Honorable Mention
Wayout Into Space. From the Series "28 Days".
DESCRIPTION
Wayout into space. From the Series "28 Days".
12x12 inches.
Photomontage, 2016
About 28 DAYS
The French philosopher Pierre Nora explains the difference between memory and history. According to him, traditional memory has vanished: we are no longer capable of remembering unconsciously. Instead, we accumulate fragments, images, and documents from the past, with the intention of having evidence of that time that is gone. Memory is a living system: it is in constant evolution. We deform, manipulate, and revive those old events, places and people. Nora’s understanding of memory explains my fascination with old documents: I collect and work with found images and nature elements to draw physical connections between memory, history, and identity.
Who were these people? Why are their photos on sale in remote vintage stores? What happened to them, to their families? Are they dead? Did they ever exist?
In 28 DAYS, I explore the fictionalizing quality of memory by choosing women from those forgotten images, and by transposing them from their original environments through the use of diverse collage techniques to ambiguous territories located somewhere in between time and space. These hybrid compositions re-signify old memories by staging symbolic representations which materialize my personal understanding of womanhood, memory, death, and nature.
AUTHOR
b. 1982, Villa María, Argentina.Leticia Bernaus has a Bachelor degree as a filmmaker from the Universidad del Cine (Buenos Aires, Argentina). In 2015, her book of photographs and personal essay "Zoobiografía" was published. Zoobiografía photographs were awarded by the “Human World Competition” from the Spanish PHOTOALICANTE 2016, and by the Brazilian contest Mosaicografía 2016. They were exhibit in Argentina (Buenos Aires and La Plata, 2015), Spain (Alicante, 2016), USA (Iowa City, 2015) and Brazil (Porto Alegre, 2016). With this project Bernaus also won the prize IILA-FOTOGRAFIA 2017 from Rome, Italy. These photographs will be shown at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (MACRO) in 2017. She was also awarded with a full grant to attend at an artist residency in Rome where she will develop a project about the city. The work will be exhibited at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma in 2018.
In 2016, she was awarded with a fellowship to participate into the Visual Artist’s Summer Studio Program at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Her work in collaboration with the artist Lara Mossler, “28 Days”, was shown at The Hollows Art Space in Williamsburg, New York (September 2016) and at the Prairie Lights Cafe in Iowa City, Iowa (April 2017). On February 2017 she assisted to the The Elsewhere Studio Art Residency in Paonia, Colorado, where she developed the works “MATER” and “Limbo” (both still in progress). She was awarded with the University Fellowship from the University of Illinois at Chicago where she will start a graduate Art Program next August, 2017. She currently lives in Chicago, USA.
