{"id":79,"date":"2015-09-17T01:25:34","date_gmt":"2015-09-17T01:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/melybarragan.com\/portfolio\/?page_id=79"},"modified":"2023-11-07T19:55:55","modified_gmt":"2023-11-07T19:55:55","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/melybarragan.com\/portfolio\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"
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CHRIS KRAUS, Writer & Filmaker<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mely Barragan, San Diego Art Prize 2023<\/p>\n


\n<\/span>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\u00a0 <\/span>chose to remain. As Barragan told Frieze magazine in 2019, \u201cThe outside world didn\u2019t know what to make of us. We were neither Chicano nor Mexican enough.\u201d Since her first exhibition, Mi Gente, in 2002, Barragan has worked across media \u2013 from collage and painting to sculpture and installation \u2013 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\u2019s 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\u2019s cheap auto repair and medical care. She thought – Why don\u2019t 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\u2019s work isn\u2019t always created in Tijuana. Since the early 2000\u2019s, 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s only recently begun to be rediscovered and claimed by projects like Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez and Daniel Ruanova\u2019s Bracero Legacy Project. To be a bracero was to become \u2018one who swings his arms,\u2019 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. \u201cAmong Mexican families,\u201d Barragan recalls, \u201cit\u2019s a stigma to have been a bracero. It was so delicate and hard to talk about.\u201d 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\u2019s experience, appropriating an heirloom that symbolized a man\u2019s work and softening it with a granddaughter\u2019s touch; sewing thread through the fabric that sustained her family. On the banner, Jose Barragan\u2019s young face floats like a ghost. The card was issued to him by the US Department of Justice. By screen-printing the word \u2018Justice\u2019 in an almost imperceptibly bolder typeface, Barragan subtly, powerfully, evokes the unjust economic colonialism at the program\u2019s 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 \u2013 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Texto por Lucia Rey Orrego, 2022.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Acad\u00e9mica\u00a0 e investigadora independiente (Chile).<\/h3>\n

Para la revista\u00a0Arte Al Limite edici\u00f3n 101.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mely Barrag\u00e1n<\/span><\/p>\n

Blanduras, nudos y escrituras<\/span><\/p>\n

Reflexiones est\u00e9ticas performativas sobre la corporalidad de los significados\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Un antecedente de lo que hoy se llama escultura blanda lo encontramos en los <\/span>ready made<\/span><\/i> de Duchamp, que empujaban al espectador hacia una crisis de significado y sentido material en relaci\u00f3n a la funcionalidad de los objetos. Espec\u00edficamente la funda hueca de una m\u00e1quina de escribir con la inscripci\u00f3n en la misma funda de Underwood que titula <\/span>Pliant de voyage<\/span><\/i>, 1916. La propuesta de Mely se construye en su misma materialidad, la blandura de los objetos parecen indicar un vac\u00edo objetual. Estas esculturas blandas comienzan para la artista desde la experimentaci\u00f3n con la escritura tridimensional ritual en 2008. Problematiza, no el acto de la escritura sino m\u00e1s bien la escritura como concepto, en donde el cuerpo de la letra se confunde con la abstracci\u00f3n, como un acto inasible. As\u00ed, esta escritura blanda va llen\u00e1ndose de contenido en la medida que se presenta en el ritual, como el llamado a la presencia f\u00edsica de lo que se escribe. Sin embargo, en este proceso de investigaci\u00f3n, su propuesta adquiere un sentido cr\u00edtico al encontrar disonancias entre la macro escritura objetual y los significados de las palabras. All\u00ed es donde aparece la experimentaci\u00f3n escult\u00f3rica, puesto que emplaza perceptivamente al espectador a relacionarse con esta producci\u00f3n de sentidos, ya no de la escritura en s\u00ed directamente, sino con su presencia escult\u00f3rica; le interesa a la artista \u201cburlar los significados del lenguaje\u201d en este tensionar significados a trav\u00e9s de su puesta material en escena como nuevo contenido.<\/span><\/p>\n

La cuesti\u00f3n contempor\u00e1nea del arte conceptual, desde los a\u00f1os 60, ha problematizado el arte como objeto, para \u201cinstalar\u201d el contenido como acci\u00f3n conceptual y fracturar la estabilidad y las estructuras materiales no solo del arte sino que tambi\u00e9n de realidades, en cuanto cultura. As\u00ed, las relaciones que se establecen a partir de la obra apuntar\u00e1n a emplazar al p\u00fablico hacia una reflexi\u00f3n cr\u00edtica sobre la propia realidad. En este caso, las 5 obras ac\u00e1 presentadas se modulan adem\u00e1s por un proceso interior, de (auto)interrogaci\u00f3n y (auto)transformaci\u00f3n en relaci\u00f3n a tem\u00e1ticas relacionadas principalmente con el tema del g\u00e9nero y la apertura hacia una cr\u00edtica femenina sobre la deconstrucci\u00f3n del masculino.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

La primera obra es <\/span>Behave<\/span><\/i>,<\/span> esta escultura indica al comportamiento como una cuesti\u00f3n cultural y biol\u00f3gicamente condicionada. En ese sentido la autora apela a la tensi\u00f3n entre la blandura de la escritura escult\u00f3rica y el significado de la palabra. Una tensi\u00f3n que podr\u00eda tambi\u00e9n aparecer entre la blandura de la carne uterina y la rigidez f\u00e1lica de los significados, y tambi\u00e9n puede indicar supuestos determinismos del comportamiento humano, en tiempos en donde la ciencia parece imponerse desde las <\/span>fr\u00edas aguas del c\u00e1lculo<\/span><\/i> algor\u00edtmico. De manera que el estudio del comportamiento hoy en d\u00eda se aloja muy espec\u00edficamente all\u00ed, en los <\/span>big data<\/span><\/i>, con la inteligencia artificial. En este sentido nos podemos preguntar: \u00bfQu\u00e9 significa comportarse? La artista abre la tensi\u00f3n en esta complejidad predecible de lo humano y la consciencia de nuestro propio comportamiento en el mundo, como decisi\u00f3n de lo que se es.<\/span><\/p>\n

La elaboraci\u00f3n material, que es central en su obra, indicar\u00e1 una intensi\u00f3n iconoclasta, pero no contra la imagen sino a trav\u00e9s de ella, en este caso se trata de la cercan\u00eda entre las palabras y las cosas distanciadas en sus significados. La tensi\u00f3n conceptual entre: signo-significado-significante, en donde el significante es la letra, el signo es la obra, y el significado ser\u00eda lo puesto en tensi\u00f3n (intersubjetiva) mediante la problem\u00e1tica material que constituir\u00eda una estructura de significados deconstruidos por los mismos materiales elegidos, que pretenden interrogar sobre lo escrito y su sentido en la realidad pr\u00e1ctica.\u00a0Esta tensi\u00f3n ling\u00fc\u00edstica nos permite sospechar de alguna reminiscencia de culturas orales no alcanzadas por la modernidad, en donde elementos s\u00edgnicos pueden <\/span>adquirir <\/span>un valor simb\u00f3lico primitivista.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

La segunda obra se titula <\/span>Acumulaciones<\/span><\/i>, y corresponde a una articulaci\u00f3n escult\u00f3rica con objetos creados con la misma materialidad de la escritura, pero en este caso, no la usa para escribir sino para \u201cdibujar\u201d con volumen, estos vol\u00famenes abstractos est\u00e1n cubiertos con pinturas y barniz, para generar una est\u00e9tica org\u00e1nica, como si se tratara de la exhibici\u00f3n objetual de interioridades arrancadas del cuerpo para ser colgadas ante el p\u00fablico, cuesti\u00f3n que nos sugiere la idea delueziana del cuerpo sin \u00f3rganos, que Hal Foster apunta como un eje del arte contempor\u00e1neo.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b>La tercera obra se llama <\/span>Bittersweet testosterone<\/span><\/i>, es una obra con car\u00e1cter intimista, con sentido terap\u00e9utico. La corbata, desde el siglo XVII existe como accesorio que da cuenta de un estatus especialmente masculino, en este caso podr\u00edamos verlos como signo del \u201cprivilegio masculino\u201d, aunque tambi\u00e9n desde otra perspectiva, al sesgo puede observarse como un \u201ccorset\u201d de ciertos tipos de palabras habladas (vinculadas a la blandura) y del ox\u00edgeno, con el que se puede tambi\u00e9n apuntar al \u201cmandato masculino\u201d que problematiza Rita Segato. En su doble significado: privilegio y a la vez mandato, lo que trabaja ac\u00e1 la artista es la masculinidad. La palabra escrita alude tambi\u00e9n a la palabra no hablada, anudada en la garganta, apuntando a lo no dicho, lo no tragado o procesado, dej\u00e1ndola en conexi\u00f3n con las obras anteriores. Esta colecci\u00f3n de \u201csujeciones\u201d o \u201cprivilegios\u201d tambi\u00e9n 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 reflexi\u00f3n sobre la masculinidad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

La cuarta obra, <\/span>Love handles<\/span><\/i>, remite prontamente al cuerpo del erotismo femenino, que adquiere una forma contra-funcional, que aparece como anomal\u00eda enigm\u00e1tica, reapareciendo la idea deleuziana de la <\/span>reorganizaci\u00f3n de los \u00f3rganos a partir de los flujos deseantes<\/span><\/i>.<\/span> La quinta obra llamada <\/span>Ovario 1<\/span><\/i>, aunque aparentemente no hay indicios, nace de la palabra escult\u00f3rica \u201cmacho\u201d, que gracias a la blandura material, es moldeada al extremo hasta darle forma de \u00fatero. Este nudo blando, entonces ser\u00eda el resultado de un ritual performativo intimista, que se presenta como un mundo-nudo interior femenino, que parece ser infinitamente curvo.<\/span><\/p>\n

Estas cinco obras, aunque independientes unas de otras, forman parte de una proceso art\u00edstico introspectivo, cuya constante es la blandura y los nudos. La blandura puede llamar al relajamiento y al descanso, pero tambi\u00e9n puede generar nudos, para desarmar o para crear.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Trifecta: Art, Science, Patron<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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September 25, 2021 \u2013 January 16, 2022<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Local artists and Salk Institute scientists collaborate in this interdisciplinary project that was inspired by the visionary gift of the Jacobs family. The Joan Klein and Irwin Mark Jacobs Senior Scientist Endowed Chair Challenge began in 2008 to encourage donors to establish endowed chairs in support of Salk scientists for their outstanding contributions to biological research. For every $2 million in donor contributions toward a chair, the Jacobs added $1 million to achieve the $3 million required for a full endowment. The Jacobs Challenge is responsible for 18 of the 31 chaired positions to date. The science that is funded today makes future discoveries possible and the patrons who make this research a reality are the stewards of tomorrow. To celebrate this gift to posterity, local artists have been paired with many of these honored scientists to create this exhibition. Through their artwork, the artists share their visions inspired by this cutting-edge research funded by philanthropic patrons of the community. This trifecta of artist, scientist, and patron pays homage to major contributors of this vibrant community and inspires a better future.<\/div>\n
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Featured artists include:\u00a0Marcos 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.<\/p>\n

Curated by Chi Essary<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Major funding for this project generously provided by the Ray Thomas Edwards Foundation with additional support from Weston Anson and ArtWorks San Diego.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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Grabs Back @ Being Here With You \/ Estando Aqu\u00ed contigo – MCASD Museum Of Contemporary Art San Diego 2019<\/h1>\n

Mely Barrag\u00e1n 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.<\/p>\n

Barrag\u00e1n\u00b4s Grabs Back \u00a0is more pointed in its subject, offering a response to U.S. President Donald Trump\u00b4s boasting of sexual assault on the notorious \u00a8Access Hollywood\u00a8 tape. The word \u00a8pussy\u00a8 is surrounded by a bustling arrangement of vintage illustrations \u2013 of men, women, and a large poodle- and layered with sequins, fur, a skirt, and painted phallic forms. Additional textual elements \u2013 \u00a8female dog\u00a8, and \u00a8grabs back\u00a8 \u2013 propose an active mode of resistance to forms of indignity and oppression endorsed by those with power.<\/p>\n

(excerpt from Museum catalogue)<\/p>\n

Mixed media, painting on tapestry cloth, thread, hairy texture, sequins, on stretcher. size 164 X 194 cm.<\/em><\/p>\n

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t\u00e9cnica mixta, pintura sobre tela de tapicer\u00eda, hilos, peluche, acr\u00edlico, lentejuela sobre bastidor. dimensiones 164 X 194 cm. a\u00f1o 2017.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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BEING HERE WITH YOU\/ ESTANDO AQU\u00cd CONTIGO: 42 ARTISTS FROM SAN DIEGO AND TIJUANA<\/h3>\n
Thursday, Sep 20, 2018<\/span>\u00a0to\u00a0<\/span>Sunday, Feb 03, 2019<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Being Here with You\/ Estando aqu\u00ed contigo<\/em>\u00a0brings together work by 42 artists and collectives living and working in the San Diego and Tijuana region. Presenting both early career and established artists,\u00a0Being Here with You\/ Estando aqu\u00ed contigo<\/em>\u00a0highlights distinctive practices shaping conversations and communities in our binational region and beyond.<\/p>\n

Being Here with You\/ Estando aqu\u00ed contigo\u00a0<\/em>borrows its title from the bilingual song \u201cAngel Baby\u201d by Rosie and the Originals, a teenage band from National City, California, which points to the region\u2019s rich history of homegrown talent. The title also harkens back to MCASD\u2019s 1985 survey,\u00a0A San Diego Exhibition: Forty-Two Emerging Artists<\/em>. Since that time, MCASD has broadened its focus to include the work of Tijuana artists.\u00a0Being Here with You\/ Estando aqu\u00ed contigo<\/em>\u00a0reflects the Museum\u2019s 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\u2019s artistic communities are distinct but overlapping, the exhibition builds on the ongoing artistic exchanges between the two cities.<\/p>\n

Being Here with You\/ Estando aqu\u00ed contigo\u00a0<\/em>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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0Being Here with You\/ Estando aqu\u00ed contigo<\/em>\u00a0also acknowledges the crucial role that alternative art venues play in the region\u2019s art scene, with nearly a quarter of the exhibition\u2019s artists running or programming independent spaces in San Diego and Tijuana.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Being Here with You\/ Estando aqu\u00ed contigo<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Being Here with You\/ Estando aqu\u00ed contigo\u00a0<\/em>is co-organized by Curator Jill Dawsey and Assistant Curator Anthony Graham. The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.<\/p>\n

Being Here with You\/ Estando aqu\u00ed contigo: 42 Artists from San Diego and Tijuana<\/em>\u00a0is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and made possible by the\u00a0Being Here With You\/ Estando aqu\u00ed contigo:\u00a0<\/em>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.<\/p>\n

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