Lo que estoy viviendo, 2012
Installation and performance
Gema Ramos uses the current crisis and the questioning of democratic systems to reflect on the power of the imagination to grasp and to share in the consciousness and unconsciousness of this world. In Lo que estoy viviendo, Ramos posits reality as a fallacy in order to explore the separation between the real and the illusion in art, showing how life, even though it may seem removed from culture and its various manifestations, continues being present in our interpretation of reality.
The installation engages with the romantic notion of landscape planning and organising the territory. Eighteenth century bourgeois individualism extolled egocentrism, subjectivity and freedom yet these values forced it to a compromise with itself. The individual has the duty to work and to build himself. The elements in the installation come from the locations and objects used to develop the video actions.
The vegetal residues are an accumulation of orderly disordered matter. In contrast, the panels are windows or landscape paintings evoking the buildings and objects from Lorrain’s or Poussin’s landscape tradition.
Video
Action 1: Architecture student. Barbed wire
Action 2: Argentinean immigrant. Herbs and flowers
Action 3: Unemployed worker. Stones and weeds
Action 4: Young Nigerian woman. Star-patterned fabric
Action 5: Striking miner. Interwoven mesh
Audio: Mind Revolution
