Residency Summary's response

Hi Sonia,

   Apologies for the delay, I wanted to receive everyone's papers first, then respond. Your paper is well edited and flows well, so I think the writing is quite good at this point. One distinction I would make is that a "critic" is a person, while a "critique" is the discussion.

Here are some of the points in your summary I responded the most to:

"In my second residency I discovered that the path to understand and find personal meaning in

my new role as a contemporary artist is now more tangible.  The passion that I feel for my Latin culture, which was learned and absorbed through my upbringing in a different country, was unmistakably present in the work that I brought to the residence."

"I also could, with this new work, include many of my interests like politics, the three

dimensional aspect of art, an old and very familiar material cardboard, and especially the Latin cultural 

 tradition of storytelling and home altars."

"Professor Apesos, among others, said that I should explore, even more,

the different aspects of inside and outside he said I was "turning my life inside out"

My installation of boxes was, according to him, a way of

profanation (using something but giving it another meaning).

With Michael Newman

I learned more about archives and understood that most artists, in one way of another, tend to  

use them.  The stories depicted in the boxes, in my installation, are an archive of childhood memories and  subsequently the self-portrait as I try to depict are archives of memories and cultural traditions.

Overall, this seems to have been a very productive residency for you! I think you received a lot of good feedback and have found a visual form that really brings up many of these powerful themes from your personal experience.

The other idea I think is very important, brought up by John Kramer, is "how much to reveal in the artwork?" Then the work of Boltanski was brought up, I'd also bring up artists like Anselm Kiefer, Doris Salcedo, and Gerhard Richter (to a smaller extent), whose work is often about a type of mourning, but one that is coded in metaphor. Part of what makes Boltanski's work so effective is that the specific stories he's referring to are hidden, but the form that his work takes is very intriguing and powerful, here's one example: http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/200311akk

Here is a talk by Doris Salcedo:http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/doris-salcedo/

The one she gave at Harvard this semester was great, but I don't see it online yet! Another artist who may be of interest in terms of themes of memory, space, and sculpture is Ann Hamilton: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/ann-hamilton

best,

   

    Ben