multidisciplinary artist
"In her series of autobiographical performances with charcoal (s./t. series), the artist Guadalupe Aldrete embodies a paradoxical image of both the fragile and enduring feminine body. In an exhausting process of piling up the black material, she configures an emotionally overwhelming scene in which the fictional world of personal memories becomes a semantic and affective trigger to reflect on the social context of invisible (migrant) bodies. At the same time, this constellation might bring to our attention the condition of precarious labor, which is not only related to hard physical labor (such as the work in coal mines in the “Third world” for example), but becomes a worrying and threatening prognosis for artists and cultural workers as well. From a historical perspective, Nomada seems to expose a discoursive context for the reexamination of the dark sides of modernity, especially in its relation with the colonial power and the suppression of women. Emotionally challenging and thought provoking, these performances at the same time invite the audience to engage in an ethical dialogue, which involves their stepping out of the safe zone of aesthetic distance and initiates the possibility of direct involvement with the living bodies of others."
Curator of the 18th Pancevo Biennale and lecturer at
the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK)