Images of new paradigms: gender, race, ecology, politics, technology

Within the Hellenic pantheon, Pallas Athena stood out as one of the main deities.

Born directly from the head of Zeus, this virgin goddess, whose heart is inaccessible to love and unbeatable in war, was protector of Athens and Attica.

To her helmet, shield and spear, warrior symbols, were added her wisdom and an unparalleled sense of justice;

a compendium of qualities that led her to occupy an intermediate place between the masculine and the feminine.

The ambivalent deity is also the inspiration for one of the latest works by Gloria Oyarzabal (London, 1991),

Paradigmas de lo exotico

(2023).

An installation that confronts the inhuman perfection of the goddess with the paradigm of the evolution of

Homus erectus

and the colonist's devouring desire for exoticism.

An evocative and instigating game of images, own and appropriate, that overlap and become transparent to allude to memory, power and the idealization of the different values ​​that are imposed throughout history, and serves as an introduction to the exhibition

Un paradigm shift

.

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The exhibition, which opens today in the Sala de Arte Joven of the Community of Madrid, seeks to make visible the changes in guidelines or patterns within contemporary artistic photography through the perspective of 15 authors of national and international origin.

Mostly emerging photographers, who present their work alongside authors with greater experience and recognition.

Distributed into five groups, they will establish dialogues with each other in order to address political, gender, race, technological and ecological issues.

Together, the works reflect changes that leave technical limitations behind, expanding the limits of photography to other territories.

They question the artist's ego and do not hesitate to integrate manipulation and appropriation as a form of legitimate expression, accepting the challenges of a continuous technological revolution.

At the same time, personal experience gains ground within the visual narrative.

'El Lugo' (2021).

César Dezfuli (in collaboration

'Paradigms of the exotic' (2023).

Gloria Oyarzabal

'La Españoleta' (2023).

Megane Mercury

'Fill according to content' (2020).

Estampa Collective

'Paul' (2023). Cristina Galán

'Don't be blind to my kingdom' (2023).Dilayla Romeo

'The photographer's eye' (2015-2017).Esteban Pastorino

'In extinction' (2022-2024).Toya Legido

'All Things in Heaven and Earth' (2022).Luye Lu

'Eternal spring and weeds' (2023).Carmela García

'The body as a suit' (2017-2023).Yun Ping

'Walking Castles' (2023).

Lucía Sun.Lucía Sun

Still from 'We all like bananas' (2021).

Ruben H Bermudez

'The Mask of Duel' (2023). Agnes Essonti Luque

In the first group, and under the title

Dominant political structures, sovereignty and capitalism

, the Atenea of ​​Oyarzabal dialogues with

La Españoleta

;

a character invented by the multidisciplinary artist of African origin Megane Mercury (Madrid, 1996), whose name coincides with the term used in certain places in Colombia to refer to those who migrate to Spain and allow themselves to be infected by ways of speaking and being more typical of the West.

Mercury will portray her protagonist in Barcelona's Poblenou, a neighborhood that has already reached inevitable gentrification, in an environment where colorful clothing contrasts with other elements that allude to the search for identity of those marked by migratory processes.

Similarly, César Dezfuli (Madrid, 1999), who was one of the winners of the last edition of the World Press Photo with a project,

Passangers

, which deals with migration in the Mediterranean, expands the limits of documentary photography, to allude to prostitution as another manifestation of the exploitation of capitalism, within a work that he will carry out with the collaboration of a prostitute.

Eternal spring and weeds

is the title of the series within which are framed two of the works with which Carmela García (Lanzarote, 1964) addresses the issue of gender within her silent way of rethinking the femininity to which she has us. accustomed.

Portraits as subtle as they are powerful, loaded with beauty that somehow return us to the origin of time, to wild lost paradises, where nature makes its way and evolves into other forms.

Next to him, the more explicit Yun Ping (Hubei, China, 1998) launches into the search for his own self, showing the transformations of his own body.

“His body becomes his work and experimentation space,” highlights photographer Marta Soul, curator of the exhibition, “in a kind of visual diary that at the same time is transmuted into a cultural symbol.”

'Eternal spring and weeds' (2023).

In the exhibition 'A paradigm shift'.Carmela García

Paul is the protagonist of the work presented by Cristina Galán (Madrid, 1992).

Dressed in pink, he inhabits neutral and impersonal settings.

He projects an appearance as immaculate as it is fake, he never looks at the camera, but he never stops smiling.

Underneath his face lies emptiness, the disconnection with his surroundings and his own being, as occurs with the clones that surround him.

A critical look at the ideals that social networks feed daily, spurred by the abundance of filters and applications that technology offers.

Likewise, the Estampa Collective warns in

Fill according to content

of the erasure of identity implicit in the use of networks—as opposed to the in-person effect they are supposed to offer—and of the paradoxes they pose between control and anonymity.

A contradiction that also runs through the tradition of the history of photography.

A thousand butterflies, photographically reproduced in three dimensions, cover two of the walls of the second floor.

All of them are in the catalog of endangered butterflies of the Iberian Peninsula.

They make up the installation presented by Toya Legido,

In extinction

(2022-2024), in which the rapid and threatening disappearance of lepidopterans from 1960 to the present is visualized in one fell swoop;

Their number has been reduced by approximately 70%.

“If the butterflies are lost, the flora that can only be pollinated by these insects disappears,” warns the author as she points to the set of nutritional plants that complement the work.

Still from 'We all like bananas' (2021).

In the exhibition 'A paradigm shift'. Rubén H Bermúdez

The exhibition includes the screening of

We all like bananas

(2021), a documentary by Rubén H. Bermúdez (Madrid, 1981), author of And you, why are you black?, a photobook that portrayed the latent racism in the Spanish society from the artist's own experiences.

Intimate experiences echoed by the seven black people who take us into their daily lives and star in the film.

Upon leaving the room, one cannot avoid the reflection that although throughout history artists have reflected in their work the changes that take place in society, their discourse has never coincided so much as that of the museums, galleries and institutions that protect it, with that of the politicians.

Characteristic that will possibly lead to defining the current moment.

Perhaps the answer is that the system is more receptive to a series of demands that did not find resonance in the past.

Even so, the idea of ​​art coexisting with politics remains as strange, complex and problematic as that of its distancing.

'A paradigm shift'.

Young Art Room.

Madrid.

Until March 10, 2024.

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