One Image a Day
Arte Institute suggests “One Image a Day” by Ana Velez.
Galeria de Arte Moderna Pintor Fernando Azevedo at Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes
November 10th to December 2sd – 2016
Curated by Mara Silvério
“Walk as aesthetic practice”, said the Italian architect Francesco Careri (Rome, 1966-). Is from here that it borns and part the newest exhibition of Portuguese artist Ana Velez, One Image a Day. The beginning of this journey took place in Los Angeles (CA), at the end of 2014, a city that has became an object of reflection and artistic practice and, consequently, the heart of a personal change. An intimate and documentary account of the act of walking as aesthetic mean of knowledge, from which space and time are reinterpreted and built memories of a certain place revisited. This solo exhibition corresponds to the rediscovery of the remains of the largest network of private transports in Southern California from the 1920s: Pacific Electric Railway, also known as system Red Car. A rail system which was a major center of commercial and cultural attraction, organized from the big cities, Los Angeles and San Bernardino, connecting them with Orange and Riverside. By using the body and the movement of her steps as a tool of thinking and knowledge, the artist ventures, in a initially strange city for her, through streets, canals, trails and hidden spaces, seeking to read this past and convert it in a contemporary interpretation. From the daily explorations performed were recorded in documentary mode marks of this same reality, having been found from parts of dismantled rails, wires of old electric systems, rusty iron plates, technical operating areas, among other details, that makes these fragments the necessary evidence that the memories of a place still printed and alive, since we are ready to revive them. This is a trip designed by Ana Velez, where herself creates an utopian interpretation, of how it would be easier to live and “navigate” through the streets of Los Angeles if a public transport network continued to exist that links all regions of this US state. Through two large and distinct rooms, located in the Gallery of Modern Art Painter Fernando de Azevedo (SNBA), her artworks are presented through a single view of what every human can absorb when «exists», which is, «is present» in a place with History and, simultaneously, future. The construction of the individual’s identity is supported by the reality that each one conceives when it merges with the environment which they’re surrounded by, is therefore the formulation of memories from places we (re)visited the true way to access the “I” of each one, that is, the being from what it once was. The artistic techniques presented in the art exhibtion are instant photography (Polaroid, 35 mm), painting, drawing and decal.
Ana Velez (Lisbon, 1982). Lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.
The most recurrent artistic techniques are drawing and painting, addressing issues that revolve around the concept of identity, based on three factors: the place, the memory and the body, and highlighting the place as memory and identity container. Master in Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (FBAUL), Lisbon.
Degree in Fine Arts – Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (FBAUL), Lisbon. Throughout her career she has held solo and group exhibitions in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania and Sao Tome and Principe.