Claudio Correa Biographical sketch
My work has been presented in renowned museums and galleries, mainly in Latin America, Europe and the United States, such as, the VIII Havana Biennial, Cuba (2003); Back Yard, Americas Society, NY (2003); Shanghai Biennial, N11 Project, China, (2004); Resistance, Fall and Madness, ACC Galerie, Weimar, Germany (2006); Era07 REGIÓN: Fricciones y Ficciones, Blanes Museum, Montevideo, Uruguay, curatorship by Gerardo Mosquera (2007); Ni pena ni miedo, MEIAC Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo, Badajoz, Spain (2011); De naturaleza violenta, FLORA ars+natura, Bogotá, Colombia, curatorship by José Roca (2013); Otros relatos, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo La Consevera, Ceutí, Spain, curatorship by Fernando Castro Flórez (2015); Bellos Jueves, National Museum of Fine Arts, Buenos Aires, Argentina, (2015); and, Libertad, Igualdad, Fatalidad,solo exhibition, National Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile (2016), among others. In my career I have received the Fondart: National Fund of Culture and Arts, Chilean Government (CL, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018); the Flora Ars Natura Residency (Co, 2013), Third Place at the Bienal de las Fronteras, Tamaulipas (Mexico, 2015); The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (NY, 2015); a solo exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile (CL, 2016) and an Artistic Residence in Hangar and Fabra i Coats, Barcelona (ES, 2018).
Artist Statement
An important part of my work as a visual artist has been devoted to a critical commentary on history and the problematization of the existing relationships between visual devices and power structures arising in the context of the modern world. Also, I have dealt with the hierarchies to which people are subjected, based on the analysis of discourses, practices and technologies that cross the symbolic and political connections between Europe and Latin America.
In the previous eight years I have developed a series of works entitled If I could I would do worse, where I researched and recreated different forms of institutional emblems and historic utensils from the recent history of Hispanic America. My visuality has been built on objects that are both out of circulation and part of historiographic records. Through exhaustive documentary research and oral sources, I have re-materialized these objects, stressing the geopolitical and visual history of Latin America in the context of Western modernity. With this effort, I reveal the power matrix that dominates Latin America’s history in its different phases of westernization. The product of my findings have been installations, sculptures, collages and videos, appropriating elements from the "monumental sculpture" typical of the "modern project", in order to disrupt its imaginary. My formal strategies subvert this iconography characterized by symmetry, durability and stability, by creating AUTOSUCIFICIENCIA sculptural similes and giving them mobility. Oleo sobre tela en excusados, medidas variables. Intervención pictórica en los baños del Morro Cabaña, “VIII Bienal de La Habana: El arte con la Throughout my work I have tried to give an account of a panoramic vision of the hegemonic vida”, La Habana, Cuba, 2003. representation of power and its influence in the conformation of Latin American identity in its Detalle different de la social, intervención cultural pictórica and politicalsobre los layers. By this I advocate a work concept that is basically excusados con citas a la obra del muralista mexicano David Alfaro Siqueiros. defined by research on the Oleo sobre tela processes of subjectivity construction, which is different depending on sobre inodoro.the area and time. 2017-2009 Bling-Bling (2017) Focus at Chaco Art Fair, curatorship by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Santiago, Chile. Bling-Bling (2017) is an installation composed of 69 small objects mounted on the wall, where the artist meticulously assembles tiny pieces of military iconography such as stars, winged goddesses and condors –coming from decorations and coins produced during the military dictatorship in Chile- intervened with handmade dental prostheses and other characteristic ornaments from popular culture. The objects created by Correa are presented as a kind of hybrid mixing aesthetics coming from two opposite worlds: the epic quality and the human dispossession, thus constituting an apparent visual paradox; the dental prostheses present themselves brutally, exhibiting their artificial carnality, dismantling the iconography that adorns them. Libertad, Igualdad, Fatalidad [Freedom, Equality, Fatality] (2016) National Fine Arts Museum, Santiago, Chile. Libertad, Igualdad, Fatalidad [Freedom, Equality, Fatality] (2016) is a sound installation consisting of a 1: 1 scale reproduction of a sailboat suspended in mid-air, composed of four masts supported with ropes to the walls and structure of the vault of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile. Each sail has a box with speakers and fans, swelling the sails while synchronously reproducing versions of La Marseillaise intoned by immigrant workers from Santiago. The versions of the French anthem belong to Spanish-speaking social movements of the early twentieth century (the anarchists from Argentina, Apristas from Peru and socialists from Chile) which preserved the melody of the anthem but changed the lyrics.
Video link https://vimeo.com/207683054
Traducción en metal de mil pesos [Translation in metal of thousand pesos], third place Transparentarte award, Stgo, Chile, 2016 Traducción en metal de mil pesos [Translation in metal of thousand pesos](2016) composite collage documents from the Central Bank of Chile, magnifying glasses and a thousand coins approx. of 1 peso. This table consists of three documents of the Central Bank: an empty bag of coins of one peso, a regulation on false money and regulation No. 32 on the exchange of money broken for new money. In the glass that protects the work are four magnifying optical lenses that allow to accentuate details of the documents, the small print of the regulations and particularities of the coins. As a whole, the elements of this work provoke a tension between form and content, equivalent to the tension between the abstract nature of the regulations and the material nature of the coins scattered in the painting.
La Tragedia de los Comunes [The Tragedy of the Commons] (2015) Metales Pesados Gallery, Santiago, Chile. La Tragedia de los Comunes [The Tragedy of the Commons] (2015) is an individual exhibition composed of works in two-dimensional format, sculptures and a video, giving an account of the dynamics of change and the uncertainties in the field of economics. Money is the protagonist of the exhibition and is used as material for the creation of these pieces. By learning the regulations of the Central Bank on bills, their use, legality and the codes contained in them, the artist becomes aware of the vast amount of hidden information carried by each single bill. The work was born on the interest of the artist to develop works governed by an economic approach, bordering on the limits of art. Thus, the bills, in their artistic status, stress the border between representation and falsification.
Línea Blanca [White line] (2015) , Third Place, Acquisition Prize, Borders Biennial, Tamaulipas Contemporary Art Museum, Matamoros, Mexico. Línea Blanca [White line] (2015), consists of wax sculpted replicas of two Latin American 1 peso coins; the 1975 new Uruguayan peso and the 1994 new Mexican peso. The work consists of 4,000 of these coins made in wax in a 1: 1 scale and along with them 3 reproductions, also in wax, of the same coins but in a larger format (90 cm in diameter). Every coin has a wick like a wax candle. This work deals with the origin of two Latin American currencies, which during the last quarter of the 20th century had to be renamed with the prefix “New”. In both countries, Uruguay and Mexico, these new coins implied that a New Peso would be equivalent to one thousand pesos, as part of an inflationary deterrent and a search for political stability.
Video link: Cuatro formas de ser Republicano a la distancia [Four ways of being a Republican at a distance] (2015) Beautiful Thursdays, National Fine Arts Museum, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Cuatro formas de ser Republicano a la distancia [Four ways of being a Republican at a distance] (2015) is an audiovisual intervention in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Video projection on Abel (1902), a sculpture by Lucio Correa, part of the permanent collection of Argentinean art. The video is made up of four versions of the Anthem with Spanish lyrics. The video is a musical performance by a choir and small orchestra, with a fascist aesthetic, alluding to a tribute to Pinochet carried out in Cerro Chacarillas in 1977. The cross between Lucio Correa’s sculpture and my work is ironic. Abel is a metaphor "of Argentinean art killed by his brothers". The intention is to have a dialogue between Abel and Four ways of being a Republican at a distance, unveiling the paradoxical pretension of originality that uses a copy, revealing the ideological dependence of the imaginaries of autonomy.
Video link https://vimeo.com/61431467
Viento de la voz [The voice’s wind] exhibited in De Naturaleza Violenta [Of violent nature] (2014), curator José Roca, Spanish Cultural Center, Santiago, Chile.
Viento de la voz [The voice’s wind] (2014) is a sound installation composed of the sound hole of a Spanish guitar, a philharmonic drum, a wax score and a narrator’s voice on stereo audio. The work is based on an interview with a veterinarian during his stay in Honda, Colombia, in 2013 (as a result of the Flora Ars + Natura residency). The voice comes from two devices that emulate traditional musical instruments: a classical guitar and an orchestral bass drum. The interview is broadcast from a hole in the wall, which emulates a guitar’s sound hole. The bass drum emits low frequencies due to a speaker in its interior, which in turn and due to vibrations, makes a drumstick move, automatically hitting the instrument.
Video link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zESEr7CIdsk&feature=youtu.be
Misión Cumplida [Mission Accomplished] exhibited in Historias del Objeto [Stories of the Object] (2013), Gabriela Mistral Gallery , Santiago, Chile Misión Cumplida [Mission Accomplished] (Chile, 2013) consists of photographic and sculptural wax recreations of medals minted during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), given as a reward for acts of political repression. Currently, these medals are proof of violation of Human Rights. Due to their scale the pieces are conceived as commemorative sculptures. However, in the course of the exhibition, due to the wax that makes up the sculptures, these can be damaged or even disappear. The tension between the institutional and the criminal quality of the pieces reveals the paradox between what is perceptible in the objects’ imaginary and its hidden meaning.
Vista general de “Misión Cumplida, galería Gabriela Mistral Cuatro formas de ser Republicano a la distancia [Four ways of being a Republican at a distance] (2013) Patricia Ready Gallery, Santiago, Chile Cuatro formas de ser Republicano a la distancia [Four ways of being a Republican at a distance] (2013) is an installation composed of military instruments (bugle, trombone, tuba, bass drum, etc.) made in wax, which have incendiary wicks and can self-destruct. The presentation includes six reconstituted scores of Spanish versions of La Marseillaise and a music video shot in Super 8mm film, which bears the same title as the exhibition. The installation refers to four Spanish versions of La Marseillaise from political parties in Argentina, Peru, Spain and Chile, which appropriated the French anthem, preserving the melody and replacing the original song with different and ideologically divergent Spanish lyrics. The work follows a museum-like presentation, enabling the contrast between the hymns being reproduced.
Perdidos: tres crónicas de una rehabilitación conductual masculina [Lost: Three Accounts of a Male Behavioral Rehabilitation] (2009), Earthquake of Chile, First Triennial of Chile, curator Fernando Castro Flórez, Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago, Chile. Perdidos: tres crónicas de una rehabilitación conductual masculina [Lost: Three Accounts of a Male Behavioral Rehabilitation] (2009) consists of three flags located on the outskirts of the Museum of Contemporary Art, bearing the faces of three accused young people interviewed by Correa. Inside the building, and in a non-expository area close to the museum’s toilets, the voices of three inmates singing a cappella the "Quiero ser libre" song by the gypsy band Los Chichos, an emblem of prison culture, emanated from the actual sewers of the museum. The work addresses situations and marginal subjects, positioned in the most "marginal" or residual spaces of the museum.
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZqkxzeoZxQ&feature=youtu.be