My House is My Body: Alejandra Glez
Initially a virtual exhibit by featuring 14 limited edition prints and a video performance conceived and executed during the quarantine of 2020, the show has been expanded to include a unique edition of 8 dye sublimation prints on aluminum panels.
In collaboration with and essay by Dayneris Brito.
THE MULTIPLE INSIGHTS OF ALEJANDRA GLEZ
DAYNERIS BRITO
The current circumstances we’re all struggling with nowadays, have brought into light new ways of seeing ourselves as subjects and individuals. Social distancing, loneliness, lockdown and solitude are just some of the issues to deal with in these latest days, since we’re not allowed to go outside our homes anymore, while our daily routine has been totally affected due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The worldwide situation that asks us to be enclosed, is certainly limiting human beings’ social activities. Suddenly, we find ourselves facing an unexpected free-time that in many ways is filled with inspiration and emotional stimulus. To contribute to this purpose, art institutions and exhibit spaces are turning to the online platform, in order to provide all a virtual refuge where art keeps going.
My house is my body consists as an ongoing exhibition of the Havana-based visual artist Alejandra Glez. It is composed by photographs and a video-art installation, aimed to recreate through Alejandra’s insights, the body language as a reflection of lockup and imprisonment felt mostly by female bodies. Taking into account that the current condition is affecting not just women’s physical health, but their mental health as well, the artist is encouraged to underline the many parts of the female body, that according her closer friends are meant to represent anxiety, sensation of lockdown, angst and fear. We’re referring to breasts, the feet, the hair, the mouth, the fingers, the hands and so on.
It seems Alejandra’s images have the intention of exploring what it is to be within our own body looking out; the moments of intimacy when you can actually exist as a woman in all your contradictions and complications, both physical and mental. How many times do we feel free from our body? Are we enclosed within our homes or within our minds? Which parts of our body make us feel trapped? These are some of the questionings that eventually show up while discovering her complex visions on such controversial issues. Likewise, this virtual show makes us aware of a shared visual experience, in which we feel comfortable –or uncomfortable- with our own bodies.
Such as, we wanted to define the results obtained by the artist’s insights as “practical exercises in time of isolation”, rather than finished complex art works, given that what really matters is the concept behind each shortlisted shot. However, the scheme prompts a reflection on, and awareness of, contemporary questions of how feminist trends and social identities are looking into themselves; while are constantly being reinvented.
Dayneris Brito
(Havana, 1996)
Art historian, art writer settled between Havana and Venice
