My Intervention in the book "CARAUMA" by Bertrand Meunièr…
In this profound reflection, I delve into the intricate relationship woven between my corporeality and the various territories I have inhabited throughout my existence. I establish an analogy with the dwelling, presenting it as a sacred sanctuary devoid of constraints and censorship. Just as a residence free from limitations stands as a refuge that nurtures self-love and self-acceptance, my own corporeal being longs to be the object of complete affection and unquestionable respect.
The coexistence with nature prompts me to recognize ourselves as an intrinsic element of this vast tapestry, endowing us with the role of life-givers and, therefore, the inherent right to the same respect we demand as women. However, at times, I must face scrutiny and censorship that immerse me in a sense of impurity or diminishment. Despite these challenges, unconditional oases emerge, offering acceptance and creating environments where I can be genuine and unrestricted.
In these places, I manage to shed the masks and synthetic skins that I unfold in the external stage, thus achieving a full coexistence with my primordial essence.
A print run of 400 copies was withdrawn from circulation in 2014 from our Valparaíso FIFV Editions Collection. After 12 years in storage, we recycled these copies to reactivate them and provoke a visual dialogue with the 34 black and white photographs in the book "Curauma" by Bertrand Meunier* (with the author's consent).
Learning to look at and read what someone else does, to approach understanding one's own. More than 180 perspectives were able to interrogate this book (which is part of the geographical territory of the city of Valparaíso), intertwining the individual and connecting the collective. Writing, tearing, painting, cutting, burning, drawing, pasting, scratching, sewing, and erasing were the conjugated and declared verbs for this invitation to deconstruction and reconstruction of new visual narratives.
We invited 12 Ibero-American authors to individually intervene in the book. Poets, visual artists, and photographers re-signified the contents of this book from their own languages, turning it into unique copies, of 12 Collectible Object Books. This same exercise of reinterpretation of another's narrative extended to our Formador de Formadores de Imagen Salvaje Program.
The book traveled to Mexico, Argentina, Peru, the United States, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Santiago, Quilpué, Casablanca, Viña del Mar, Valparaíso, and Playa Ancha. Sixteen learning communities worked for 6 months on the collective intervention of the same book. Methodologies that arise from dialogue, agreement, consent in the aesthetic, the poetic, and the political-philosophic to end in a collaborative authorial visual coexistence.
More than 45 copies are part of our collection of Photo Books Maquettes that will be safeguarded in our Library Casa Espacio Imagen Salvaje FIFV. *Bertrand Meunier was a resident of FIFV 2014 where, by socio-political decision, he explored the out-of-frame of Valparaíso and walked along the edges of the city of Valparaíso in Curauma, a model of progress that he criticizes in his visual narrative and the text by Jerome Baschet "Dehumanization of a World" that accompanies it.
