exhibition, ARTE VIA, Tijuana, Mexico, November-December 2011. [Abstract]
With this series of work, Mely Barragán shows in Tijuana after returning from a residency in China. She comes from the young generation of artist that transformed the city ́s art scene durring 2000-2010,the best known names in the national map of contemporary art. It looks like the work of an artist who has displayed “her way”, in this case through transfers, reflections, multiplications, human physical ideals that float or contain glitter or rest, measured, stretched, tested. Men and women whose bodies and positions are immersed in a series of investments in which gender -even if they appear challenging issues such as women’s rights, etc.- feminism no longer occupies the central theme, but appears in some parts as fact, one with a real presence more complex and beyond extreme positions. Today any idea of gender can be up or down, front or back, near or far, be good or bad, true or not, in or out, as the series title suggests, written in English, as is natural for an artist of this border region.
Claudia Algara, 2011
El trabajo de Mely Barragán —frecuentemente asociado con desconfiable rapidez a los intereses de género y el arte feminista— hace de la delgada línea del dibujo que dispone sobre el vacío a sus hombres duplicados, tono y timbre discursivo que anima y subvierte su propuesta estética y conceptual. La representación esquemática, pulcra y atexturizada de los cuerpos de papel que en estas obras reproduce entintados del diseño y visualidad del cuerpo gráfico perfecto en las revistas de mediados del siglo XX evidencian con aparente sencillez una fragilidad que intenta esconderse sobre el dibujo no sólo en la imagen sino incluso de ella. La elección técnica de su obra en perfecto equilibrio y resonancia con la apuesta sígnica de los delicados cuerpos de Barragán convierte a estos tambaleantes narcisos en inquietantes reflexiones-en-refracción sobre el resquebrajamiento inevitable e inherente a toda construcción simbólica saturada de sí. El tremor de sus cuerpos dobles susurra con atronadora claridad el desvelo de la condición humana cuando más expuesta, no en la desnudez sino en la pretensión por alisar sus contornos y enmascarar el resto de su singularidad.
The work of mely barragán—often hastily and presumptuously associated with issues of gender and traditional feminist art—generates a discursive tone and timbre which animates and subverts the aesthetic and conceptual proposal of her duplicated men by rendering fine lines over an empty surface. with this schematic, meticulous and texture-less representation of paper bodies which comprise the works he man i and ii, barragán reproduces design prints and images from idealized magazine illustrations from the mid-20th century; demonstrating with apparent simplicity, the fragility which tries to hide itself not only in the image, but even from the artists herself.
the technical decisions operate under perfect equilibrium and resonance with the semiotic tactics of barragán’s unsettlingly fragile bodies. the artist converts these staggering narcissists into suggestive reflections/refractions concerned with the fracturing which is inherent and inevitable in this over-saturated and symbolic construct. the tremor of their doubled bodies whispers with thundering clarity the un-veiled human condition when it is most exposed–not in its nakedness–but in its endeavor to soften its contours and disguise that which still remains of its singularity.
Marcela Quiroz, 2010
http://falladecortante.blogspot.mx/2010_07_26_archive.html
HE MAN
El papel de las mujeres dentro de los esquemas de poder que operan en la sociedad, las relaciones de género y el cuerpo femenino como objeto sexual son preocupaciones recurrentes en la obra de Mely Barragán. Sin embargo, en su última serie, titulada HE MAN, la artista cuestiona sus propias suposiciones sobre estos temas al explorar la imaginería, los clichés y las expectativas culturales creadas alrededor de la figura masculina.
Interesada en los mecanismos sociales y psicológicos que están en juego en la “físico-cultura” —estilo de vida en que impera un compromiso casi filosófico hacia el desarrollo y cuidado del estado físico y la salud— Barragán crea una serie de dibujos sobre papel y muro en los que usa imágenes “retro” de estilizados hombres fornidos. La artista es conocida por sus representaciones femeninas —generalmente presentando mujeres estereotípicas que visten moda de época, maquillaje y cabello oscuro a la Betty Page— las cuales son empatadas con textos o motivos decorativos como flores o diseños abstractos que introducen elementos irónicos o satíricos, para dar pie a mensajes directos o subliminales que complejizan su propia relación a la feminidad.
Así, en HE MAN la artista desarrolla un sujeto fornido que, vistiendo solamente pantalones cortos ajustados, aparece estático mientras realiza una rigurosa rutina atlética. Si bien el héroe forzudo de Barragán —modelado siguiendo las formas del hombre musculoso de mediados del siglo pasado semejante al efímero personaje de caricatura aparecido en 1956, “Mr. Muscle” (“Sr. Músculo”)— también refleja el fenómeno contemporáneo del hombre obsesionado con el ejercicio y la salud que pareciera haber asumido como propia la objetivizacion del cuerpo femenino. “Intento revertir los roles de genero al usar la figura masculina como objeto decorativo”, explica la artista. Con una línea sinuosa, Barragán dibuja los contornos de ese cuerpo ajeno al suyo, sintetizándolo en reducidos trazos sobre el papel o el muro, repitiendo una y otra vez el dibujo que conforma una figura reconocible, si bien abstracta, transformando el ideal masculino en algo semejante a los patrones decorativos del papel tapiz.
Lucía Sanromán, 2010
Drawing The Line @MCASD Museum Of Contemporary Art San Diego
Drawing the Line presents works on paper, sculpture, and fabric pieces from the Museum’s collection that reveal new approaches to the integration of drawing techniques into media that have not been traditionally associated with these genres. The exhibition includes works in the MCASD collection by Amy Adler, Jacci Den Hartog, Kim Dingle, Eugenie Geb, Iana Quesnell, Margaret Honda, Marta Palau, and Nancy Rubins. Tania Candiani is also represented with a new large-scale textile on loan. These works are brought together with additional pieces by invited artists Marisol Rendón, from San Diego; Mely Barragán, from Tijuana; and Lynne Berman and Shizu Saldamando, from Los Angeles. Together, they present a wide gamut of approaches to drawing, ranging from traditional tonal renderings of landscape views to diagrammatic representations of situational maps; from realistic portraiture to the metaphoric use of the figure; and from mark-making as a record of past events to drawing as performance.
In the history of academic art, drawing was seen as a means and not an end in itself. Drawings were produced as preparatory studies for the production of paintings or sculptures; it was that which lay under painting, a scaffolding or structure to support and organize brushstrokes and color. As a preparatory study of nature or the human figure, it was a tool to aid the artist in perceiving and reproducing the world realistically; but its primary function still was to remain hidden, part of the artist’s toolkit and relegated to the studio or classroom. Changes in drawing’s status as an art medium began to take place during the 19th century with the Impressionists, who as they broke with academicism, began to produce drawings for their own sake, and to explore all the qualities of the media—the soft sfumato of pastels; the disturbing, dry darkness of charcoal—to carry the content of their art. The Impressionists interest in perception and representation of modern life through engagement with the surface qualities of their media dislodged the preeminence of narrative and opened the door to the potential of formal and material experimentation over content.
It is precisely drawing’s directness as a medium that gives this genre its ability to be fully receptive of an artist’s nascent intentions. With none of the theoretical weight of the painting genre to contend, drawing remains a space of open experimentation unobstructed by a historical tradition that demands specific analysis. As a genre, it does not give over easily to categorization and resists traditional definitions and the elaboration of a consistent discourse based on formalist values. Rather, the nature of drawing is not limited by media, nor is it characterized by a format. To draw is to engage in a creative space outside of the prerequisites of language in which experience and idea come together through line. Its potential lies, therefore, not in the success of drawings to represent, but in the potency of the medium to express directly the
DRAWING THE LINE
MCASD DOWNTOWN
Drawing the Line is the second in a three-part series of exhibitions that explore interconnected themes and genres in the work of women artists of Southern and Baja California. The exhibitions run sequentially and start with Memory Is Your Image of Perfection (8/3/08-11/30/08), featuring photography and video; followed by Drawing the Line (12/7/08-2/22/09), featuring drawings, works on paper, and mixed- media pieces; and ending with Abstraction for Everyday Life (5/22/09-9/6/09), featuring abstract paintings and prints. Each of these exhibitions begins from an investigation of artworks in the MCASD collection, which are grouped by media. Collection pieces will be augmented with selected works by invited women artists from Los Angeles to Ensenada.
VIEW MY COMPLETE PROFILE
Drawing the Line (Trazando la línea) es la segunda parte de una
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Drawing the Line 4/15/13 11:36 PM
gestures and intensity of its making—to memorialize, meditate, act, and think through the performatic, bodily activity of making a line. The artworks on view reveal a bias towards the performative qualities of mark-making, shading, and diagramming, incorporating aspects of performance art linked to the integration of the feminine body as a critical site of personal and political power.
Author Peggy Phelan has argued that early feminist performance art is characterized by a particular attitude towards touch, which requires “that we put the sentient body at the center of knowing.”1 While none of the artists in the exhibition have “performed” their drawings before a public, many prioritize their own bodily engagement with the material of drawing over a sustained period of time. The subject of Nancy Rubins’ Drawing (1993), for example, is the activity of drawing itself. Implied in the work’s vigorous graphite crosshatching are the artist’s own actions upon the paper, This shifts the drawing from a representation of something into an object that embodies the artist herself.
Something similar occurs in Amy Adler’s Director (2006), a work that represents the artist’s reconsideration of her own creative process. Utilizing primed canvas instead of paper as a base, the Los Angeles artist provides the viewer with an unmediated experience of the medium as applied by her hand. She situates herself in the middle of the process, as it were, as a way to subtly subvert the qualities of the media, because the image that appears is created as much by the trace of graphite left behind as it is by its absence on the corrugated surface of the primed canvas.
Drawing is a trace; it is evidence of a deliberate action. This is highlighted in works by Iana Quesnell and Lynne Berman, two artists whose interest in diagramming their own lives overlaps with their preoccupation with space and narration. Iana Quesnell’s Triptych: Migration Path (2007) describes the artist’s movements as she travelled between La Jolla, the former location of her studio, and her Tijuana home via the public transit system. Her astonishingly detailed drawings are self-referential and experientially driven. The large pencil and graphite works on paper are multi-dimensional cartographies that follow her movements through a specific territory, narrowing in on the particular coordinates where she settles for longer or shorter periods of time. Similarly, but utilizing a highly abstracted and personal mark- making language, Los Angeles artist Lynne Berman represents tours she has taken through highly contested sites of Jewish oppression, such as concentration camps in Eastern Europe. Berman explores the “relationships between fictionalized spaces, historical social spaces, and the formal language of space in the work of art.”2 Her drawings result from calligraphic “notes” taken during her travels. Once in the studio, these notes are translated into a variety of watercolor drawings; some use language descriptions, others layer the calligraphic notes into an abstract recreation or spatial score of her experience.
Both of these artists inflect their work with a feminist interest in grounding their point of view within a growing matrix of visual associations in order to explore and problematize notions of subjectivity. This is an approach also shared by other artists in the exhibition and particularly visible in the work of Tijuana artists Tania Candiani and Marta Palau, both of whom apply drawing to a variety of media that includes textiles and various forms of installation art. Tania Candiani’s Lo visible intervenido (That which is visible intervened) (2005) overlays the artist’s subjective viewpoint upon everyone else’s. Lo visible intervenido represents a view through an existing window in a historic building in downtown Mexico City. Commissioned to do a site-specific piece, the artist covered what would be visible to others through the window with what only she had seen. “The perception of what is real is a personal construction,” Candiani states, adding, “In this work, the lines that make the landscape are narrative elements, and the thread is the visible material I used to ‘read’ the exterior world.”3 For Marta Palau, however, context and site are understood subjectively, but are also enmeshed in an inescapable historical and cultural matrix.
Front-era (2003) is an abstract installation created from 41 individual twig ladders arranged into a triangle of 13 ladders on each side to evoke her interest in cabbalistic ritual, sorcery, and feminine mystical power. Mexican pre-Columbian mythology, in particular the prehistoric cave paintings in Baja California, influenced both the form and content of her work. The hyphenated title is a double interpretation of the Spanish word for border, a word that can arbitrarily delimit any space or object. Front-era speaks to a time of the border and the aspiration—as well as the danger—ladders and borders imply.
Other artists in the exhibition use drawing as a means to comment on popular culture and ethnic and gender identity. Women’s roles, gender relations, and the sexualized female body are long-term preoccupations of Tijuana artist Mely Barragán. In her latest ongoing series, Golden Boy, she features a body-builder to problematize her own assumptions about gender by exploring the objectification of the male figure. An interest in describing and investigating subcultures marks the drawings and paintings of Los Angeles artist Shizu Saldamando. Of Mexican- American and Japanese-American heritage, Saldamando focuses on subcultures that have created identities that depart from mainstream representations of Hispanic minorities towards more fluid, ambiguous, and complex identifications that are, nevertheless, self-aware about their cultural differences. The artist Marisol Rendón, who was born in Colombia and now lives in San Diego, also finds in her work a means to explore the cultural divide. In her drawings, common objects are transformed into complex repositories of memories and meanings to reflect the culture at large and her memories and life experiences.
Whether focused on the act of drawing itself, on subjective exploration, or on identity, drawing has emerged as a fluid and experimental medium. Several works in the exhibition, for example, are sculptures in which properties derived from drawing are foremost. In the relief of Jacci Den Hartog, the barbed wire protective devices of Margaret Honda, and Mely Barragán’s plush-fabric piece, form is defined not by mass or volume, but by line, creating a sense of a drawing in three- dimensional space rather than a solid object in a room. In these pieces as in others in the exhibition, the sense of immediacy derived from the works arises equally from the simplicity of drawing as a means of expression as it does from its transparency as a conveyor of the artist’s intuition, experience, and intention.
Lucía Sanromán
Assistant Curator
http://drawing-the-line.blogspot.mxhttp://drawing-the-line.blogspot.mx
Other artists in the exhibition use drawing as a means to comment on popular culture and ethnic and gender identity. Women’s roles, gender relations, and the sexualized female body are long-term preoccupations of Tijuana artist Mely Barragán. In her latest ongoing series, Golden Boy, she features a body-builder to problematize her own assumptions about gender by exploring the objectification of the male figure.
Lucia Sanromán, 2009
- from the golden boy series, acrylic and gold leaf on wall and soft sculpture, variable dimensions, 2008 – 2009
- MALE, soft sculpture, variable dimensions, 2009
- promo from the exhibition
- http://drawing-the-line.blogspot.mxhttp://drawing-the-line.blogspot.mx
Other artists in the exhibition use drawing as a means to comment on popular culture and ethnic and gender identity. Women’s roles, gender relations, and the sexualized female body are long-term preoccupations of Tijuana artist Mely Barragán. In her latest ongoing series, Golden Boy, she features a body-builder to problematize her own assumptions about gender by exploring the objectification of the male figure.
Lucia Sanromán, 2009
IN OUT
exposición multidisciplinaria de la artista visual
Como un juego de memoria en su vida diaria, la obra de Barragán evoluciona temáticamente con cada situación personal que vive. Es el mismo juego que la ayuda a entrar y salir series específicas en su producción artística con las que intenta lograr sus objetivos estéticos, los cuales giran entorno a la mujer contemporánea y los distintos roles que esta asume en el mundo actual.
En sus propias palabras, “IN OUT es una colección de experiencias traducidas en objetos con las que resuelvo los conflictos diarios de enfrentarme al aquí y ahora como individuo que busca la equidad y el balance.”
IN OUT representa un debate entre el pasado, presente y futuros inmediatos en la trayectoria de Barragán, es a través de estas piezas y objetos con los que llegamos a nuestra conclusión personal respecto a su obra reciente y quizás, darnos una idea de lo que puede venir en su carrera.
Mauricio Cadena Ainslie, 2011