Johanna Unzueta
View of the exhibition Tools For Life 2020 Modern Art Oxford On image: Related To My Self, Felt sculpture, recycled burned wooden beam
Johanna Unzueta (Santiago, Chile, 1974) studied art at the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago and lives in New York City since early 2000. She has exhibited widely through Europe, North America and South America, having solo exhibitions and projects at Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City, the Jewett Art Gallery, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Galería Gabriela Mistral, Santiago de Chile, Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City, Queens Museum of Art, New York and Or Gallery, Vancouver.
The Artist was invited by the curator Natalia Viera Salgado, to share a selection of her most representative works.
View of the exhibition Tools For Life 2020 Modern Art Oxford On image: Related To My Self, Felt sculpture, recycled burned wooden beam
View of the exhibition Tools For Life 2020 Modern Art Oxford On image: Related To My Self, Felt sculpture, recycled burned wooden beam
Through sculpture and installation I intend to bring into discussion the notion of labor. On a first layer its technological, historical and social impact on the human condition and on a second layer its relationship to nature. Most of my work incorporates felt along with other natural materials such as fabric and wood. How I manipulate these materials is as important to me as what is being represented. In this sense the notion of labor does not only exist in a social and historical context, it is present in the fabrication of each artwork. The pieces I construct are based on architecture and on industrial elements and objects. My interest in architecture is focused on its symbolic condition, its representation of progress and human development.
A Garment For The Day 2019 on going View of the exhibition From my Head to My Toes, To My Teeth to my Nose … at the Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum curated by Carla Acevedo Yates. 7 Pieces made out of Upcycling Denim and organic Cotton from Guatemala, thread, wooden buttons (handmade from Mexico ) Ref: clothing, on the back a mural piece made in collaboration with student Michigan State University
NIctinastia 2018 Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros. Mural piece 13mt x 6 mt aprox. Pastel pencil, pvc rope.
My interest in industrialized artifacts and machinery is tied to the notion of production. These objects, tools and industrial type constructions, present a physical aspect - that of its possible manipulation or use. As an extension and counterpart of my sculpture practice I have also worked with video and drawing. The video work has been constructed around sculptural actions, many times involving the body as the support of “wearable pieces” and in other occasions by simply intervening spaces. These videos explore how the work and body can relate and interact with the environment (non museum or non gallery spaces).
My most recent explorations in drawing intend to be in juxtaposition with my earlier “industrial” based works. They are muse exercises in which natural designs become a new point of observation. Here, a new set of references is taking shape in the form of biological observations of life, plants and the sciences.
May 2016 NY Watercolor, pastel pencil, charcoal and needle holes on tinted paper.
This drawing was one of the first on a large scale, part of a series of drawings that I said I was working on in 2013. The paper is dyed with natural pigment, in this caunic material. The shapes and colors are absolutely unexpected, I decide them the moment I confront myself with the surface of the paper. I make my drawing base in a composition of circles and oval shapes. The last step in this long process is to make holes with a needle so that the light also becomes part of this composition.
1:1 Resonance 2020, Mural piece pastel pencil, charcoal, recycling cotton thread and cotton dye. Exhibition Pine’s Eye curated by James Clegg. Talbot Rice Gallery of the University of Edinburgh
Johanna’s recent group exhibitions include What’s Love Got to Do With It?, The Drawing Center, New York (2019), Searching the Sky for Rain, Sculpture Center, New York (2019), We Do Not Need Another Hero, X Berlin Biennale (2018), Embodied Absence: Chilean Art of the 1970s Now, The Carpenter Center for The Visual Arts, Harvard University (2016), Cambridge, Massachusetts (2016)
Between 2018-2019 Unzueta was part of Open Sessions study program at the Drawing Center, New York. She is currently in a solo exhibition titled Tools for Life for the Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK.
IG: @ovejavelozzz
