ExhibitionAugust 28, 2023
Gabriela Golder: Arrancar Los Ojos. (Tear out the eyes) Fragmentos. Espacio de Arte y Memoria
Arrancar los ojos, by Argentinean artist Gabriela Golder, is the winning project of the Fragments 2021 Call; for this, she proposes a reflective and poetic journey through five works: Un dolor que recuerda por qué duele (A pain that remembers why it hurts), Formas de decir (Ways of saying), Desde el campo de batalla (From the battlefield), De los ojos que se mueven amparados por su furia (From the eyes that move sheltered by their fury), and Arrancar los ojos (Tearing out the eyes), that are video installation, sculpture, music, and archival material.
The works emerged after the social outbursts in Chile and Colombia in 2019. "I started this project with the unrest that what happened in Chile in 2019 produced in me. I was moved by the news that protesters were being shot in the eyes with non-lethal weapons. I started researching and collecting archival material from newspapers, alternative media, and YouTube," explains Golder, a visual artist born in 1971, director of the Biennial of the Moving Image (BIM), and curator of El Cine es Otra Cosa, a cycle of experimental film and video at the Museo Moderno in Buenos Aires. After the artist investigated eye mutilations executed by state security forces in several countries, she proposed a reflection on institutional violence, repression, and collective trauma.
Gabriela Golder, although she focused her research in Colombia, doing interviews in May 2022 with some ocular victims, in the text of the exhibition states:
"To remove the eyes, to stop seeing, to hide, to cover, to blind, to make invisible, to disappear.
The police aim directly at the head, not only in Colombia and Chile but also in Palestine, Catalonia, France, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Brazil, Kashmir. Where else? Since when?
This repressive strategy has been evolving since the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where bullets aimed at the eyes of demonstrators have been used to blind, to maim. This is a paradigm shift in police violence, from the 'right to kill' to the 'right to disable.'"
For more information, visit: https://www.fragmentos.gov.co/desde-el-arte/Paginas/Arrancar_los_ojos.aspx?nombre=Arrancar_los_ojos.aspx
The works emerged after the social outbursts in Chile and Colombia in 2019. "I started this project with the unrest that what happened in Chile in 2019 produced in me. I was moved by the news that protesters were being shot in the eyes with non-lethal weapons. I started researching and collecting archival material from newspapers, alternative media, and YouTube," explains Golder, a visual artist born in 1971, director of the Biennial of the Moving Image (BIM), and curator of El Cine es Otra Cosa, a cycle of experimental film and video at the Museo Moderno in Buenos Aires. After the artist investigated eye mutilations executed by state security forces in several countries, she proposed a reflection on institutional violence, repression, and collective trauma.
Gabriela Golder, although she focused her research in Colombia, doing interviews in May 2022 with some ocular victims, in the text of the exhibition states:
"To remove the eyes, to stop seeing, to hide, to cover, to blind, to make invisible, to disappear.
The police aim directly at the head, not only in Colombia and Chile but also in Palestine, Catalonia, France, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Brazil, Kashmir. Where else? Since when?
This repressive strategy has been evolving since the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where bullets aimed at the eyes of demonstrators have been used to blind, to maim. This is a paradigm shift in police violence, from the 'right to kill' to the 'right to disable.'"
For more information, visit: https://www.fragmentos.gov.co/desde-el-arte/Paginas/Arrancar_los_ojos.aspx?nombre=Arrancar_los_ojos.aspx
Gallery
