Art Madrid'23 – Colita photography at Conde Duque Madrid

 

 

 

To concentrate 50 years of career of one of the most active, committed and productive photographers of our contemporary scene is complicated, but not impossible, and have done so in Conde Duque with the exhibition "Colita, ¡porque sí!". Organized by the Foundation Catalunya-La Pedrera, the exhibition is a journey through the path of Isabel Steva Hernández "Colita" the watchful eye of the streets of Barcelona, ??the ethical view of our society, the friend of intellectuals, ...

 

 

 

Her images are not just a portrait of society, but a compendium of sensitivity of the author, her expectations and her opinions about politics, social relations, identity ... and always in pure state, without digital manipulations without cheating, without artifice and without pose, no matter they were profesional or personal projects.

 

 

 

 

 

Infinite issues, her archive spans from political photography, journalism, feminism, local customs and the urban landscape, the world of flamenco, cinema, bullfighting and the phlegmatic "gauche divine" Catalan. The exhibition is thus also a tour of the biography of the photographer, always personally involved in the worlds that she put at her goal and that they ended up being its intimate spaces, their own friends, their ideas and their own vices.

 

 

 

 

In front of her camera have succumbed Terenci Moix, Ana Maria Matute, Maria del Mar Bonet, La Trinca, Paulovsky, Orson Welles, Joan Manuel Serrat, Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Herralde editor, Juan Marse and Jaime Gil de Viedma, among many others. As she always handles remind "do not consider myself an artist, but a photographer that has fun doing the task" and fun is a nuance that permeates each of his images, a fun that grows of the joy of recognizing the world, in all its extension and contradiction, as something wonderful and using sense of humor used as a weapon of resistance to the powers that be.

 

 

According to exhibition curator, Laura Terré "Colita is not photojournalism as we know it" because behind all her pictures, there is a woman who is showing her look and her point of view.

 

 

 


 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.