Gabriela Agüero

La Tinyu (sacred chanting)
photograph – 24 x 60 in.

Place and memory are intrinsic aspects of identity. Ontological perceptions of space embedded in cultural consciousness create pervasive specificities of time and space. These images precariously suggest narratives that aim at elucidating the disjuncture between perceptions of outdoor/indoor, nature/culture and domestic/public spaces whilst interrogating deeper (dis)connections to our environment as dark, fearful, anxious, wild or as an apostasy for the allure of the sensual. The tight coupling of images chronicle altered states in dimensions beyond the self. The figures exist in isolation and in constraint of voyeuristic windows where they are able to (sub)merge into narratives of alienation and isolation.

From the locus of the body pairing figure and landscape allow for a channel to free existential and sometimes anxious associations that seek to narrow the crumbling distance between the self and nature as a moist, dark, organic material that forms the soil where our skin could delve and eventually rest from the anxieties of selfhood. Immigrant, woman, artist, mother, latina, native, old, wise, wild, and free are stifling, dogmatic labels that limit and break. In order to transcend cultural/gender/race these images lure the viewer into meditation; to reminisce, dwell in the past, dream in darkness creating myths of the boundless realm of spirit.