artnexus #63

Donna Conlon was born in the US (Atlanta, 1966) but lives and works in Panama City. Her earliest works focused on sculpture, and in recent years her activity has moved towards photography, video, and installation. She has received many recognitions for her work, and was selected to participate in the latest Venice Biennial.

With her video Espectros Urbanos (Urban Ghosts), Conlon won 1st Prize at the 4th Central American Isthmus Visual Arts Biennial (2004.) In it Conlon continues to develop what has been a central preoccupation in her oeuvre: the investigation of the space around us, and the aggressions it suffers due to the contemporary way of life, uninterested in caring for the environment. In Espectros Urbanos, she confronts a panoramic sequence of Panama City high rises with structures that she builds using garbage picked up from the streets, and which grow until becoming the landscape that replaces the initial towers.

This work continues, then, to explore the artist’s interest in what she calls her “immediate environments,” an environment that allows her to find, almost like an archaeologist, objects that people discard and that accumulate and are part of our everyday images. Thus, trees, insects, street garbage are all materials to be discovered and reconstructed in works that explore and question the ecological damage that Man is capable to inflict on his own habitat.

Conlon’s works, be it in ephemeral sculptures, on-site installations, photographs, and videos, display her concern about contemporary humanity’s questionable behavior in its use of everyday objects, and are not only a warning but an attempt to incite reflection about the need to develop a greater sense of responsibility towards the natural world we inhabit.

 IVONNE PINI