Contingency issues have always been present in Catalina Swinburn’s work in which the following question is raised: where is the limit of the past and the present, of death and the vital drive, of vigil and sleep, of the real and the imaginary, of the game of borders, and of religions? This and other questions are addressed by a body of work from hazy territories, prodigal though blurry zones, the vagueness of which leads us to the realm of the subconscious. It takes us through the borders of the here and beyond, the archaic and the contemporary, into the multiple memory “of permanence” either as myths or reality. She employs the intervention space to delve into personal and collective doubts where her own body establishes boundaries and bonds, claims and hopes. The artist seeks to make us reflect upon the gap between body and territory and upon the inhabiting passage.

Her proposal embodies a game of opposing relationships between technology, the perception of news, the territory as a solid element (marble), and lightness (the bodily shadow). She uses noble materials such as the beautiful and traditional marble, which appears cracked and intervened by a photograph taken with a high tech device (a drone). All of her pieces are ironically presented as a great sublime staging, which, nonetheless, leaves unanswered atavistic questions about territory.

Isabel Aninat
Director of the Isabel Aninat Gallery