AwardJune 9, 2017

Catalina Toro Awarded at the "Topographies of the Inside and of the Outside" Competition

The award in the Professional modality of the competition "Topographies of the Inside and of the Outside" was granted to Antioquean artist Catalina Toro for her photographic work Breve Ensayo sobre el Alto y Bajo Relieve: Proyecciones para una "Incertidumbre Segura" (Brief Essay on High Relief and Low Relief: Projections for a "Certain Uncertainty"), consisting of a series of five photographs that question the preconceived notion of home as refuge and of the outside world as dangerous, while showing the relative nature of such assertion. About the spaces used to capture the images, Catalina Toro affirms that "I intervene landscapes in Medellin, like a plot across from my home that for some reason remains undeveloped. I went there and played with the elements in the space and other items that I bring from my home." Toro also intervened the ravine in the town of Envigado that leads to the Medellin River. She placed a bed sheet on a stone and photographed it, and took other images in Valledupar of women washing bed sheets and hanging them on trees. Organized by the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), in partnership with the Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño and Fotomuseo, the competition aims at reflecting, through photography, on concepts such as inside, outside, inclusion, exclusion, migrating and inhabiting. The call received more than 100 applications from Colombian visual artists and photographers between the ages of 20 and 45. A selection of the works was exhibited at the Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño organized by curator Ana María Lozano, Gilma Suárez, director of Fotomuseo, and Maria Paula Silva, Arts and Creative Industries manager of the British Council. Two winners were selected, one in the Professional category and another in the Amateur category. The jury was formed by Dieter Neubert (Germany), Dominique Teufen (Switzerland), and Santiago Forero (Colombia).
Catalina Toro Awarded at the "Topographies of the Inside and of the Outside" Competition | artnexus