Elisa García de la Huerta

Statement

Elisa Garcia De La Huerta is a multi/interdisciplinary visual artist. Currently she focuses on two mediums: detailed portraiture using analog photography, and performance art based on improvisation, movement and experimental sound. The two disciplines are thematically consistent, detailing the ways in which nature interweaves with different aspects of the modern self, and post-gender politics.

She is fascinated by the Shadow of late capitalist culture, how it is fed by more or less conscious strategies of repression. Her work invokes the primal Archetype of the Goddess – Virgin, Mother, Shaman and Witch – in the belief that through a global return to the feminine in all Her aspects, we might soften our rapacious drives, creating more of a balance between our technological advancement, our relationship to nature and the refinement of our consciousness. In this context she portrays intimacy as a vital and unruly form of resilience and resistance.

Her work depends on relationships, on intuition, on critical thinking. She thrives on the ephemerality of collaboration. She revels in the poetic, tactile and pictorial aspects of analog film, the punk post-digital experience which reintroduces the more emotional, nostalgically saturated quality of the vintage format.

With the culture bombarded by an exponential number of images, she wants her work to represent a form of sanctuary, allowing a place where our connection with nature – including our bodies – might be resurrected, de-commodified, and re-beautified.

The gaze she employs is both queer and humanizing, transmitting subtle, fragile messages through the inclusion of bizarre details or punctum which allude to facets of transpersonal and eco-feminist discourse. It contrasts with the sensationalizing spectacle of mass-circulation visual media, preferring a more vulnerable language which evokes quiet reflection, relatedness, an intimacy which can be genuinely erotic that is well-known in the history of painting, but largely obscured by contemporary culture.

Credits: Collaboration with Pauli Cakes, Melanie Bonajo, Alees Yvon, Juan Donoso, Alexandra Mabes, Hex Kim

GlogauAIR Project

I would like to explore through my work the intersection of capitalism, intimacy and nature; the ways in which an increasingly technological, egotistical, market-driven culture has dramatically contracted our private space, erasing personal time, accelerating the pace of life, and most piercingly of all, eroding our capacity for intimacy. More particularly, I am curious about the ways in which ‘urban’ nature has functioned as both a mode of leisure and a form of social control: providing commodified, clearly circumscribed locations and objects (well manicured communal lawns, hanging flowers on the edifices of banks) which deliberately function as a ‘relief’ from the madness of digital/work-obsessed culture.

This use of nature is deeply suggestive of the patriarchal organization of the female/queer body. And just as there is a wildness or wilderness (tree roots cracking pavements, bird shit corroding statues) that resists this commodification, there are unstandardized representations of beauty that function in the same way. I am not interested in just going out and finding suggestive, symbolic images that might point to these broader conflicts.

My creative process depends on carefully developing relational aesthetics that fits with the environment I am working in. It depends on me becoming acculturated, developing a critical dialogue with people and places, exploring the different and unexpected ways we rely on things and each other to secure our deepest needs. In other words the images need to emerge from authentic, shared expressions of intimacy. These concerns first emerged very simply when as a ten year old armed with my first camera I would take pictures of friends who would, for example, lose themselves interacting with a tree, or be indulgently buried in sand by the edge of the ocean. And this curiosity has continued to this day, the same urge but now within a more developed, ‘adult’ conceptual framework.

For the last 12 years I have lived within various different communities in a broad range of cultures, finding new ways to embed my creative work within the relationships I become part of. The work I’ve produced develops slowly and organically, probing beneath the surface of things, attempting to harness the same mysterious force (sometimes love or spirit, other times just a blind wildness) by which the tree root cracks the pavement.

Berlin is not just another place. Ever since my first visit in 2007 I have been drawn to it for many reasons: the post-punk bohemianism, the underground, the transgressive, the multi-disciplinary landscapes; then the friendliness of the city with so much greenery. All of this feels inspiring and relevant to the general movement of my work, and the intersection of post- industrial green urban spaces, electronic/ambient music and queer subcultures, dovetails with it perfectly.

GlogauAIR is not just another residency. Two close artist colleagues, Antonia Cruz and Virginia Echeverria, both past residents whose work I admire hugely, have been encouraging me to apply for some time. I am a hardworking, enthusiastic and curious artist. I thrive in communal environments and I believe that having a network that combines support and expertise will only deepen my conceptual and curatorial outlook. Personally I am hospitable, love cooking, DIY projects, helping to improve the environments in which I live and work and generally contributing to social cohesion and health. From what my colleagues have told me it sounds as though the GlogauAIR would be a very good fit for my creative and interpersonal idioms.

CV Summary

EDUCATION

• 2011 SVA School of Visual Arts, New York, USA, MFA, Fine Arts
• 2006 Universidad Finis Terrae, Santiago, Chile, BFA, Painting
• 2010-2017 Go! Push Pop Collective, Co-Director with Katie Cercone

SOLO AND TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS

• 2016 CAD Centro de Arte Digital en Memoria de Juan Downey, Puerto Varas, Chile
• 2015 J Square Moving Movements, curated by Hyejung Jang, Busan, Korea
• 2014 Soho20 Gallery, Vibrations/Vibraciones, New York, NY, USA
• 2014 Galeria Artespacio, Vibrations/Vibraciones , Santiago, Chile
• 2013 School33ArtsCenter, EXCHANGE: a home based residency, curated by Hyejung Jang, Baltimore, MD, USA
• 2007 Centro Cultural de las Condes, El Hacer, Santiago, Chile

SELECTION OF GROUP EXHIBITIONS & PERFORMANCES

• 2019 CULTO, curated by Antonia Cruz, Teatro Zapallar, Chile
• 2019 EDEN, Spring Break Art Show curated by Indira Cesarine, Untitled Space, NY
• 2017 Social Media Detox, performance, By Other Means Gallery, London, UK
• 2017 Start from Scratch, 2nd Changjiang International Photography and Video Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Art, China
• 2016 CA2M Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, curated by Quiela Nuc, Madrid, Espana
• 2016 In the Raw:The Female Gaze on the Nude, curated by Indira Cesarine and Coco Dolle, Untitled Space,NY
• 2014 SELECT Art Fair, Milk and Night Curatorial, Gallery Sensei, Miami Beach, FL, USA
• 2014 Whitney Museum of Americam Art, The Clitney Perennial, feminist performance protest led by Go! Push Pops and others
• 2013 Bronx Museum, First Fridays! QUEEN$ DOMiN8TiN, New York, NY, USA
• 2013 Brooklyn Museum, Go! Push Pops perform at the Annual Artists Ball, Brooklyn, NY, USA
• 2013 Catch Fire, Movement, Queer Film Screening, Berlin, Germany
• 2012 Soho20 Gallery, Savoir Faire, Go! Push Pops SistersSpinderella, curated by Jenn Dierdorf, New York, NY, USA
• 2012 Galeria Artespacio, Made in NY, curated by Carlos Navarrete, Santiago, Chile
• 2012 C24 Gallery, CAMPAIGN, curated by Amy Smith-Stewart, NY
• 2011 Galeria Artespacio, PINTA Latin American Art Fair, curated by Carlos Navarrete, New York, NY, USA
• 2011 Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, Fragmentation, curated by Dan Cameron, New York, NY
• 2005 Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Taller Arte en Vivo, Santiago, Chile
• 2005 Museo Histórico Militar, Talentos Jóvenes , Santiago, Chile
• 2003 Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Art Phillips Expressions, Santiago, Chile

HONORS, AWARDS, AND GRANTS

• 2014 Alexandra Arts, HOLY CREATRIX, a commissioned residency & performance, Manchester, UK
• 2014 Nominee, Rema Hort Mann Visual Arts Grant, with Go! Push Pops
• 2011-2009 School of Visual Arts, Matching Outside Scholarship, New York, NY
• 2011-2009 Chilean Bicentennial National Scholarship, for MFA Fine Arts
• 2009 AICA, Selected by International Association of Art Critics, Chile
• 2006-2003 Universidad Finis Terrae, Honors Scholarship, Academic Excellence, Santiago, Chile
• 2005 Museo Historico Militar, Honor Distinction in Painting, Jovenes Talentos, Santiago, Chile

Gallery