artnexus #98

They believe that growing up in close contact with mental illness drove my siblings and me, from an early age, to question the notions of what is normal and what is pathological*”, says Javier Téllez (Valencia, Venezuela, 1969; lives and works in New York City). The son of two psychiatrists, he was raised in a context where contact with mental illness was an everyday affair. His interest in the film is also rooted in personal experience: his grandfather established one of Venezuela’s first movie theaters, and Téllez speaks of spending long hours of his childhood in the projection room and of filming his surroundings with a camera given him by his father. In his work, the boundary between madness and sanity is blurred and, in that measure, susceptible to exploration. As he explains, the issue is not to create a kind of therapeutic art, nor to simply observe mental illness; Téllez is intent on giving a voice to those who do not have it, marginalized individuals who inhabit the complex boundary between what is “normal” and what is not. In Téllez’s works, we are confronted with questions such as, must the established norms that structure society always be heeded, or can they be subjected to doubt and evaluation? Téllez’s Juego de sombras, on this issue’s cover, is a film installation that reveals his desire to create a kind of parallel cinema, with subjects often rendered invisible in our everyday experience as its main characters. The mentally ill and the blind, as well as the urban poor, are the marginalized communities visualized here. In Téllez’s work, there is a sustained interest in giving greater visibility to those made invisible by the social fabric, and this ethical posture is expressed as a commitment to difference. His works reflect on heterogeneity and on the need to think in terms of inclusion. 
 * Carolina Ledesma. Javier Téllez. Metáforas sobre la sociedad condenada al olvido (2010). 
IVONNE PINI