artnexus #29

Beatriz González (Bucaramanga, 1938) has explored her interest in history both through her artistic activity and her research work, which has led to numerous significant publications.

 From early on, she has devoted her energies to looking at things from the perspective of the history of art. Her keen eye and sense of inquiry led her to question the iconography we use to represent our culture. Through criteria based not just on collecting data but on the act of discovery, she sifted through newspaper photographs in search of the images that document our history. Thus her pictures are full of well-known figures who stir our memories, encouraging us to establish associations related to events and experiences in which, whether consciously or not, we have all been involved.

They are, from the anonymous figure taken from a newspaper to the ironic portrayal of national heroes. Her approach to history does not result in any loss of local color which, on the contrary, she tries to heighten. It is created through the observation and analysis of images rooted in popular culture which are used to interpret the characteristics of the world from which they spring.

From her early work in the 1980s, she has plunged deeper and deeper into our national reality, with the jocular tone of her view of local history. Gradually this gives way to a more critical attitude through the ironic treatment of stereotypical figures. In her most recent work, González combines various facts, displacing and condensing them in time and space, inviting us to look at them from other perspectives. But she has always insisted on something that is a constant feature of her work: the creation of new symbolic relationships that, rather than offering a visual description of the history, seeks to identify and explore its problems.

Beatriz González, an indispensable point of reference in the contemporary art of Colombia, is currently presenting her first individual exhibition in New York. See the article by Nicolás Guagnini.

IVONNE PINI